Current Post Information • How to Post • Posting Guidelines
What do the red dots next to my post mean? • How do I get an author blurb?
I need an idea of what to write about!
Current posts
We are currently scheduling posts 1-2x a week: Tuesday and/or Friday. Posts go live at 8am Eastern Time.
We are now also posting urban observations of the week on Wednesdays. If you come across photos or videos of urban wildlife doing interesting things or rare or little-known urban species, email Lindsay!
How to post
To log-in to your wordpress account to contribute, click here.
Click on “Posts” -> “Add New” on the left panel
You can preview what your post will look like by clicking on the “Preview” button on the top right panel of the add post page.
Your current permissions levels should be “Contributor”, which allows you to upload images (do this please). It also lets you submit your posts for review when you finish — do this please! We would like to make minor edits to your post and will schedule it so that we have a post every few days.
If you have any questions about this, please email us! We are trying to make this as easy as possible for you.
Guidelines for posting
- Keep content focused. Post whatever you would like as long as it relates to urban evolution. We welcome all sorts of posts, but we will not permit unfounded criticisms, offensive language, or clearly off-topic posts. Try to connect your post back to urban evolution if it is more tangentially related. If you have any questions about the appropriateness of a topic that you would like to post on, feel free to contact the administrators and we can advise.
- Why does what you wrote matter? End your posts by reflecting on why what you have written about matters to the field. Are you curious if other people have observed something? Do you think the topic is understudied? Does the paper shed light on some crucial topic? Don’t be afraid to ask your audience to comment if you want their opinion or feedback.
- Be constructive. If you criticize something (a post, a topic, a paper), try to remain objective and stick to the facts. Be prepared to defend your perspective. We would like this to be a constructive community and will not tolerate personal attacks in posts or comments.
- Keep your post succinct but make sure to give enough detail. The length depends on the type of post you are preparing. If it’s a natural history note, short and sweet is fine. If you’re talking about a recent paper, you might want to give a bit more detail about what the main findings were and why they matter. A post that simply says, “this paper just came out, check it out” will not be published.
- Include pictures (but make sure they’re not copyrighted). People like pictures. You should be sure to set a “featured photo” on the bottom right panel of the add post page. This picture will be the one that shows up with your post on the main page and it will show up very large on the top of your post. You should also include a couple photos throughout your post. A picture of the study organism or location are always good ideas. You might also include an image that explains a concept (like the urban heat island), or a figure from a recent paper (but be sure to give credit).
- To find photos that are not protected by copyright, try searching commons.wikimedia.org, Creative Commons, or Google images (selecting “Tools” -> “usage rights” -> “labelled for noncommercial reuse”. If a photo is labelled “CC-BY”, make sure to include the name of the photographer in your caption. If you have any questions about this, contact Kristin.
- Set the category. We have chosen several different categories that most posts should fall into. Pick which one(s) fit your post best.
- Set as many “tags” as you can think of. These are keywords and help people find your post.
- Links! If you’re talking about a person, link to their website (or if they do not have a website, to their google scholar profile or research gate pate). If you’re talking about a paper, link to the paper (or if not available, to the journal page with the abstract). If you’re talking about a concept, link to the wikipedia (or other authority) page explaining it. To set a link just click on the chain link icon in the toolbar of the editor. The link text is the text that will be highlighted. Make sure to check “open in new tab.”
What are those red/orange/yellow/green dots next to my post?
Don’t worry, this doesn’t mean your post is bad if there is a red dot next to it! The two dots are automatically generated by an analytics plugin that helps us optimize posts to be picked up by Google. The dot on the left is the score for how highly the post will be ranked in Google searches based on metadata and keywords. The dot on the right is the score for “readability” as seen by search engines. At the bottom of your post you will see suggestions for how to get these scores higher, if you would like. But don’t stress over these.
How do I get one of those “about this author” blurbs at the bottom?
Go to the author login page.
On the left panel you should see “Users”. Click that and then “My Profile.”
Keep your photo appropriate and your blurb short and sweet. Link to your personal website, google scholar profile, or research gate so people can find out more about you.
Need an idea of what to post about?
Write-ups of recent papers tend to be the most popular posts. You’re also welcome to contribute graphical abstracts of papers or perspective pieces. We’re happy to help you come up with an idea if you’d like, send us an email!