Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Enhanced Article Previews

Starting today, Associated Content is improving the "Preview" step in the article submission process by giving Contributors a more accurate look at how their content will appear once it's published on our site.

Our old submission process presented Contributors with a rough preview of their article text after it had already been published or submitted for review. Using the new system, you will now be see a realistic preview of your article, exactly as it will appear on AC – before it gets published or submitted.

This update allows you to:
See how your article will look once it's published, including the alignment around advertisements.
Preview images, takeaways, resources and other items attached to the article.
Proofread your article before sending it to us.

Click the thumbnail below for a preview of this new feature:


Important Note: This change also creates a new step in the publishing process. In the old submission process, content was submitted or published immediately following the "Add Image" step. From now on, you will now need to preview your content and click the "Submit" or "Publish: buttons underneath the content preview. Your content will not be published or reviewed by AC unless you complete this step. As always, you will be able to go back to edit your content by clicking "Make changes now."

What do you think about this update to the submission process? Once you’ve used it a few times, leave some feedback in the comments section of this blog post.

32 comments:

Tal Boldo said...

I noticed the change when I submitted an article this morning, before I read the mail notification. Even so, I had no problems. The changes were self-explanatory. It was really helpful being able to see the actual presentation of the article. In addition, I liked the ‘submit’ button as it gave the process a feeling of finality.

Pam Gaulin said...

Now if our ability to remove photos during the process were added back into the process...that would be swell. I know I am not the only one who has accidentally uploaded the wrong photo from the desktop and then had to start the whole submission process over again. Also, a more streamlined process (fewer steps) would be more useful for prolific conttributors.

Jenny Wagner said...

Sounds great. Now, if there was just a way to move the ads around in the preview screen, so they don't block the articles themselves, that would be wonderful.

Lyn Lomasi said...

Just checked that out and I love it. Of course, now it gives me yet another reason to be an editing perfectionist, which can be both a good and bad thing with me...lol

Thanks AC!

Also, I agree with Pam about the photos. That would be very helpful.

Lyn Lomasi said...

P.S. I also agree with Pam about having a more streamlined process for those of us more experienced with submitting content.

Darlene said...

Before, if I'd copy and paste a pre-formatted article from my Microsoft office word into your paste-from-word box, the formating would change, and some of my words and paragraphs would run together. When I'd go back and fix them, then submit them again, other words would run together. And this would keep happening. Will this problem somehow be solved now? Otherwise, how do I get around this?

Anonymous said...

Darlene, I write in Word out of habit, but I copy and paste into Notepad before moving the text to the AC submit blocks. That automatically strips all the Word formatting so that I only have to format within the AC blocks once. Hope that helps.

Carol said...

When we see that a bolded heading is going to be the bottom line on the page, there is no way to force it to stay with the first line of the following paragraph. There should be. Otherwise, our only option is to stuff text to move it down which I for one would prefer not to do.

jcorn said...

I like this preview change and I like the chance to see how our article will appear in print on the page.

Unknown said...

This is great, and I have hoped at some point we would be able to view our submissions around the advertising, as my submissions tend to get tweeked around them! Now we will be able to present professional pieces and move our own words around!

Ahermitt said...

Well, seeing that my eye usually picks up errors on the actual published paged better than in the template, this could be a very good thing.... we'll see.

Marilisa said...

very nice; thank you. helps with formatting. agree with Pam about pics. This probably isn't the right place but I'd also like to thank AC staff for immediately publishing content once the offer is accepted. A huge help to me.

Diana Raabe said...

This is very helpful; a great change!

venkat jr said...

Hi,
This process is really good and will help to get correct picture of our article, before posting.Thanks and good luck.

Elayne's Travel Blog said...

Thank you! Thank you! I always wondered how my article would look before it was submitted. This should really help.

Firefly said...

Thanks you AC, for all the updates that make life easier for us contributors. There is one thing that I would love to see in the future, the ability to place the ads in a different place. I know that the ads make this all possible and are very important, however when submitting poetry they are often placed in a bad spot. Poetry should be read the way it was written and the ads are usually placed in a manner which causes the reader to pause at a time that makes the flow intended impossible. I don't wish to see the ads go away, only that we as writers have the ability to move it to a place that does not take away from the article/poem we publish.
Thanks for always listening!

Farah said...

I think the enhanced article preview is nice. However, I'm concerned with the time required for my submitted article to be published. It does NO good to write any CURRENT articles if AC takes days to publish it. I thought I was supposed to have gained the ability to post without review??? I'm really frustrated about your website. I have a week-old post that still says NA after it was supposedly fixed and I have an article that needed to be published YESTERDAY, still languishing in review status. I'm considering closing my account and going elsewhere.... HELP!

Langley said...

Fantastic news. Sometimes it drives me crazy where the page breaks occur. This is an excellent upgrade, thanks.

Rosezilla (Tracie Walker) said...

I'm still pretty new, but I definitely noticed this change, and I like it a lot. The other way kind of left me hanging, but this is a good way to know you've covered all the bases in the submitting process.

Anonymous said...

What happens when you click the "make changes" button? Does it take you back to step one?

Unknown said...

Love it!!!!

Darlene said...

What if we start putting in our new article, but can't finish doing it until later. Will we still be able to save it and edit it later, like we could before? And once it's submitted, if we find any necessary changes, will we still be able to edit it if it hasn't been published yet?

Paresh said...

This is really a very Cool feature that they have implemented. I loved it..!! :) Now I don't have to worry about the content how will it look after publishing it..! thanks!

Anonymous said...

I just joined AC so I didn't get to use the older interface. One oddity I've encountered with the new one is that using it with the editor off does not seem to allow you to enter bold/italic html markup. I tried it and when I saved the text, the html was stripped out. The only way to use bold is to turn the editor on. So either I'm doing it wrong (and I can't find examples for it) or the editor-off mode is not handling bold properly.

mvmaithai said...

I really like the enhanced version. Thank you!

Cassandra James said...

Absolutely love this!!

And yes, agree with Pam and Lyn about being able to delete photos. I ended up submitting two articles this week with photos that hadn't uploaded correctly and the CM had to delete them for me, but I just did not have time to go through the whole submission process again :(

Mona Loeser said...

I just want to say that I love the new way of submitting an article. It allows me to make changes to the presentation that I might not have thought of before.Heres another change I would like to see. After I review available assignments I would like to be able to click them off. So many are not appropriate for me and I have to see them over and over again and hunt for the new additions.I would really appreciate a delete button there.

Unknown said...

Am a new writer to AC, and am finding it fairly easy to navigate, but still having trouble making my paragraphs break at the right spot for flow. Any suggestions? Am frustrated when I can't get it to line up right after several attempts to preview and edit. Wish I could move things while previewing, especially around the ad blocks...just a suggestion! Thanks for listening!

Mary Kirkland said...

I liked th changes, I think it's always good to take another look at what you are publishing before clicking on that last button.

Unknown said...

I think the change in submission format is great, I can see what my article will look before it's published.

Linda Ann Nickerson said...

Of course, the new format adds another step in the process, but it is helpful to see how an article will look.

This is particularly true for poetry and other formatted pieces.

Jenna Sands said...

I thought it was great to see what the content would look like after publishing.