Writing & Editing

You can view all the Posts you have Published or saved as Draft in the Posts section accessible in the left-hand menu. To start a New Post, click on the Add New button on the Posts page, or the Add New link under Posts in the left-hand menu.

The Post Title

Headlines are one of the most important elements of your article. They will help Search Engines find your story and if written well, they should entice the reader to want to click and read.Headlines are entered at the top of the Add New Post page.

10 Word Limit – ensure Headlines are no longer than 10 words.
Always ‘Sentence Case’ – only the first word and proper nouns in your Headline are capitalised.

The Homepage Title

The Post headline isn’t the only title Journalists will be asked to write for their article. At times you may be asked to write two, three or four headlines for different platforms or areas of the site. A common formatting option on News websites is to have a longer headline within the post (usually no longer than 10-12 words) and a shorter headline which will show on the homepage (usually no longer than 6-8 words). You can add your shorter headline in the ‘Homepage Title’ field.

Eight Word Limit – ensure these Headlines are no longer than eight words.

For examples of these different types of headlines check out the BBC and Guardian sites – count how many words in the headline on the homepage and then click into the article and count again. Is it different?

When creating a new story on BUzz, you have two editing modes available to you – the Visual editor and the Text Editor.

Visual Editor: The default mode for writing. Works much like Microsoft Word – where toolbars are used to format your text.

Text Editor: Allows writers to write their posts in HTML – only advisable to use if you’re comfortable with HTML. The Text Editor will prove useful when embedding content from other sites.

Whilst it’s advisable to always write directly into the BUzz CMS (remembering to Save as often as possible) – this isn’t always possible (you may be somewhere without internet). If you write an article in any software outside of BUzz, whether Microsoft Word or the Notes app on your phone, there’s a process you need to follow before pasting the text into a Post. One of the main problems you’ll encounter with copying and pasting into BUzz is that often when you do this, you’ll take unwanted code across with your text. To ensure you paste just your text – be sure click on the ‘Paste as Text’ button before inserting your text.

The first time you click on the Paste as Text button, a dialogue window will appear informing you that: ‘Paste is now in plain text mode. Contents will now be pasted as plain text until you toggle this option off.’ Once you click OK you are free to paste your text into the editor.

The first thing you’ll need to do so you can see all the styling options available is click on the Toggle toolbar button to reveal a 2nd row of styling options.

Hyperlinks can be attached to text or images – highlight the selection you want to make a Hyperlink.

To add a Hyperlink to your selection, click on the Insert/Edit link button

Once you’ve clicked on the Insert/Edit link button a small dialogue windows appears under the text/image you have selected.

Enter the target URL into the empty text field and hit enter to apply the link.

To see more options, click on the Link Options cog.

After clicking on the Link Options cog a new window opens with more options for your hyperlink

Enter the target link into the URL field – this can be copied and pasted from the address bar of a browser window or typed directly in.

Tick the Open link in a new window/tab box to ensure the target link doesn’t open in the current window/tab and take viewers away from your article.

If you want to link to another article already on BUzz, use the or link to existing content section to search for relevant Posts.

Once you’ve finished adding all the necessary information for your Hyperlink click on the Add Link button.

Your Hyperlink will now have been added. If your selection was text it should have now become coloured and underlined, if it was an image you probably won’t notice any difference until you preview your Post and click on the image.

To edit or remove the Hyperlink once inserted, select the linked item and click on the Insert/Edit link button.

The Lead, or opening paragraph/sentence of your article is vital in setting the one of the article and making your reader want to know more.

On Buzz we don’t add the lead into our body text, but into a special field (see image on left) which means it is placed just underneath the headline and formatted differently from the rest of the text in the article.

“A lead is a promise. It promises that the piece of writing is going to be like this” – John McPhee

Add your text to the Excerpt field on the Add/Edit Post page – don’t exceed the 90-character limit.

If you can’t see the Excerpt field, it can be turned on in the Screen Options at the top of the Add/Edit Post page.

Every Post needs to be assigned to at least one Category. Assign Categories by selecting them from the Categories panel on the right-hand side of the Edit Post page.

Whilst it is possible to assign Posts to more than one Category, doing so means often stories will often appear duplicated across the website.

Assign to One/Two Categories – Never assign your post to more than two categories and always try to pick the most relevant category

Tags need to be entered into the field under the Categories panel on the right-hand side of the Edit Post page. Tags should be typed into the field and separated by commas.

Maximum of Six tags per post – Although there is no limit in place to restrict on the amount of Tags you can add to a Post on the Breaker,  for consistency and bast practice we stick to a maximum of no more than 6 per post.

If you want to see the Tags that have been most used on the Breaker, click on the Choose from the most used tags link, under the Tags field. A Tag can then be clicked on to assign it to your Post.

Examples of ‘Tags’: If you were writing an article on AFC Bournemouth manager Eddie Howe, you could Tag your Post with: Eddie Howe, Football, AFC Bournemouth

Once you have finished writing and styling your Post, it will need to be checked by an Editor or member of Staff before going live. To send it through for editorial checking click on the Submit for Review button. If there are no problems it will be published. If there are changes needed it will be resaved as a draft and you will be notified of the changes needed.