Associated Content Overhauls Website

Overnight, Associated Content gave their website a complete overhaul.  You can read their press release here.

Some of the most requested changes, like the deletion of the Top Rated page, were incorporated into the redesign.  Some great new features like “Most Popular Content” were added.

As with any major change, there are lots of little bugs to workout.  The AC tech team will have their hands full for the next week or so addressing all the bugs, but overall the changes are great.  Check it out for yourself.

Associate Content Tip of the Day 2 Sept 2007: HTML Special Characters

Basic HTML makes creating special and non-Latin alphabetic characters easy. These characters are created by using the “&” symbol followed by the HTML code for the character and terminated with a semi-colon. For example the Spanish enyay (n with a tilde above) in HTML is ñ (without the spaces).

Knowing just a little HTML can get you through some tough spots. Many web sites, like Associated Content and WordPress, support basic HTML. At AC, simply turn off the built-in editor and you can use some of the basic HTML tags and character codes.

Here is a brief, but not exhaustive list of some of the more common special characters.
" = "
& = &
< = &lt;
> = &gt;
¿ = &iquest;
À = &Agrave;
à = &agrave;
Á = &Aacute;
á = &aacute;
 = &Acirc;
â = &acirc;
à = &Atilde;
ã = &atilde;
Ä = &Auml;
ä = &auml;
Å = &Aring;
å = &aring;
Æ = &AElig;
æ = &aelig;
Ç = &Ccedil;
ç = &ccedil;
È = &Egrave;
è = &egrave;
É = &Eacute;
é = &eacute;
Ø = &Oslash;
ø = &oslash;
Ñ = &Ntilde;
ñ = &ntilde;
¼ = &frac14;
½ = &frac12;
¾ = &frac34;
¢ = &cent;

For a more complex tag you can combine the the letters “TM” with the code to superscript and make the font smaller:

<FONT SIZE=”-1″><SUP>TM</SUP></FONT> which renders ^TM

You can find the complete list of codes for special characters at WebMonkey

Updated PV Converter and New Quick Stats

For AC members only.

I’ve updated the Page-view converter to version 1.5. The new feature is a table that breaks out some basic information and does a few addition calculations.

	Total Num	Total PV	Avg PV	Best PV
All Articles
Free Articles
Paid Articles

Plus, the total of your payments and your highest paying article.

I’ve also code a basic page parser, AC Quick Stats. Drop in your AC Homepage and it will total the number of articles and calculate your average page views.

Why? How do you use the new info? One thing that goes into getting better offers from AC is your track record. Proven producers get better offers. Hopefully, you can use this to figure out what you’re doing right and wrong.

If you have any suggestions for new features, just let me know.

A big thanks to Michy for hosting the pages at Accentuate Services.

If you’re not a member at AC and like to write FOR MONEY, it’s easy to get started. You can check out my Getting Started primer for more info or drop me a line in the comments.

The Last MySpace Holdout

A few weeks back, I was stomping around the French Quarter with my cousins.  I was pointing out interesting architecture and giving general history lessons to my cousin’s three boys.  Street medians are called divisions in New Orleans.  Earth-shattering stuff like that.

We passed a woman using a public phone.  Without changing my tour-guide tone I said, “And that boys is the last woman on earth who doesn’t own a cell phone.”  There but for the grace of God, go I.

Sometimes I feel like the last person on earth without a MySpace account.  Pros and cons aside, it has become a matter of pride, a test of wills.  I feel the pressure.  Every page says I’m already in their “extended network.”  I’m so close I can smell ‘em.

I don’t genuinely hate MySpace.  It is a source of endless entertainment to see the lousy layouts, dancing widgets, and general disarray of some pages.  Sometimes I wonder if there is a contest running that requires your MySpace page to have as much crap as possible stuffed into it.  Is there a prize for putting pink text on top of heart-strewn wallpaper?  There must be bonus points for giving the reader a seizure with blinking widgets.

The only thing left that makes me want to join MySpace is the building urge to show people what a decent webpage looks like.  But who am I kidding?  You can’t argue rationally with someone with Hello Kitty stamped all over their page.  Argh!  It makes me want to drink before 5PM.

AC PV conveter v1.3 Now with IE stain-fighting power

I got the IE bug in the converter figured out. If you’re really interested, IE was putting in carriage returns which are not the same as end-of-line characters. In the end, it was a simple 2 line fix to just tell the code to replace “\r”. Thanks for the heartburn Bill..

The new duel-browser-compatible version should be up soon on Michy’s site.   Check the “bug” list at the bottom of the file to make sure you have the version with “RESOLVED: IE reads line breaks where there are none.”

You can either run it from there or download it for off-line use. I also added a little meta tag to the file. If you are wanting to host the page as part of your site, please make note of it and email me. If you don’t, there will be no way to send you updates.

Thanks to all the testers. Pam even reports that this works well in Camino on her Mac. Thanks to Michy for giving me a distribution point.

http://www.accentuateservices.com/theBarefoot/

AC PV conveter v1.1 - Firefox only

The WordPress editor put in a lot of junk that broke the code that I previously had here. I guess I’ll find some place to distribute this intact.

