Create a template for writing a blog post

[lillihart]

Deadline: Tuesday, February 3

I had been adding the following instructions individually to issues. It would be helpful to have the instructions in a template, so it's easy to find and apply to an issue/task. I'm not exactly sure how that would work, so part of this task request is to find out how best to reuse these instructions. Would we just duplicate the issue? Is there a template option?

BIDS Blog Style and Instructions

• Create and save your draft in this folder
• Consider the purpose of the event or project and the impact we want it to have, and incorporate it into blog/story
  • Ask if you are unsure of the purpose
• Include a few section headlines - example here
• Add a quote from the speaker and a testimonial from a guest/attendee whenever possible
  • Ask if you are unsure of who could give a nice testimonial
• Welcoming, warm, and informative tone
• Close with a call to action (CTA) - some options:
  • General: "To stay in touch with the BIDS community and join the conversation, please visit follow us on Bluesky & LinkedIn and subscribe to the BIDS newsletter.
  • Specific to Cultural Analytics: "To stay in touch and join these far-ranging conversations of critical cultural importance, please join our Cultural Analytics mailing list by visiting this page or emailing bids-cultural-analytics+subscribe@lists.berkeley.edu."
• Add links to people, orgs, and tools mentioned in the blog
• Add a few photos or other related graphics
  • Size to 768px wide, 144dpi
  • Crop and adjust the lighting as needed
    • Ask for help if needed
  • Add Photo Descriptions and Alt Text to the draft
  • Choose a photo or image to be the "feature image" which will appear on the homepage
• Create a second tab on the blog doc, and write social media posts for Bluesky and LinkedIn

Elements of a BIDS Social Media Post

(add instructions from this doc)

• Include a link to photo/image from the blog that you think is best for the social media post

Process

• Add a link the blog post draft in the comments of the corresponding GitHub issue and ask @lillihart to review
• After change requests/comments are addressed, @lillihart will contact the person featured in the blog post and ask for a review/approval, Ccing the person who wrote the blog post
• Write the social media post draft
• After all approvals have been received, add the blog as a News item to the website
• Save but do not publish – add the URL link to the corresponding GitHub issue
• Lilli will publish the News items on the website and post on social media

[lillihart]

@mnmnm22 - thanks for working on this!

I just made two changes to the instructions:

• the photo size is now 768 instead of 750px
• I added "choose a photo..."

[ankbiy]

Some notes on the formatting (to paste content directly as plain text) for creating a news item content article on the BIDS website:

It's best to use the paste without formatting (command + shift + V as shown on google docs edit tab) as we want to maintain plain text. For me, this option is not working. I instead use the BIDS website content page clipboard toggle button (right next to the format/heading options) to choose to paste my content as plain text directly.

Edit: Command + shift + V is not working for me to paste without formatting. However, if I do Command + Option + shift + V from google docs content --> this works! The content is directly pasted into the BIDS website as plain text without extra html tags (simple & clean). If you do not want to press the toggle button on the BIDS website, you can this alternative!

A couple of observations when experimenting when formatting:

1. I noticed when I used TextEdit (text editor on the Mac) and toggle the button to paste as plain text directly - it does paste correctly (without hyperlinks), however interestingly there is also excess html tags.
2. If I paste from Word, I am unable to paste directly without formatting (looking into this). However, if I toggle the button to paste as plain text directly from Word, it works! I don't see any excess html tags.

Feel free to try it out on your end and post comments in case you find something different with the formatting.

[lillihart]

@mnmnm22 - As I mentioned yesterday (and in case anyone else refers to this issue), I'd like this to be as lightweight as possible. Imagine a scenario where I am asking an intern next year - who hasn't worked with us yet - to write a blog post. I would like that info to be easily accessible or populated into a github issue.

[mnmnm22]

Hii! I began drafting the BIDS Blog Style instructions as a github issue template. When creating a new issue, a dropdown menu will show up with "BIDS Blog Style and Instructions" as one of the options, which will automatically pre-fill the issue with the blog checklist and formatting guidelines. I tested one on my own repository, and you can view it here
I can also research other methods if that's preferred!

[lillihart]

This is a great idea! Let's give it a try. After you implement it on the interns repo, please take a few screenshots of the process and add to this issue.

Also, please add one more step to the process that I just mentioned on Slack:

• Find someone in this intern group to review your draft and share comments and suggestions. This can be done asynchronously or if you happen to be working at the same time.

[mnmnm22]

I opened a pull request with the code in the interns repository. Once it's merged, the template should be live and look like this when creating a new issue!

[lillihart]

Thank you!

Please add instructions to this issue for making edits to the template

Some edits:

• Please change all image sizes to 768 x 512 (I forgot the 512 initially) and include this description:
  • for the Feature Image, if possible and if it looks good, add a 1 px border to the image with color Berkeley Blue, Hex 002676

Also, it occurred to me that we can often reuse the Feature Image for social media, but we need quick access to the image. Therefore, add more instructions:

• add a link to the Feature Image on the social media post tab of the blog draft doc (ex: https://bids.berkeley.edu/file/768 -> this is found by navigating to Dashboard > Files)

[lillihart]

And another comment! Let's specify what websites we should consider when we are linking peoples names on the blog post. Please rewrite this to make sense in the instructions:

When someone has a LinkedIn page, then I typically prioritize that as long as it seems relatively up-to-date, excluding UC Berkeley faculty (linking to their Pages on a UC Berkeley website is preferred)

[ankbiy]

Sounds good - thank you!

[mnmnm22]

Made the edits! I don't think I can merge though

[lillihart]

@mnmnm22 - Are you saying you don't have the permission to merge? If so, please ask @KirstieJane to help since I'm also still learning github.

Also, one new adjustment: I made a Featured Image Template in Google Slides with instructions. Please suggest people use the template to create the Featured Image, then add it to the Social Media tab of their doc for easy access.

[mnmnm22]

Added the new edits, will talk to @KirstieJane about merging!