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20100718.144024
website is now in archive mode. visit blog.subnova.com for information.
20080730.144615
i added amazon context links... just because i can... if they're not too obtrusive... i'll leave them
20080114.231544
enabled mod_deflate on andromeda. the site is now seeing an estimated 80% reduction in overall size for clients to download
20080109.022443
added an rss 2.0 feed for the news at http://www.subnova.com/news/rss/. it will show the 14 most recent posts
20070823.031056
updated cq calculations so that if a member doesn't login to the website in the past 77 days, the contribution points start vanishing in a hurry... tanking the irank
[more]
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So, You Want to be a Library Poster?
With the power of Subnova's Library, you too can post your own reviews, interviews, views and miscellaneous articles. The system is extremely simple to learn how to use, and if you stick to the points laid out in this short article, you'll be able to make your articles as pretty as the existing Library content.
Please note that to post to the Library you need to have an account with Subnova. Joining is easy and free, and can be completed online here. Account applications will take a day or so to be processed, or more if we're all busy. Sorry about this, but it allows us to check you're for real, and not just signing up to spam us.
For those of you who are proficient in HTML, a lot of this will be redundant, however I seriously advise that you read the Links and Images sections at the end of the article, so that you can make the most of the Library.
Content
There's no point writing an article if it doesn't have any appropriate content. If you go and write a 10,000 word essay on the mating habits of migrating birds, its not very likely that its going to be approved for display. What we're really looking for is reviews of games, movies, books or whatever takes your fancy, opinions on or insights into the games industry, articles on programming techniques or style, interviews with interesting people, humourous articles, and so on. I don't think we're really into fan-fiction of any sort, but if you think you have something that needs to be seen then you may as well try. I could even set up a "Short Stories" section if the demand is great enough.
So, yeah, make sure your chosen topic is sound. It also goes without saying that you should have some grasp of English grammar. Every article that is submitted will be vetted by a trained professional (heh) before it is made publically available. We'll check that the article is appropriate (no porn, intense profanity, etc), check it reads well, and check it is technically compatible with the system. If the article is written in 1337 speak (unless its supposed to be, for humour value), don't imagine for a second we'll even give it a second glance. If the article has a few grammatical errors, we'll probably go through and fix them for you.
For our international visitors, if English isn't your first language but you still want to post an article in English then please do. If you write a little note at the top saying that your English isn't great, I'll give it some special attention and make sure it all makes sense.
Formatting
Now that your content is secured, its time to get onto the technical bits. The Subnova Library fully supports HTML tags in posts. For those not in the know, this means that you can use little commands in your text to format stuff. For those who are in the know, don't try anything too complicated, if it looks surplus to requirements then I will cut out formatting. But if you spend some time playing with tables to make things look nice, it make articles all the more impressive.
Layout is everything. If you post all your text in one big paragraph, it looks ugly and is totally unreadable. So make sure you put in paragraph breaks. The Subnova Library system will help you here - while you can use HTML in your articles, the system will automatically replace every paragraph break that you type with the HTML to do this. This means that you should in fact not use your own HTML formatting to do paragraph breaks, unless you know what you are doing.
For example, this:
Say hello to my pretty paragraph
will in fact be converted into this:
Say hello to my pretty paragraph
which has a vast number too many paragraph breaks in it. (
is a breaking non-paragraph mark, whereas is a proper paragraph mark).
If you want to do formatting of paragraphs (like centering it), then use the HTML directive, which will center everything until you close the tag with .
As a rule of thumb, I like articles to have two paragraph breaks between each paragraph. This makes the sizing look the same on all articles. To illustrate, I don't like this:
Paragraph One
Paragraph Two
But I do like this:
Paragraph One
Paragraph Two
Its also nice to add in formatting, like bold or italic text, or even coloured text. For the non-HTML enabled amoung you, here is how these feats of genius are accomplished.
To change the style of a piece of text, you need to put tags before and after the text. Here are examples of how to do the most popular types of formatting.
| Code | Result | Some Bold Text | Some Bold Text | Some Italic Text | Some Italic Text | Some Indented Text | Some Indented Text | Some Code-style Text | Some Code-style Text |
Coloured text is more complicated (but not much!), so go and search on Google for how to do it, or get an HTML guidebook! Remember to close all your HTML tags, otherwise really ugly things happen.
Links
Links in articles are very important. If you are citing other sites on the internet, you should link to them so that people can get more information if they want to. If you are reviewing something, then maybe adding in a link to the developer of the game would be a good idea.
