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.

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.

Headlines should be no longer than 10 Words

Headlines should always be ‘Sentence Case’ – meaning only the first word and proper nouns are capitalised.

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).

Add a headline that only shows on the homepage to the ‘Homepage Title’ field, do not exceed the 8 Word limit

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 Post editor within the BUzz CMS contains various options for styling your articles. Unless you know HTML, it is advised that you always use the Visual Editor and the buttons available to take advantage of these styling options.

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 a one-sentence description to the Excerpt field on the Add/Edit Post page.

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. Always try to pick the most relevant category for your post and at the most, assign to two categories at most and never pick two from the main categories in the navigation menu (News, Sport, Entertainment, Lifestyle & Technology)

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.

Although there is no limit in place to restrict on the amount of Tags you can assign to a ‘Post’ – Buzz operates to a linit of no more than 6 per post.

If you want to see the Tags that have been most used on BUzz, 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

If your post is part of an assignment and you need to add links to the other posts in the submission, do so by using the ‘Assignment Links’ option in the ‘After Article’ section in the Sidebar.

If the post you are linking to is already live, use the ‘link to existing content’ search bar to find the post. If the article you’re linking to is still a draft copy the ‘Permalink’ under the headline – if the ‘Permalink’ contains … be sure to edit it to be shorter.

Once all your posts are published, check the links in all of your posts work

Only Editors & members of Staff have the ability to Publish a Post on Buzz. As a Journalist on Buzz you have a number of Save Statuses available to show the progress of your Post:

• Draft – while the Post is a work-in-progress and not ready to checked by an Editor or Submitted for Assignment, save it as a Draft and you can return to it whenever you want.
• Pending Review – for any non-assignment Posts on Buzz, save them as Pending Review and an Editor will either Publish it if it ready to go live or save it as Feedback Left and leave an Editorial Comment and you can return to the Post and fix any issues.
• MMP Submission (for BAMMJ lvl 6 only) – Save your MMP assignment with the MMP Submission status to record it as a submitted Post. You’ll still need to perform the usual hand-in through Brightspace and once a lecturer has checked and marked your work, it will be published on Buzz.
• NO1 Submission (for BAMMJ lvl 4 only) – Save your News & Online 1 Assignment with the NO1 Submission status to record it as a submitted Post. You’ll still need to perform the usual hand-in through Brightspace and once a lecturer has checked and marked your work, it will be published on Buzz