Article Manager Guide

Title, Author Alias, and Category

To write an article, you will be using FireHow's article manager. Once logged in, select the "my articles" tab, and then click "New."

Now you will be taken to the article publishing screen (shown below).

To start off, you will need to enter a title for your article. In the example below, an article about website hosting is being published. When writing the title, it must start with "How to." All nouns, pronouns, verbs, adverbs, and subordinate conjunctions should be capitalized in the title of the article. In the example below, the title is "How to Choose a Website Hosting Company"

After you have the title written, you have the option of entering in an author alias. If you do not enter in an author alias, your real first and last name will be displayed on the article. If you type in an alias, then that will be displayed instead of your real name. For example, if your screen name is John123 and your real name is John Smith, you can enter John123 as your alias to keep your real name private.

Next, you will need to put your article in a category. For right now, there is only one section and many broad categories. As FireHow gets more articles, more sections and specific categories will be introduced.

Article/Body Text

Now that you have your title, alias, and category selected, you will need to type in the body of your article. The article should be in step by step format and should contain a short introduction. At the end of the article, you should include any resources that you used for your article and a few tips and warnings for your readers.

Adding Images

To add an image, you need to click the "Image" button underneath the article body text box. Once you click image, you will be able to manage all of the images you have previously uploaded. If you want to add a new image, click "Browse."

After you click browse, you will be able to select the picture you want to upload from your computer. Go to the appropriate folder, click on the picture, and click "Open."

Image Description and Title

After you upload your picture, you will see it in your picture manager. From here, you need to click on the picture, enter a description and title, and select "Insert."

The "Image Description" field should contain a very short description of the picture. The "Image Title" field should contain a title for the picture. This is a great place to enter keywords related to the article, such as the title of your article. Entering an image description and title related to your picture and article will help your article perform better in the search engines, bringing in more traffic.

Image Resizing

To resize an image, you can click and drag the corner of the picture smaller.

You can also click the picture and then select the "tree" icon, on the far right side of the toolbar, and then adjust the dimensions of the picture.

Keywords and Description

The final step is to add a description and keywords to your article. This is really important and should not be overlooked. A description should be 140 - 160 CHARACTERS (not words) long. It is best to copy and paste the title of the article into the description box and then add the first sentence or two of your introduction. As you can see below, this description is 160 characters long, contains the title of the article, and includes a sentence from the introduction of the article.

Next, you must enter keywords. Keywords must be separated by commas and be all lowercase. Nothing should be capitalized in your keywords. Keywords can be one word, two words, and phrases that you think people would search for in the search engines. For this website hosting article, the keywords start off short with "hosting" and "website hosting." But since their is a lot of competition for those short keywords in the search engines, we also want to target longer tail keywords like "how to choose a website hosting company" and "how to pick a website hosting company."

Save Article and Publish

Once you have completed all of these steps, you can click "Save article and publish." Your article is now live for the world to see. You can view your article by going to your profile, selecting the articles tab, and then clicking on the specific article.

If you have any other questions, look through our FAQ or go to our Contact Us form.