Run it live at:

http://www.accentuateservices.com/theBarefoot/

Converting AC’s PV page to CSV

I spent the weekend writing a program that will convert Associated Content’s page view report into a comma-separated format that most spreadsheet applications will read as nice columns.  I got it free enough of bugs to call it release 0.1.

It’s still has a problem figuring out the “submitted for payment or nonpayment” and the “submitted as Exclusive or Non-exclusive”, but it doesn’t throw off the overall format.  It also puts an extra, leading column in, but that is easily deleted once you have it in the spreadsheet.

If you want to be a beta-tester, please log into AC and send your email address via my content producer page with the message “PV converter beta”.  The whole thing is one simple HTML file.  The instructions are built into the file.

Since this is a very specific program, I’ll only send copies to registered AC producers.  Log in before you message me.  Thanks.

Associated Content Tip of the Day: 25 April 2007 Hyperlinks

Hyperlinks
Associated Content discourages the use of active hyperlinks in an article body. It is recommended that you limit active URL to the “resources” section of the article. According to the AC submission guidelines it is preferred that any URL in the body be simple text (e.g. www.google.com). To create an active link in the resource area use a standard HTML anchor tag like:

<a href=”http://www.accentuateservices.com”>A Writer’s Forum</a>
Only the words “A Writer’s Forum” would display, but clicking them would direct your browser to the site, like this: A Writer’s Forum.

This is the basic anchor and link tag for HTML. There are other attributes that can be applied to the code, but the resources area of the Associated Content template is limited to 120 characters. You’ll want to keep it simple.

It is possible to use anchor tags in the article body. There are two ways to do this.

1. With the editor ON: Type the text; select the text; click the “create hyperlink” icon on the editor’s toolbar; type or paste the target URL.

2. With the editor OFF: use the above example to create the correct HTML code.

It is not guaranteed to produce the desired results. If any part of the tag matches one of AC’s keywords the publisher will hack your URL and put its own hyperlink in its place. What are the keywords? No one knows the entire list. Most U.S. state names are AC keywords. This makes embedding an anchor/href to a state government agency almost impossible in the article body.

You may create a link to The Official Website of the State of Alabama by typing the HTML tag <a href=”http://www.alabama.gov/portal/index.jsp”>The Official Website of the State of Alabama</a> . When you hit the publish button, AC’s “interlinking” software will scan your article and replace “Alabama” with their own link to search results from the AC web site.

The resulting link code would look like: <a href=”http://www.alabama.gov/portal/index.jsp”>The Official Website of the State of</a><a href=”http://www.associatedcontent.com/theme/123/Alabama.html”>Alabama</a> .

Notice that the anchor tag closes after “State of”. The result is two links, pointing to two destinations, but appearing as one continuous highlighted phrase in the article.

Some common words like “running” are AC keywords. Even celebrity names are keywords. You never know what will happen with a link embedded in the body of your article. Use them sparingly.

Associated Content Tip of the Day 24 March 2007: Creating Bullets

The Associated Content editor does not contain a bullet maker when you are creating your article. The safest way to create a bulleted list at AC is to use some basic HTML. It’s not hard. Just remember to close all your tags and everything will look fine.

In HTML you have two choices for the list you want to create, ordered or unordered. An ordered list will create numbers starting at 1 and increasing for each bullet. HTML will track the numbers automatically. If you add a bullet to the middle of the list, all the following numbers will increment.

An unordered list will create simple bullets. The web site’s style sheet will determine what the bullet looks like. Your article preview may show simple circles, but once published they may change to arrows or whatever AC defines as a bullet.

To create an ordered or numbered list, use the OL tag. For an unordered or bullet list, use the UL tag. Within each OL or UL block, designate your bullet with the LI tag. HTML tags are denoted by using the less-than (<) and greater-than (>) keys. Every HTML tag needs an open and close point. To open a tag type “<tag>”. To close the tag type “</tag>”.

Here is an example of an ordered list:

1. This is point number 1
2. Here is number two
3. Hehe, I just said “number two”
4. Now you know the basics

The code for that list is
<ol>
<li>This is point number 1</li>
<li>Here is number two</li>
<li>Hehe, I just said “number two”</li>
<li>Now you know the basics</li>
</ol>

Here is an example of an unordered list:

• With a bullet
• From a gun
• Made you look
• Made you run

The code for that list is
<ul>
<li>With a bullet</li>
<li>From a gun</li>
<li>Made you look</li>
<li>Made you run</li>
</ul>

One word of caution
Once your article is published at AC your bullets may be partially hidden by some of the other columns of the AC layout. This is true of lists that appear at the top of your article’s page. They tend to be hidden by the picture and/or takeaways. If you rely heavily on lists in your article, consider not including a picture, fun fact, and takeaways. This allows more space for your text and more room for you bullets to shine.