Touch this to download the latest Go Inside article template. If you don't want to download a ZIP file, you can touch here to get the HTML template file and save it locally to your hard drive by doing a FILE | SAVE AS from your web browser.
Here's a GO INSIDE button for use on your homepage for hotlinking back to your article
once it's published. Download it and do a VIEW SOURCE for the HTML code to link back to
the general GO INSIDE page.
GO INSIDE Magazine has a rolling publication date. As soon as we get a new article, we upload it to get it online ASAP. You are also free and welcome to revise your articles after they've been published in order to keep them fresh and up-to-date. These are the strengths of being a virtual magazine. We aren't bound by paper or deadlines or distribution limitations. Our limits are boundless.
ALL ARTICLES & REVIEWS MUST BE AT LEAST 1,000 WORDS OR MORE.
1. Send GO INSIDE Magazine Publisher David Boles a note with an article or review topic so it can be "reserved" for you here.
2. Make sure your graphics files fit the 8.3 format and that your HTML files are in the 8.4 format. Please also delete any proprietary HTML editor code (i.e. FrontPage) from your article.
3. Naming unity: If your article is named "modem.html", please make your screenshots build upon that base, i.e. -- "modem1.gif", "modem2.gif", etc. That will ensure your entire "article" stays together in the DIR structure upon uploading.
4. When you include screenshots, please include height and width tags for your images. Screenshots can be in JPG or GIF format -- any color depth -- but limiting your screenshots to 256 colors will load your article much faster. Don't have any screenshots bigger than 580 pixels wide. If you're not writing a computer related article, screenshots are not as paramount to help demonstrate your story.
5. The easiest way to format an article for GO INSIDE is to read one online, and then save the article locally. Then all you need to do is open that file, rename it and cut-n-paste your code into the existing GO INSIDE "template" you saved.
6. All article submissions to GO INSIDE must be previously unpublished original work written by you. Upon initial publication in GO INSIDE Magazine, you will own the Copyright, but all present and future publication decisions and the continued use of your article, name and likeness belongs to solely to David Boles. If we choose to allow your work to be reprinted elsewhere after its debut in GO INSIDE, you are required, as a precursor of publication in GO INSIDE Magazine, to credit us as the original publication of record with the following: "This article originally appeared in GO INSIDE Magazine (http://goinside.com)." Please only entertain re-publication offers of your material in a "for pay" publications (with proof of contract provided to us) since republishing your work in another venue (including your own Website) that nets you no money simply serves to drain off readership from GO INSIDE Magazine. We welcome hotlinks, so link to us as early and often ask you like.
7. Please ZIP all your screenshots and HTML code together in a single file for submission.
8. Write your passion -- whatever that may be.
9. If you have any questions or comments... please ask!
10. Do not use borders on your screenshots if you use screenshots.
11. Tell your computer related story with screenshots if you can and introduce your screenshots before you talk about them.
12. Use whatever system color scheme you like for screenshots. "Windows Standard" will load fastest, though.
13. Please use ALT tags for your images if you use graphics. This makes it easy for me to instantly know which screenshot goes with which HTML code if any re-arranging of shots needs to happen. The ALT tag should be a descriptive statement like alt="Microsoft Bookshelf Main Window", and not the file name itself, so our Editors can look at the ALT description in order to know what the screenshot is demonstrating in the HTML code BEYOND its file name. The alt tag is also visible in the browser window in IE 3.0 and above. When you hover your mouse cursor over the image, the ALT tag becomes visible. MSFT did this for the benefit of Blind web surfers so they can get a description of the image they cannot see.
14. Don't cheat on your screenshots by shooting them larger than 580 pixels wide and then falsely shrinking them via a WIDTH= tag. Falsely shrinking the size of your screenshots makes them unreadable because information is squeezed out of the graphic to fit your shrunken pixel size.
15. SCREENSHOTS SHOULD BE NO MORE THAN 30k in file size each! This is important. Setting your screenshots to 256 colors and making them interlaced GIFs will help you achieve this fast-load speed goal! Most of you give me screenshots that are between 7k and 13k and that's great because it means your stories SNAP into place -- both text and pictures -- at the same time on our reader's screen.
16. Don't use colored fonts.
17. Look at your article under both Netscape 3.0 and IE 3.0 before submitting your work for publication. You'd be surprised to see how differently both browsers read the same article. Since 83% of the readers are looking at your article under Netscape -- reading your article with Navigator 3.0 ensures what you write is what you want SEEN as well as read.
18. Give your articles creative titles that pull the reader inside. Something like "Windows Watches The World" is better than just... "Windows 95" as a title.
19. Don't use graphics for titles -- just use a centered H1 text header for your title.
20. STYLE RULES: "Website" is one word. Internet, World Wide Web, Webmaster, Web and Online are always capitalized. Don't use trademark, registration, copyright, or other symbols in the body of your article when you discuss a product name. You can use UL and LI if you like, but Bullets (you can copy them from the main index page) are best for setting off points in your articles.
Italics are better than Bold in the body of the article for emphasis. Use Italics for product names and titles. Never use Underline since it can be confused with a clickable hotlink. When quoting outside sources, use the BLOCKQUOTE tag to set off the quoted material from the body text.21. The method of placing screenshots in an article is to introduce them before the reader discovers them in the text. Introduce the graphic, explain what you're demonstrating in the graphic, and then once the graphic is displayed, never refer to it again. This makes the article run from top to bottom in a straightforward and orderly "start to finish" flow without backtracking or retracing.
22. Never start a "new section" after a headline with a screenshot alone. Screenshots always need to have some text as introduction, then a graphic, then more text. Screenshots are always surrounded by text to give them a before an after... otherwise they feel abandoned.
23. Due to FTP file restrictions on SimpleNet, do not use the following characters in any file names: (!@#$%^&*-=_+/\][{}) until further notice.
24. If you create a graphic in the body of your article that includes text, please make certain you use a graphics program that uses anti-aliasing to create your text. This ensures the edges of your text characters will be clean and smooth at any point size. Non-Aliased text looks chunky and jagged in an on screen graphic. Touch here to download a graphic example of the difference between anti-aliased and aliased text in a graphic. The graphic was created with PhotoShop 4.0.
25. Use Sub-Heads to give your reader signposts within your article. This is demonstrated in the author's template.