Subnova uses its own special form of linking to other sites, which should be used at all times. First find the link to the site that you want to use (it should start with "http://"), and think of a clever name to call it. Now, paste in the link, then type a "|" immediately after the link (the "|" character can be found in the bottom left of UK PC keyboards, and near the Return key on UK Mac keyboards). Then immediately after the "|" type the title that you would like to give the link, replacing all the spaces in it with "_". The "_" character will be converted into a space in your article. For example:
http://www.subnova.com/|Subnova_Index, the home of Subnova
looks like this:
Subnova Index, the home of Subnova
Images
Images make articles much prettier, especially when you are doing reviews of games and suchlike. Loads of images for games can be found on IGN and XBox.com. Gather the images that you want to use, and then FTP them to Subnova.
To FTP into Subnova, open up your favourite FTP client (I can't help you here) and connect to "ftp.subnova.com", with the username "anonymous" and your email address as the password. This will get you into the guest uploads directory. Then put all your files there; please try to give them some sort of consistent name, such as "sc4-overview.jpg" would be an image of SimCity 4. The files should all be in JPEG format. Once the images have uploaded, an admin will need to move them to the working directory. Either email one of us, poke us on Hotline, or just wait for the article to be accepted by us (but bear in mind that if you preview the article, you won't be able to see the images...).
Having full images in the body of the text is really messy, so the Subnova Library provides an automated thumbnailing system. The technicalities of this are really quite complex, so I'll just provide you with some sample code that you can copy and paste into your own article. The code will give you a thumbnail (an image which is a reduced version of the original) which can be clicked to produce the full size image.
looks like this:
Now, that might look really complicated, but there are only three things that you really need to change. Below is the code for you to copy into your article. Just change the two occurences of "FILENAME" to the name of your file (without the ".jpg" at the end), and change "ALTERNATIVE TEXT" to a cunning caption that will appear if the image doesn't load (i.e. in a text browser like Lynx). Leave the rest exactly as it is, and it will all work perfectly.
If you want to play around a bit more, once you first preview your image if you notice that the thumbnail is too small or too large, then change the "scale=4" to "scale=X" where X is some other value. A value of 1 is 1:1 scaling, a value of 2 will halve the size of the thumbnail, and so on.
A Few Words About Game Reviews
Just a quick few words about game reviews before I finish up. If you are reviewing a game, then please make it clear what platform it is you are reviewing it on. PC, XBox, PS2? If its PC or Mac, then please put the system requirements of the machine you tested it on and the recommended requirements at the end of the article. In addition, try and say something about the performance of the game on your machine. If its a console game, then maybe quickly say what your setup is: do you have a big TV? Have you tried it with system-link or XBox-Live multiplayer? Do you have Dolby 5.1 sound? And so on.
Also for games, you really should provide a rating. If you don't, I'll have to come and hunt you down and get you to rate it for me, after all that's what reviews are all about. Here is some sample code for the ratings table that should be put at the end of Game Reviews. Substitute all the "X"s for the value out of 10 that you think that category deserves, and then give it an overall score out of 10 (either an average or something different if you think the average isn't quite right).
| Graphics | 7.0/10 |
| Sound | 7.0/10 |
| Story | 8.0/10 |
| Playability | 8.5/10 |
| Replay Value | 2.0/10 |
| Fun Factor | 10/10 |
| Overall | 7.1/10 |
looks like this:
| Graphics | X/10 | | Sound | X/10 | | Story | X/10 | | Playability | X/10 | | Replay Value | X/10 | | Fun Factor | X/10 | | Overall | X/10 |
You'll note there are no paragraph marks anywhere in there. If you put them in, they'll do bad things to the table layout and you'll need to be talked to sternly. Well, actually I'll just fix it for you, but consider yourself sternly talked to.
Submission
And finally, submission. When you've finished your article and are happy with the content, enter the directory where you would like the article to be stored. The directory must start and end with a "/" character, and should be relevant. If its a game review, then put it in "/Game Reviews/". Otherwise, you work out where it should go. If you put it in a stupid place, the admins will move it for you.
Now go and hit that "Submit Article" button! That isn't the end of the process though... You will now be offered with a chance to review the article. Click on this link and go through the article to make sure it all looks like you want it to. If it doesn't, then click on "Edit" at the top of the screen, and you can change bits of it. Once you're done with it, just close the window and forget.
A friendly admin will then come along and review the submission. We'll check it over for both content and technical correctness, and if we're happy with it we'll make it visible to the site. We'll probably also put up a news item about it if you're lucky :) Don't forget that all Library articles also earn you 3 karma points on the iRank board, so get posting! |
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Slackers.
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