Notes

Instructions for contributors

I’d like my readers to become my writers, sharing places and plates, songs and snippets. Looking at America as a feast, the only mandatory inclusion is a place. Anywhere in the USA or Canada will do. Technically speaking, “America” covers more ground than those two nations, but this is an English-language blog, so I’ll stick to English-speaking America.

Mark each section of the post with a heading. A “Heading 3″ in visual editor (selected from the drop-down menu in the “Kitchen Sink”) or use “<h3>” tags in HTML.

The place

A photograph, please! It might be a restaurant, a building, a city, a state, a region. Anything really, but include a photograph. It shouldn’t be too huge. 600 x 400 pixels (landscape) will fit nicely into the Featured Content Gallery widget on the home page.

Talk about the place in terms of geography, how to get there, the circumstances of your visit.

Add an embedded Google Map. You can generate the code for this by opening Google Maps, finding the place you want, and clicking the “Link” link, which will give you the HTML snippet you need. The WordPress visual editor deletes the iFrame part of the code, but not to worry, there will be a link remaining that lets me regenerate it for final publication.

The plate

There should really be a dish included. A meal, an ingredient, a drink. Something you put in your mouth and go “Nommmmmmm”. Add a photo, a recipe (or link to a recipe if it isn’t your own), notes on how to get to eat or drink it. Talk about the dish. The recipe link can go in the “Resources” section.

The song

Do you associate a song or piece of music with the place? Then add a YouTube video or some other way to listen to the music. YouTube provides the embedding HTML code, just copy and paste it in – in HTML mode, please! Tell us why the song is important to the place. It might be a tenuous connection, but there must be some connection in your mind. Maybe it was playing on the radio when you drove through, maybe it was used in an advertising campaign. Anything, really!

Relevant lyric fragments should be included. In italic, and tabbed one to the right (use the visual editor kitchen sink). Not the whole song, please, just a verse or chorus.

The movie

If there is a link to a movie, then embed the YouTube trailer or relevant scene if you can find it. Or include a still. The place (or plate) may have featured in a movie. Sleepless in Seattle is an obvious example for a post on Seattle. Include fragments of dialogue, if relevant. Tell us why the movie is tied to the place.

The book

Maybe it’s a book (or a magazine article). A cover photograph, a link to the Amazon page, some way of finding the tale. Again, tell us why it’s relevant.

The history

Sometimes it’s a snippet of history. Some incident, some trivia. Tell the story or link to it.

The quest, the tale, the key

Use these (and other headings) to tell us your part of the story. How you got there, what you did, why you remember it, how important is it to your life. Maybe it’s the place where you proposed to your partner over softshell crabs and a keg of beer.

Resources

Further reading. Links to the restaurant website, the Wikipedia article (and Wikipedia covers just about every bloody bend in the road, nowadays), a recipe site. Whatever extends the post.

Copyright

Unless you specifically include a note reserving rights, you are giving this site publication rights to your text and photographs and artwork. Don’t worry, I’m not going to go making a book or a movie or CD with your stuff in it and keep all the profits to myself  – anything like that will involve a lot of discussion. What I’m most concerned about is that anything you include isn’t copyrighted material from some third party. So don’t include vast slabs of text you’ve lifted out of a book or someone else’s website. A few lines is OK.

Likewise photographs. Use a free source such as Creative Commons or Stock Exchange. Or your own photographs. Don’t go ripping off someone else’s stuff.

Advertising

The blog is monetised and promoted. Books, movies and songs are linked to pages on Amazon.com. Appropriate affiliate banners or text links may be placed in posts. Each post may have a small advert between post and comments. Currently featuring Cafe Britt gourmet coffee.
Raveable.com links to places aid cross-promotion. People searching Raveable.com for hotel reviews will also see any blog posts linked to that area, if the post includes a small “badge”. See here for details.

Flickr Gallery Plugin

This is used to add a gallery of Flickr thumbnails to a post (or a page). It uses shortcodes with the square brackets, and a page of instructions and examples may be found here.