SteemNews.Online: Update, Subscription, Work Flow and Logo
As we come to the close of our second week since the introduction of SteemNews.Online, we're getting a better grasp of what works, what doesn't and some of the challenges to overcome.
Besides tech issues (which will likely be a long-term challenge), curation can be very demanding. We do have a few folks contributing articles to our Discord channel. If you're on Discord, look up the SteemNews trail and have a chat.
Work Flow
In order to streamline the process, we've implemented a few tools. One of these brings in feeds to our website, so curation can be done there, deciding whether or not to feature specific articles. The flow goes something like this:
- Check articles in the #steemnews feed. This is our first consideration. If they're good quality, they get featured, upvoted and resteemed. And, yes, we have a Streemian trail, for those who want to lend their voting power to SteemNews.Online.
- Check into the #steemnews trail in Discord to see what's been submitted.
- Check our site for #news articles that are well written and formatted well, including images. Often the code isn't written to reveal images on other sites, in which case we pass. Any of these that meet our criteria are then featured, upvoted and resteemed.
- Time permitting: Check Steemit, to see if we missed anything, specifically from the authors that have consistently provided good content.
NOTE TO AUTHORS: For our site, articles go to the feed according to the tag that is listed first. So if you have #steemnews before #news, then we'll see your article first. But if you put #news before #steemnews, then we may or may not get to it.
ANOTHER NOTE TO AUTHORS: If you are featured repeatedly, your username and a link to your Steemit blog will be attached to your articles automatically. This requires manual manipulation, so it will only be implemented for those who consistently provide excellent content.
We make time to check the #steemnews feed. We try to get to the #news feed as well, but there are a lot of not-so-great articles there too, so it is often unproductive for promoting articles.
Two authors that have had articles featured on SteemNews.Online are @krnel and @sirwinchester. Both are producing excellent content. @doitvoluntarily and @angeliobc have provided some nice content as well. If you're not following them yet, check them out.
Update
Images remain our major headache. The coding between Steemit and the receiving WordPress site simply doesn't get along. Others have worked on solutions, which we're hoping to be able to utilize.
Hopefully Steemit will eventually change their code so it doesn't allow authors to circumvent the anti-hotlinking code implemented by many sites. Until they do, this will likely remain an issue. It's not our only image import issue, but it's a big one.
Opportunities
SteemNews.Online is the first of several similar projects we're working on. It's our desire to build a team to push these sites into excellent resources that reward authors for creating great content.
Are you good at front-end or back-end development? If so, contact @instructor2121 or @anotherjoe. You can find us in Steemit.Chat or the SteemTrails Discord channel.
Excerpts
We're considering ways to provide excerpts in regular updates here, for those who miss the resteems. It's a little clunky trying to do it manually though.
On the other hand, our update-by-email feature is working wonderfully, providing daily updates. It can be set up to provide an email immediately upon publishing, but that might result in too many emails. What do you think?
Ideally, the subscriber could choose their option. We'll figure that out eventually, but at this point it's limited to one or the other.
Logo
The rules for our logo contest will be laid out Monday morning at 14:00 GMT(UTC). We've set up our Facebook and Twitter pages, but they're pretty blah without logos or at least some sort of branding colors. Help us out!
The contest will be Winner takes all, and is guaranteed to be at least 100 Steem. How much more than that depends on our updates between now and the announcement of the winner. All liquid payout to this account, from the time of the first post until the announcement, will go to the winner, with a minimum of 100 Steem guaranteed.
What you can do now
Your support of @steemnews.online is invaluable.
- LOGO - Start working on a logo, if you’re so inclined. We’ll outline the details on Dec 19. All liquid Steem from this post and all posts between now and the reward will go toward the logo contest. Let’s see how valuable we can make it!
- Journalism - Work on your journalism skills, if becoming a contributor interests you.
- Curation, contribution and promotion - If you already have good journalism skills, please start using the #steemnews tag so we can curate, resteem and publish your content on the new site. We will be monitoring it immediately.
- Vote for @instructor2121 as a witness - He should be publishing his witness post shortly, but you can get a jump on the action here!
Thank you for reading and your encouragement in this endeavor. With your help, we look forward to making SteemNews.Online a valuable news resource.
Your editors,
SteemNews.Online
LOGO GOES HERE!!
This post prescheduled using Steemian Scheduled Posts
Resteemed and Upvoted. Excellent post! Thanks!
Thank you!
This post has been ranked within the top 25 most undervalued posts in the second half of Dec 16. We estimate that this post is undervalued by $11.90 as compared to a scenario in which every voter had an equal say.
See the full rankings and details in The Daily Tribune: Dec 16 - Part II. You can also read about some of our methodology, data analysis and technical details in our initial post.
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