Editing and publishing Charting the Music articles
Overview
Charting the Music (also known as CTM) is a weekly article that focuses on a new album that has been performing well on one or more of the KDHX music charts. These articles are written by interns in the Music Department. The goal in editing these pieces is to make the information as clear, well-written and consistent with AP Style as possible.
This is no small task. Do your best with it but don't get bogged down.
Refer to this Wiki page to help you with AP style:
http://wiki.kdhx.org/wiki/KDHX_online_writing_style
Preparation
You must use Firefox for this process.
You will receive the CTM articles by email, shared in a Google Doc. These articles usually are completed and shared by the intern on Thursday or Friday. Sometimes they are delayed and some weeks there will be no article. Check your email a few times on Thursday and/or Friday for the submission.
Editing
Open the article in Google Docs and begin editing.
Make sure the first sentence or sentences are effective as ledes. Do light editing to make the sentences grammatically correct and clear in a stand-alone/first paragraph context. Edit for style. If the writer says something horribly cliched or nonsensical, try to improve or ask editor for assistance.
Edit all entries for clarity and accuracy. Double check spellings of names or any other facts that you may have doubts about.
Edit for AP Style: Writers struggle with these areas:
Avoiding Oxford comma Putting album names in quotation marks Including state names with cities (when city is not obvious, like Chicago or St. Louis) Using figures for 10 and above Single space between sentences
Leave the links embedded as is for now.
Once editing is complete, copy the text from the Google doc and convert using the curly quote stripper:
http://jhy.io/tools/convert-word-to-plain-text
Copy the converted text. You are now ready to add it to the "content editor" in the KDHX.org Joomla back end.
Working with the content editor in KDHX.org back end
Log in to back end of KDHX.org as a manager/admin. You will see the Control Panel.
Click on "Items." Sort by choosing from the Category drop-down "Music News."
Locate and then duplicate an existing Charting the Music article (in Music News category) by checking the box next to it and clicking the Copy icon in the upper right.
Open the article you just copied by clicking on it in the items list.
Once open, delete the words "Copy of" in the title and delete the title alias. Change the title to reflect the album and artist featured in the article.
Make sure Featured and Published are both checked as NO.
Paste the text you copied from the converter into the Full Text window (it's the second big window on the screen) using the Insert as Plain Text icon in the WYSIWYG. You should now see your text nice and cleanly displayed in the Full Text window.
Once inserted, cut the lede from that Full Text window and paste into the IntroText window.
Paste the rest of the text into the Full Text window using the Insert as Plain Text icon.
Put the main date section dividers in bold by highlighting the date and clicking the B icon in the WYSIWYG.
Add links to the venues. Use the raw URL for the venues listed here:
http://wiki.kdhx.org/wiki/URLs_for_frequently_used_pages
If the venue is not listed on that page, you can generate the raw URL by using the tool at the bottom of that Wiki. Open another tab, do a Google search for "venue name" kdhx calendar, click on the result, and copy the URL. Then paste into that tool and generate the raw URL.
Insert the raw URL for the venues by highlighting the name of the venue, clicking the chain icon in the WYSIWYG and pasting it in.
Leave tags, image etc. as is.
If you are finished with your formatting, go to the right hand side, click Special under Access level, then click Yes for Published.
Check the Creation Date and Start Publishing date. These should be set to the actual day and time (now) that you are working on the piece.
Click the Apply button in the upper right. This will apply your changes, leaving the window open.
Open another tab. Go to KDHX.org and click on Log In/My Account. Log in with your user name and password.
Go to the Music News section on the website. You can find a link to it in the left-side navigation under Music.
You should see the draft of your AAFFT post there. Click on it and preview it.
If it all looks good in the preview, switch back to the content editor tab, click Yes for Featured and Published, and then click the Save Icon in the upper right.
If you see errors in the preview, go back to the content editor tab and try to fix. You may wish to click on Source icon in the WYSIWYG to view the html code. Check for proper < p > and < br > tags to get proper line spacing. The former creates a double line break; the latter a single line break.
Make your changes, click Apply again, go back to the preview tab in your browser, refresh it, and see if it now looks good.
When it does look good, make sure you click the Save icon on the content editor window. This will save your changes and close the window. You may then log out of Joomla by clicking the log out icon in the upper right.
Email roy at kdhx dot org and let him know that an AAFFT is ready for review and final publishing.
Don't hesitate to email Roy if you run into problems along the way.
