Before submitting an article for approval, all of the requirements below must be satisfied. Use the Article Checklist Bookmarklet to ensure your article follows these guidelines.
Changes are highlighted.
Important: Before you begin editing in WP, you must have followed the setup instructions for WP under the section “WordPress (WP) Setup” (UPDATED) in the Wiki Index.
Title
- Required
- Make it catchy, as the front page relies on image and titles for clicks.
- Always capitalize the first word and any word that follows a punctuation mark. Capitalize all primary words: essentially all words except the following: “a”, “an”, “and”, “at”, “but”, “by”, “for”, “in”, “nor”, “of”, “on”, “or”, “so”, “the”, “to”, “up”, “yet”
- For SEO purposes, keep the important keywords in the title within the first 62 characters. The closer the keywords are to the beginning of the title, the better.
- Use intelligent SEO titles and not clickbait titles. “You Won’t Believe What This Astronomer Said to the Talking Heads Today” vs. “Neil deGrasse Tyson Discusses Hawking Radiation on CNN”
- Do not use HTML tags in the title. They do not translate well to social media. Use single quotes instead of <em> tags for titles of books, movies, etc.
Permalink
- Required
- You don’t need to shorten.
- Yoast should automatically remove stop words. In case it doesn’t, then change the slug to remove them. A full list of stop words can be found here.
Post
- Required (no kidding)
- Follow the guidelines in Best Practices – Article – Image Guidelines
- Double-spacing/Copy-Paste: While you may have learned to use double-spaces between sentences when you took typing class way back when, they are not a standard, and must be avoided. When you copy draft content over from a word processor, only copy unformatted text into the HTML editor, and clean it up in WordPress. NEVER COPY FROM A WORD PROCESSING DOC STRAIGHT INTO VISUAL EDITING, UNLESS IT’S MS WORD 2013 OR NEWER – most word processors will dump a ton of very bad HTML into copied/pasted content, including strange <div> tags that can end up breaking formatting for the entire blog. There IS a button for “Paste Plain Text” in the visual editor toolbar, but use it with care.
- Spell-check/Grammar: Always spell-check. There is a button for it in the editor. Indeed, read your piece out loud to yourself at least once before submitting to catch everything you can, including words misspelled or misused in a way that eludes the spell-checker (their/there/they’re). And keep an eye out for common punctuation errors, especially apostrophes – the its/it’s error is an ongoing hair-puller for us. Editors will kick back posts with 4 or more spelling/grammar/punctuation errors found on casual inspection.
- Links: Links should be clearly identified, and often cover multiple words explaining where they go to. For example, for the phrase “You can read more about the subject here.” The link should cover the entire sentence, not just “here” which is often tempting to do.
- HTML Tags: Please use emphasis for titles of books, movies, TV shows, games, etc. WordPress does this for you when you use the Italic button (an <em> tag is actually used in the code). Do not use HTML tags of any kind in your title and excerpt. Instead, use single quotes where you would normally use emphasis.
Excerpt
- Required
- The first few lines of your post or a custom-crafted summary.
- Do not use HTML tags in the excerpt. They do not translate well to social media. Use single quotes instead of <em> tags for titles of books, movies, etc.
Categories
- At least one is required.
- Multiple categories are ok; don’t go overboard.
- Do not use the Featured category. That is reserved for editors. GeekDad writers: Do not use the GeekMom category or any of the GeekMom child categories. GeekMom writers: Do not use the GeekDad category. GeekDad and GeekMom writers: Do not use the GeekKid category.
- For your post to appear in the front page parent (top level) category sections, you need to select a parent category. Select no more than one of the parent categories listed below. Be sure to also select the appropriate corresponding child (sub) category(ies). If you don’t see the parent category listed below, it’s okay to choose it on top of the categories featured on the front page.
[row]
[column size=”1/2″ center=”no”]GeekDad Front Page Categories
Columns
Gaming
Entertainment
Technology
Podcasts
Products
[/column]GeekMom Front Page Categories
Featured Columns
DIY
Education
Entertainment
Reviews
Science
Family
[/row]
- You may also choose child categories outside of the parent categories list above.
- There are other category restrictions. More GeekDad category restrictions and guidelines. More GeekMom category restrictions and guidelines.
Featured Image
- Required
- Make it compelling, as the front page relies on image and titles for clicks.
- See Best Practices – Article – Image Guidelines
Tags
- Avoid using them unless under specific circumstances. More details can be found at How (Not) To Use Tags in Posts.
SEO
To make sure your posts get good traffic, and readers stay on your post and the site longer, be sure to read and follow the GeekFamily On-Page SEO Guide.
