Writers’ Guide
A short guide on how to set up an author profile, and an article style guide.
Author’s profile
The profile needs to include the following.
- First name, last name, and nickname. Nickname can just be the same as your username (the one you use to log in). We don’t use it, but WordPress requires it to be there.
- Website. Should be your Instagram url, formatted like this: https://www.instagram.com/yourusername/
- Biographical info. Should be one to two short sweet sentences about you. If you write a Swedish article please fill out both English and Swedish bio, otherwise only fill in the English one.
- Profile Picture. WordPress uses Gravatar, which means you have to register at gravatar.com, with the same email address as you use on your WordPress profile. Upload a color portrait there. (WordPress also uses your Gravatar across the web if you, for example, comment on another WordPress site while logged in.)
Article style guide
All theses are requirements, but we’ll go through the article before release and help you out.
- Lead. Use the ‘lead’ Gutenberg block (in the content) to stylize the first paragraph of your article. This should somewhat summarize the content, and set up expectations for the rest of the post. See any other post for examples.
- Featured image. Add a featured image (in the sidebar). This will be cropped in all shapes and forms, so the focal point needs to be in the middle, with appropriate space around. (P.S: Ignore the ‘Featured Image 2’ block, use only the first one called ‘Featured image’.)
- Article image size. Inline images in the article should be “large” size.
- Headings. Title case on the main article title. No title case on h2 and lower headings.
- Body copy. Keep it left aligned.
- Image style. We use images that are lightly edited, not strongly stylistic in any direction. No framing or text on the images. No B&W or sepia imagery. Look at our other articles and align to the style.
- Image quality. Imagery matters a lot, so it must be as high quality as you can manage. Every picture should be at least 2500px wide. They have to be RGB (pictures are in RGB right off the camera). If your images are RGB, but still look faded when you upload them, it is probably because you have edited them, and they have been saved in a color space WordPress doesn’t handle very well (usually Adobe RGB). Switch them to ‘sRGB’ and they get back their crisp colors. Most pictures are in sRBG right off the camera.
- No guerrilla marketing. Don’t add links to your Instagram or add any introduction to you or your brand anywhere around the article. We want to control the flow of the user, and make the actions look and feel the same for every channel, every post. If you have ideas, please talk to us and we might include it in the next page update. We are working for a platform that gives a liberal amount of brand exposure for our writers, but in an integrated way.
