New PlanetPOV Feature for Your Posting Pleasure

Our invaluable friend and colleague, Bitohistory, clued me into a new plugin we can use at The Planet to make posting easier and add more content to your posts. It’s now installed on a trial basis for our members to explore and for me to make sure there are no software conflicts.

Giving credit where credit is due (in addition to Bitohistory!), the new software is called Zemanta and adds pictures, turns words in your posts into links, offers links to topical articles at other sites and tags all with the click of your mouse on your Post composition page.

Here’s a couple of pointers on how to use it:

a. Write a post as you normally would. When finished composing it, go to the box in the upper right corner titled “Content Recommendations” and click on the green “Update” link (Zemanta may automatically update along the way as well).

b. A set of photos will appear below it in the “Media Gallery” box. Hover your mouse over a picture to see it slightly bigger, click on a photo to insert it into your post. If you don’t see a photo you want, you can of course use the regular Upload/Insert button above the text box to add an image from the web or from your computer.

c. Just below that is a “Related Articles” box that lists a variety of articles that are (hopefully) about the same topic you’re writing about and could be included as links in your post if you wish.

d. Below the text box of your article, you’ll see a section titled, “In-Text Links”. The items listed here are links that match words in your article. By clicking on the pulldown arrow next to one of these words and selecting one of the items on the list, the matching word in your article will automatically be turned into a link.

e. Under the “Tags” box is now a Zemanta “Tags” box, you can click on any of these or enter your own in the regular Tags box. BTW, a request, some articles are posted without any tags. This makes it less likely that people searching on the Internet for articles will find yours. So please, try to add at least 3 tags to every article you write that well describe what the article is about.

So, give it a test drive. Please let us know if you like it and/or think you will use it when you post. Also, please alert us to any glitches or issues that arise.

The Planet is always changing, more features on the way as always. Thanks so much for your support and contributions here!