Bitmob Posting Tips

Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 Hopefully you know by now that we're all about supporting the community here at Bitmob. Register with us (using your real name!), and besides being able to leave comments on stories, you can post your own articles (via your Profile link), which will go to our all-purpose Mobfeed. And if we find a story that particularly stands out -- cause it's funny, insightful, smart, original, informative, shocking...whatever -- we'll editorially vet it and promote it to the front page of Bitmob for more of the world to see.

We can't thank you all enough for the hundreds of great posts you've put up so far. The Mobfeed and the front page have become daily reading for a lot of people -- gaming community and industry alike -- and if we can keep this up, Bitmob will be around for a very long time.

For you more serious contributors out there, below are a few quick posting tips that will help get everything a bit more consistent around Bitmob. This is optional of course, but you'd be making our lives much easier...and helping to show other new users how we do things around here:

1. Break it up

Put in plenty of paragraph breaks and images to help make longer stories easier on the eyes. With Internet writing, it's OK to have paragraphs that are two or three (or even one) sentences long. Pictures at the top are nice to help draw readers in.

2. Suck them in

Also helpful for drawing readers in: Give us a good, interesting intro! Everyone should know right away what your story is about and why they should keep reading right from the very start.

3. Tag

Please fill out the following sections, located in the right column of the MyBlog window where you're posting your article: Keywords and Descriptions (under "Meta Info") and Tags.

Keywords and a short description will help search engines find your story.

Tags are really important in allowing other users to find your post! Don't overdo it, though -- just legitimate tags only. And please make sure you write out game names as fully and as accurately as possible.

4. Links

For links to other Bitmob pages, please have them "open in this window" while links to outside content should "open in new window" (target = blank).

Note: We don't want community members to turn Bitmob into a place where they can advertise their games, websites, or podcasts. We will delete clearly promotional pieces. If your post has legitimate content but requires a credit link to elsewhere (say, to where your article originally appeared or your personal blog), then put that at the bottom of your story in a non-intrusive, non-annoying way. As long as we see you're not using Bitmob just to get people to go to your site, you should be OK.

You can find these and future tips in the submissions guidelines section of our About Us page (both are linked to in the footer of every Bitmob page).

Thanks!

-The Bitmob Staff

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Demian Linn

July 20, 2009

Oh, and if you can link game names to the appropriate tag (for example, the first time you write 'Halo', link it to http://bitmob.com/index.php/mobfeed/tags/Halo/) then we'll love you forever!

Dan "Shoe" Hsu

Heh, yeah, I was going to add in how to link to game names, but I didn't want to overwhelm any newbies! But what Demian says would be really helpful for us. Upon first mention of a game, please do a link to its tag. For multi-word titles, put in hyphens instead of blanks and take out the colon. For example:

Halo: http://bitmob.com/index.php/mobfeed/tags/Halo

Left 4 Dead: http://bitmob.com/index.php/mobfeed/tags/Left-4-Dead

Call of Duty: World at War: http://bitmob.com/index.php/mobfeed/tags/Call-of-Duty-World-at-War

Toby Davis

You know I have done some many of these things wrong with my writing on here the past few months. Guess this is my slap with the knowledge stick 8)

It's not wrong if we never told you how to do it in the first place! :) And these are just guidelines to help us out. Nothing mandatory.

Jon Porter

I'm a slave to the OpenOffice spell check, but if it bothers you that much I'll leave 'Videogame' as one word. :D

Keita Ohara

O man now im really regretting not using my real name.... my bad shoe

Alejandro Quan-Madrid

I read a debate once over whether it should be written video games or videogames. That article concluded video games as two words. Time to retrain myself.

Keith, you should be able to change your name in your account settings.

Frank Anderson

Thank god I get some confirmation that it is OK to make videogame one word. There is something about all those red marks on my writing that drives me up the wall!
BTW- You guys really need to highlight more stories than you are... and maybe put a limit on how many you can highlight by one user each week. Of course I am just saying this because you people seem to have no appreciation for how awesome I am and have never posted me on the front page. ;)
Seriously, thanks so much! This site has been a great help with me so far. I wish I had found it earlier.

Tyler Samson

Question: where should we grab pictures from so as to dodge copyright issues? I doubt many of us could make high quality screenshots of PS3 games, so where should we hunt for copyright free pictures?

O thanks Demian

There we go now I can write under my real name :)

Craig Ostrin

"And videogame is one word! For our purposes at least."

Respect +1. :)

Jason Wilson

Thank god I get some confirmation that it is OK to make videogame one word. There is something about all those red marks on my writing that drives me up the wall!

@Frank I prefer videogame as one word, but on the Internet, you're going to find it as two words a lot thanks to SEO best practices. Videogame is so much more elegant than video game!

Danh Hoang

It's like being part of a bitmob staff meeting minus donuts.

Alex Mekos

July 21, 2009

I wouldn't mind if people started to use more spoiler warnings. I've been having quite a hard time avoiding Mass Effect spoilers at just about every website and in every podcast, since I'm not too far into my first play through of the game.