I've been asked to publish answers to some questions that come up all the time. I'm no expert here at Newsvine but I would be glad to share what I do know with everyone. If you have a question that I haven't addressed here please feel free to ask and if I don't know possibly someone else can answer it for me

Here are the details for posting pictures on an article:

Write your article as always, then close to the bottom you see:

Add Media If Desired:
Click Upload:

then you have two options, the first is:

Option #1 Include your own photo: (if you have your own pictures you want to include click "Browse" it will take you to your picture directory. Then double click on the picture you want.

That will put the link in the box, then click "Send File" It takes a few seconds, once it uploads you then have a box to insert a title to the picture. Then you click "done"

Option #2 Choose a topic-related photo from Flickr: This will take you to a collection of photos that relate to the tags you have put on your article.

Don't worry about messing up, because you can delete anything you don't like, you can also change picture titles too. The only caution I would give you is be sure of the order you want them in, because if you change your mind, you have to delete and start over.

Anytime you insert pictures they always go over on the right of the article automatically. So it will move your words over and down the page.

It's really easy and makes an article look so much better, give it a try!

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How to link

For an example, I want to link to my column in a comment:

Make sure your comment box is in "Normal Mode"

First open the page you want to link too and copy the URL (the address) In this case it's my page.

Next write what you want the link to say,This is how to link to Rottlady's column. then select the word you want, in this case it will be the word "column".

Once you have selected a word the chain symbol (fifth button from the left)on the option bar will brighten.

Select it and a box will open that says "insert/edit Link" You will paste your URL into the top and bottom lines.

Then click "Insert" and like magic you have your link! Or you can get fancy and use the middle line called "Target" which usually says "not set" and change it to open in a new window if you want.

Another helpful hint here is that you can use this when writing an article, all you have to do is follow these steps, then once the link shows up, switch the mode to "use XHTML mode instead" and copy all of it and paste it into your article. You do this on a different page and then just delete before saving. You may have to delete a couple line breaks (the p's) but it really works pretty slick.
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How to watch a tag:

For instance the "Good News Wednesday" tag we have been talking about. Underneath every title is a list of green words, (tags) associated with an article. If one of them interests you, click on it and you will be directed to a page that has all articles and seeds that have that tag. To "watch" that particular tag look over on the left you will see the words Good News Wednesday and beside it you will see a a green button that says "Watch" Press that and you will have any future article with that tag show up on your "watchlist " which is located over on the left close to the bottom of every page.

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Tumbleweed58 asked how to manage her overflowing conversation tracker:

To manage your Friends list, you go to the black bar at the top of any page and click "Friends" This takes you to a page that lists all your friends, their online status, whether you are tracking their comments, and a button if you decide you want to remove them as a friend.

If your conversation tracker seems to get full of things you really don't care to watch, notice the author or the commenter, you may decide to quit watching them (you can always change this). Or heaven forbid you may decide you want to un-friend them (you can't change this without asking them to be a friend again). This is the place to do that.

If it is just a particular article you are tired of watching, you can press the "Stop Tracking" button located at the bottom of the comment section on any page.

You can also do this in you conversation tracker itself without even going to the article if you like.

You have two options, one is to "Stop Tracking All" this makes every thing on your list go away forever or you can use "Clear Count All" which makes everything on your list clear but the next time anything gets another comment it will appear on the list again. If that's too radical, you can do it by line just by using the red button or red X on each line.

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Newsvine's New Meta Policy

 
As of today, 11-30-2010, there has been a change announced in the Meta Policy posted by the Newsvine Blog, Announcing The 'Not News' Section

What it says is that the new rule on Meta, which is anything about Newsvine, newsviners, newsvine groups, anything you want to write about the site is to be published to a Not News category.

Per the blog; From now on, Meta articles can be published to 'All of Newsvine', replacing the old Meta policy, but must be published to the 'Not News' category. This allows more visibility for Meta articles than the former method.

To break it down for you, you don't have to uncheck all of Newsvine any longer. Just choose
News Type-"other" and under the Optional section choose, Category = Not News from the drop down box.

You may still use the Meta tag, and publish to the MetaVine groups if you like also.

How to un publish from all of Newsvine per the Meta policy:

To un-publish from All of Newsvine: Click "edit" located to the left of your title, scroll to the "Publish To (Optional)" box,click the arrow, this will give you a drop down box with all the groups you belong to.

Just below" Select groups to publish to" you will see " All of Newsvine" Un-Check it.....then click "Save"

Here is the article that talks about the Newsvine Meta policy:

newsvine-meta-articles-new-policy

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How to set up Google Analytics:

There are two articles that explain pretty well how to set up a Google Analytics account that tracks your traffic for you. I will list them below.

A Google Analytics Primer

Google Analytics Update

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I keep a collection of articles in my private clippings that I refer to every time I write something.

Here is a list of a few good ones:

Pimp My Newsvine

HTML for Viners

Learn Your html Tags

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Aine MacDermot has done her own Help Threads and I would suggest anyone that hasn't already read these to do so. Just look over on the right under her Recommendations.

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This is an edit to add additonal items to this article that are discussed in the comments below.

How to Get Rid of that Ugly Green Avatar with Your own Picture: Comment #4.1

How to Report a Bug: Comment #8.1

How to use Quoted Text on Seeds: Comment #9.3 and Comment #13.3