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New Feature - Articles

Pauline

Forums Admin
Xenforo (who makes this forums software) has introduced a new feature (end of 2020). Forum threads may now be designated as ARTICLES.

Previously we used the RESOURCES section for our articles. This was a bit of a "work around" since that software was not really meant for publishing articles.

Have a look at the new ARTICLES forum that I set up for Italy.

It is similar to resources but instead of having categories for each country in the RESOURCES section, I can make a forum for articles for each country and it is on the main forums page. Easier to find! And they have nice formatting for the articles.

We have a lot of resources and I will move them all to the new article formats. This affects mostly @Eleanor and me, who have written most of the articles. Maybe in this nice new format, others will be inspired to write articles.

Comments?
 
To see the difference, here are our Italy articles in the old Resources format.

And here are some of them in our new Articles format:
 
Oh, that looks a lot better!

Presumably we still submit articles in the old way and you do the necessary?
 
I will set up Article forums for all our forums countries and we can start publishing in the new way as I copy the old ones over.
 
Looks indeed better, but for functionality I would check if it is possible to also add a small menu on the left or right side with a list of all the categories (perhaps arranged alphabetically), and their corresponding number of articles. Each category of course linked to the articles. For example :
Food and Drink (10)
Slow Masters (3)
Tuscany (16)
etc.
This way you don't have to scroll through pages looking for something, something that may even not exist.
Another possibility would be to at least have each category a different color.
 
Good suggestions. I will see what I can do. I need to figure out colors. They will help. There is a filter pull down where you can select by category (I determine these categories).
 
I like that suggestion of Joe's too - especially the idea of categories. Possibly have an index page with the different categories with a link to the articles, so keeping all the food and drink together, different regions etc.
 
If you click on the Tuscany prefix on an article, or select it in the filter pulldown, you see all Tuscany articles. These articles are supposed to get better indexing from Google, so people searching for info on google will find them.
 
I finally found an add-on to the forums software that lets me change the "owner" of a thread. Previously when I was moving trip reports from SlowTrav (with permission) to the forums, I had to get the member's password, login as them, then post. Now I can post the trip report and afterwards do an easy change to the thread owner. A nice benefit of looking at moving resources to the articles forums. I can also change the date to give the articles their original posting date.
 
I’ve started moving all the resources pages to the new article forums. It is going well but will take some time. It will be worth it to have all the content more accessible.
 
Update to this project

6 General Travel Articles have been transferred to the new system:

7 France Travel Articles have been transferred to the new system:

41 Italy Travel Articles have been transferred to the new system:

It was fun to review these great articles! I *think* I have set the forum so that the original authors can make changes if they need to (let me know if you can't). We welcome any new travel articles!

It works best if there is at least one photo in an article. If you see an article without a photo and you have a photo that would suit, let me know!
 
You have been busy and the new pages do look good.

I wonder if you need to make a comment somewhere (possibly in the header for each section) to click on the left hand box to see more articles for that heading - I hadn't realised you could do this until you pointed it out, and there may be others who don't know either. Just a thought...
 
I *think* I have set the forum so that the original authors can make changes if they need to (let me know if you can't).
I checked this, but it doesn't seem to show an option for editing by the OPs. Not that I need to, just saying....
 
I checked this, but it doesn't seem to show an option for editing by the OPs. Not that I need to, just saying....
Thanks for checking that. I didn’t have it set. I’ve done it now for Italy articles so could you give it a try? I’ll fix the other article forums now.
 
You have been busy and the new pages do look good.

I wonder if you need to make a comment somewhere (possibly in the header for each section) to click on the left hand box to see more articles for that heading - I hadn't realised you could do this until you pointed it out, and there may be others who don't know either. Just a thought...
Good idea! I will make a text box on the sidebar or at the top with some instructions. I am hoping to be able to list prefixes and the number of articles for each, as Joe suggested earlier. Maybe even a tag cloud.
 
One thing that happened with all this - some email notifications were sent out when I moved articles making it seem like I had deleted them. This won't happen now but I apologize to anyone who got these. I would never delete someone's article!

When this is complete I will send out a newsletter to let everyone know about the change.

If you want to write an article and need help, never hesitate to ask me to help. These articles are a very important part of the forums.
 
Great! I've started moving your UK articles @Eleanor. I am working from the earliest to latest. I deleted a couple of images in two articles because the forums limit is 15 then decided to change the limit to 20. I will put those images back.

I am doing a "soft delete" on the resources articles, just hiding them from view, so they are still there if I make any mistakes moving them.
 

How to Find Information

Search using the search button in the upper right. Search all forums or current forum by keyword or member. Advanced search gives you more options.

Filter forum threads using the filter pulldown above the threads. Filter by prefix, member, date. Or click on a thread title prefix to see all threads with that prefix.

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