How to Write an Article

You may have seen and wondered about the words "0 Articles" (in very large letters) on each page of your homesite except the Entrance. Article writing is a patron feature, which means you must be a subscribing member at any level to create them. Articles can be used as additional webspace for a wide variety of uses. For example, our AW newspaper the Acta Diurna is done using the articles feature. If you were a patron at AncientSites, you will remember having the ability to create additional webpages. This feature was used to great effect by many members there, who created anything from Lucius Aelius' Encyclopaedia Romana to Sekhmet Meritamen's recreation of an Egyptian Temple. Articles at AncientWorlds offer our patrons many of the same abilities.

All standard webpage formatting code works in this feature. So, your article can be simple textual information (example), an html or CSS formatted page (example), or a page using javascript or java programming (example).

Articles written from your Courtyard are listed as "Social Articles"; those written from your Library are designated as "Historical Articles"; and those from your Study are classified as "Role Play Articles" — although you can change these classifications at any time by opening the article and clicking the "re-classify article" button. All of your articles, regardless of classification, are listed in all three rooms. Note: only the seven most recent articles will appear on the list in your rooms. After that, you will see a box with links to the "Next 7" and to the "Bottom" of the list (in the same way posts are handled on the boards).

To create a new article, choose the room in which you want to create it. Scroll down until you see the Articles List. At the bottom of this list, you should see a link that reads New Article of (room)". (example) Click it to open a new article edit form.

Give your article whatever title you care to, but remember that this title also becomes the page title that readers will see in their browser's title bar (so don't make it too long).

In the abstract section, include a short description of the article. This information will appear below the title on your articles list (see example above), but it is also used to create "meta tags" for use by search engines. The more keywordswords people may use to search for your topic you can include in your description, the better.

Insert your webpage code into the body of the form. This is the actual article itself, including any CSS, scripting, or html code; all text; and images tags.

Last, you can associate your article to a place. All the articles you write will automatically be included in the articles list on your homepages. In addition, they will be included in the Library of AncientWorlds. But with the association feature, you can also cause them to appear in any AW Neighborhood's list of articles. To associate your article with a place, click the small arrow button at the far right side of the field (not shown in graphic) and a drop down list of all AW Neighborhoods will appear. Simply pick the neighborhood to which you want your article associated.

A published article contains a number of useful links. To see these, click the name of your article from any article list on which it appears. To aid you in the following explanation, you may want to click this link to open a numbered example page.

1. Link to the Site Library. Clicking this link will open the Library of AncientWorlds, also known as the Articles Hall. Here you will find a list of all the articles published by any AW member.



2. The type of article is listed here. The options are Historical, Social, Roleplay, General, and Interactive Story. As previously mentioned, a category is automatically assigned to your article, depending on the room in which it was originally created. However, you can change the classification at any time (see option 5 below).



3. The author of the article is listed here...or at least, the person in who's article library the article was published. On some occasions, an article may be included in an articles library other than that of the author. For example, the articles of the Acta Diurna.



4. Here you will find the place (if any) to which the article has been associated.



5. The re-categorize button allows you to change the classification of any article. When you click it, a classification box opens that allows you to choose a new category.



6. The feature Article button allows you to feature your article. Okay, that's reasonable, but what does it mean? Simply that your article will appear at the top of the list in the Articles Hall — at least until the next time someone features an article.



7. The Edit button allows you to open the article edit form to make changes to your articles. Unlike posts you can edit your articles at any time regardless of how long they have existed.



8. The Style button opens the standard page styles sheet. This will allow you to change the text and links color and background of your article page. The article takes its style from the style of the room in which you created it. If you've used a background, for example, that causes your text to be difficult to read, you can change the background of the article without affecting the room. Of course, this can also be accomplished using CSS in the article itself if you're a CSS guru.



9. Item number 9 allows you to search for words within various categories of any article. At the moment, the only category available is "Title and Summary".



10. The Add Image button allows you to add a graphic to your article, but note that you can also include graphics using standard html code.



11. The Delete Article button allows you to remove outdated or unwanted articles from your published list. Be careful, however, because there is no way to get the article back if you delete it.



12. Item 12 is the actual body of your article.



13. You can create a new article in your library by clicking this link.



14. This is a list of all the articles you have published.

Occasionally, you may wish to write a series of articles that go together. This may be very useful when discussing a very complicated subject. Or perhaps you're recreating The Egyptian Book of the Dead and wish to organize it into chapter descriptions with the actual verses as subsections. To create a sub-article, simply scroll to the bottom of your article and click the link entitled Sub-article of [article name]. This will open a new articles editing page exactly like the one you used to create the original article. In fact, the sub-article will be shown in your articles list like any other article. The only difference here is that the sub-article will appear on the list inside your articles immediately below the original and indented (see "The Japanese Invasion of Korea" in the numbered graphic linked above). And, yes, you may have sub-articles of sub-articles....