Placing Articles in Your Newsletter
A quick guide to publishing with iMakeNews
It is easy to add articles to
your newsletter, and to use many of the software programs you already know. You can create new articles from scratch, use
existing articles that you have already written, or choose one of the many pre-written
articles in the content library. The article
can either be in simple text format or formatted using HTML.
Choosing the Format
When creating or using an
article, you should first determine the formatting requirements. This decision helps determine the method you will
use to compose the article. Plain text
formatted messages are the easiest to add to your newsletter, and require the least amount
of work to produce. Plain text is also a
natural fit for the plain text version of your email message. However, plain text articles do not allow for
special formatting such as bold text and font changes.
Only HTML formatted articles can include this level of formatting control. You can create HTML articles using a word
processor, such as Microsoft Word, a specialized HTML editor, such as Microsoft Frontpage,
or by inserting HTML tags to the text of your article.
Writing Online or Offline
If the articles that you are
creating are longer than just a paragraph or two, then it would be best to create the
article while you are off-line using one of the many desktop tools which are ideal for
writing text (e.g., Microsoft Word). Simple,
short articles can be written directly within the article entry form displayed in your
browser, but note that if you take too long to write without saving your work, the
newsletter software will assume that you have left to surf elsewhere on the Web and your
session will expire.
Using Microsoft Word
Microsoft Word is ideal for
creating articles. It has many helpful
writing and formatting tools and a comprehensive spell check feature. You should create a separate document for each
article and refrain from using tables, graphics, and other fancy layout elements in your
text. When you have completed an article, you
must save it as a Web page (using HTML format). You
can then upload the file directly into the article entry page of your iMakeNews account. Here are the steps:
In Microsoft
Word:
- Write your document.
- From the File menu, select Save As…
- From the Type box select Web page (in older
versions of Word this might be listed as HTML).
- Enter the name of the file and click the Save
button.
In iMakeNews:
- Login to your account.
- Go to the Articles area.
- Click Add New at the bottom of the article list to
add a new article.
- Select Add Your Own and then click Continue
- Underneath the Article Body box, click the Upload
button.
- In the Upload File area click the Browse button and
locate the HTML file you just saved from Microsoft Word.
- The HTML file will be uploaded and inserted into the
Article Body field.
- Select the HTML (formatted text) radio button.
- Click Save to create and save the new article
record.
Next month’s article will focus on
converting plain text to HTML. Stay tuned.
