Posted on October 6th, 2009
42934 views This final chapter will cover all the miscellaneous tweaks, tips and rules for using the P2L Publishing System and help you get the most out of publishing your tutorials with us. We''ll also cover the Publish and approval process and why tutorials are declined and what that means. About the Author There are several options you can edit to customize the look of your "About the Author" section, which is located at the bottom of every page of every tutorial you publish. This area is designed to tell readers a little bit about the author of the tutorial and it''s a great way to promote your website or blog. "About the Author" contains the following customizable options:
The last button on the main Publishing System menu is the "Publishing Settings" option, which you can click to access your user settings and edit your "About the Author" description. Type in your personal description as desired and once you are satisfied with your description, click the save button to apply your changes. The second option we can set is the URL displayed under your name, which is a great way to advertise your site, blog or product. Please note that advertising URLs that are not relevant to the tutorial itself within the content areas is not permitted and will result in your tutorial being refused. Please use the "About the Author" area to advertise your website. To set the displayed URL, click on "Publishing Settings" button and open your personal settings area. You will find a menu with several categories of settngs you can change. Under the Forum Settings category, click the "Profile Information" option. Scroll down to the "Website URL" field and input the full URL you want to display in your author info area. Once you''ve entered the desired URL, click the save button at the bottom of the page to apply your settings. The next item you can change is your personal avatar image, which is also changed from your settings menu by clicking on the "Display Avatar" option under the Forum Settings category. Use the form to upload an avatar directly from your PC. Please note that avatar images can be no larger than 80 x 80 pixels with a filesize no larger than 10kb and can only be .JPG or .GIF format. Click the save button to apply your changes and your author information is complete! Once your description, website URL and avatar image are set, your "About the Author" section will look something like this: You will also notice that there is a credit donation box to the right of the author information area. This is a special donation box found on every tutorial that can be used by any user with credits in their account to show their appreciation for a tutorial by sending 5 thank you credits to the author. Don''t be afraid to say thank you for good content, the favor my come back to you when you start to write tutorials! You may also notice that some publishers are tagged with a "Premium Publisher" logo under their tutorials. Premium Publisher status is awarded to users by P2L staff that have a proven track record of publishing good quality content on a consistent basis. When a publisher is given Premium Publisher status, all Publishing related credits awarded for publishing a tutorial and for traffic to that tutorial are doubled! Publishing a Tutorial and the Approval Process Once your tutorial has been written and all your content is ready to go, it''s time to save your tutorial one final time and then press the "Publish" button from the Start tab in the writing area. This will finalize your tutorial and send it to the approval queue. When you tutorial is published and submitted to the approval queue, your tutorial is basically being approved for two functions:
Let''s define the difference between these two areas as this will help you understand the approval process and where your tutorial will be found. The P2L Tutorial Index is the core database of the site. The Index is the main directory of every tutorial submitted to Pixel2life, and this includes both tutorials submitted by webmasters AND tutorials published in the P2L Publishing System. Tutorials that are approved for inclusion to the main index are the tutorials you see on the main page and then become part of our huge tutorial archive that can be searched by users via the search box or browsing by tutorial category. The Published Index is the public listing of tutorials available from the Publishing System main page as well as by browsing the Publishing Categories. When you visit the main Publishing System page, the tutorials you see listed are published tutorials only. It is possible that a tutorial is accepted as a published tutorial, but not included in the main index. As long as a published tutorial is properly formatted, it will be accepted as a published tutorial and will be included in our published tutorial database. However, our acceptance criteria for the main P2L index is a bit more strict, and your tutorial must meet certain criteria to be included. So when you publish a tutorial, it is automatically queued for review by our staff. Once your tutorial is reviewed, there are four possible actions that can be taken:
Here is a list of the most common reasons why a tutorial is set back to draft and requires some formatting improvements before it can be processed for approval:
It is very important that you do NOT use the publishing system to post links to tutorials outside of the site. The publishing system is meant for hosting your tutorials, not to post links. If your tutorial is hosted on another site, please use the regular submission process to submit tutorials, not the publishing system! Always ensure that ALL images, videos and attachments are uploaded via the Publishing System and embedded directly in to the content of the tutorial. Do not link to images or other media that is not contained with the publishing invironment. We do not want your tutorial be lost should a third party host go down or be removed. Your tutorial should not have users browsing away from pixel2life.com. Here are the most common reasons why option 3 may occur, which is when a tutorial is declined to be included to the main index but is approved to be a listed published tutorial:
When writing a new tutorial, be sure to search the main index to see if multiple versions of your topic idea already exist. 99% of the tutorials we decline for inclusion to our main database are either repeat topics or concepts, or they are simply too basic. We actually maintain a full list of the most common types of tutorials that we do not accept to our database. You can find this list at the end of the "Submitting Tutorials" chapter of this guide. Earning Credits by Publishing Tutorials When a published tutorial is accepted to our P2L Main Index, the author is awarded credits for submitting the content to us. Please note that only tutorials accepted to the main index are awarded credits, however ALL published tutorials receive credits for every 1000 unique views each tutorial receives. Traffic credits are based on increments of 1000 unique views per tutorial, it is not based on flat views overall. As an example, if you have 2 published tutorials and each have 500 views, this does not qualify for credits. Each tutorial must receive 1000 views each to earn the credits. Each increment of 1000 will receive credits, so new credits are won as the tutorial hits 1000, 2000, 3000 etc. There are many ways for you to promote your published tutorials to earn a TON of credits, which you can put towards advertising on our site or grabbing credit prizes and more! If you are willing to help spread the word about our site and promote your published tutorials, you can earn quite a bit. Here are some great ways you can promote your tutorials to bring in more traffic:
Did you know that sharing your link with social bookmarking sites is as easy as 1 click? Once your tutorial is listed on the site, you can just click the share icon under the tutorial title and this will open the share interface, allowing you to share your link with Digg, BlinkList, del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, Google, Yahoo, Facebook, reedit, Technorati, Windows Live and Furl. Common Publishing Issues and Errors There is definitely a few errors that we see commonly in the Publishing System, so we hope this documentation helps clear up any questions or confusion you may have using this feature of the site. Below is a list of some of the most common problems we see that you can avoid:
Should you have any additional questions, concerns or issues with the Publishing System, please don''t hesitate to contact us! �
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