How to post news on CDX

Once logged in, go to Create Content, then News Item

Fill out the fields as follows

Title – self explanatory – the title should contain specifics about what the news is. The more specific the better. It is ok to be catchy and funny here, as long as it is obvious what the news item is about.

Media – Does your news item contain any audio or video? If so, select one.

Manufacturer – Select all the Manufacturers involved in this news item. If the manufacturer is not listed, leave blank and we can go into the categories section later and fix it. You can select multiple items.

Articles – this defines the news type. Typically it is just NEWS, but say for example you are announcing a convention, you would select both NEWS and EVENTS. You can select multiple items.

Metadata – This field is optional but highly recommended. This is the text that shows below the result in search engines such as google. The more descriptive this block, the better the result in google. NO HTML PLEASE – TEXT ONLY.

Summary – This is the teaser for the news item, you can tell a little more information here, or just be witty. Basic HTML in here is OK, but no images please.

Teaser Image – occasionally we will put news images in the gallery under /gallery/news/, but usually we just attach them to the article. Its quicker for the most part. A good rule of thumb is if the images come from the manufacturer (ie official images attached to a press release) we include them in the gallery. See this section (scroll to step 3) about adding images from the gallery.

Body – this is the main news section. All relevant information should be in here. Consider adding the title, release date, size, and other relevant information (such as why this is cool, limited edition, or other notable info). The more interesting the better. Feel free to have an opinion, and mock releases you think are silly. PLEASE SPELLCHECK. News sources can be found at the bottom of this page.

CDX Gallery – if you have added images to the gallery, add the URL of the gallery here

On The Web – Did this news item come from another site? Put the URL in here.

File Attachments – Upload the images for your news here. Once you have uploaded the images, you can copy the image path and paste it in the article with some html. For example, after you have uploaded an image, the URL will be displayed in the gray box as:

<img src="http://www.collectiondx.com/system/files/yourimagename.jpg">

copy and paste this where you want that image to go.

Is the image too big? Add the width to a smaller size – max is usually 640:

<img src="http://www.collectiondx.com/system/files/yourimagename.jpg" width="640">

Menu Settings – ignore

Comment Settings – ignore

Authoring information – your username should be pre-populated along with the date and time. You may change either, but you shouldn’t need to.

Publishing Options – This is set to publish by default. If you want to check it before going live, or save it for later, uncheck “published”. Do not promote to front page or sticky any news.

NEWS GUIDELINES

Try to keep news relevant to the readers of CDX. You read the site, you should know what it is about by now. The main thing you want to avoid is just pointing towards another sites news all the time. There is a ton of Transformers news and Star Wars news every day, but not all of it interesting. The dedicated TF and SW sites cover everything, we only want the major news due to the variety of news we cover. We already include most major toy sites news in our Newsfeeds page, so try to avoid too much duplication.

So how do you get news? Well, there are a few venues for getting news, but obviously the biggest source for news about Japanese toys is Japan and HK.

Pay attention to the context of the news item. Sometimes it is just announcing that a toy has gone on sale, rather than when it has been announced. Check older CDX news to see if it has already been covered. If you are not sure, DON’T POST IT. Try to post within a genre that you are familiar with.

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