Tips and Tricks - How to Write & Post

How to Write a Tip for FixYa


This is an exercise, so work the items in this tutorial one by one.


1.) From most any page on FixYa, scroll to the bottom where you
can see the links footer.


2.) Click on the Products links.


3.) On the resulting page, find your Major Product Category


4.) Now select a Product subCategory.


5.) For an exercise, look at Computer Components and then the
subCategory Graphic Cards. Click on Graphic Cards now.


6.) You will notice that there is a list of sub categories in this section
for Graphic Cards. Then, below this are products themselves that
have been active lately and are organized alphabetically.


7.) Click on a Product in the List on this Page, not a subCategory. Do
not click on Get Support or Add to My Products. The Products listed
on this page are the most active, or popular.


8.) You will notice three categories on this page; Troubleshooting
and Support; Unsolved Support Problems and lastly at the bottom of
the page is "What you are looking for now." Tips & Tricks,


9.) Look at the category header for Tips & Tricks at the far right is the
link, Post a New Tip.


10.) Click on the link "Post a New Tip" now.


11.) Take a look at all the features of this "Write A Tip" page.
Specifically, notice the area under the Title" "My Solution is valid for:"
This is a drop down list. Drop this list down and you will notice an
entry that is common for all tips you will post: All Graphic Cards. Do
not select "I'm not certain", that choice will place your tip under the
current product. More often than not, you want to choose "All xxxx"
This gets your Tip listed under all Graphic Cards, and gives your tips
the most exposure.


12.) When a user lands on FixYa, they often conduct a search. But,
this is what is great about tips, your Tip will come up in a Google
Search or an MSN search or even a Yahoo search. Since posting a
Tip as valid for All Graphic Cards your entry gets the most reach and
because of the large number or links from within all the graphic cards
entries, your Tip will rank high in search engines.


13.) The next part is up to you. You must make your Tip as useful as
possible. Write it in a recipe format. That is step 1, step 2, etc. Or,
you can look at how I constructed this Tip itself. Be aware that when
you are constructing a tip you have many formatting options, Bold,
Italics, underlining. You can add photos and links to an upload you
made to You Tube.
i. What you will not see is a font selection. This can be tricked
though.
ii. Tricking out a post to use a font of your choice.
iii. To do this, open Word Pad in Windows or bring up the Run
Command and type write and then hit enter. When you have Word
Pad open, change the font and write your text, what ever that is and
choose font size. Now, select that text, Copy that text, return to your
Tip work page and paste the text into place. Now you have changed
the font. Whether this font will be persistent once you post it in the
end depends on the font, safe choices are Arial, Times New Roman,
Georgia and Verdana as these fonts are universal in web browsers.
Anything off the wall or just unusual in font usage will be substituted
by the users browser and the end result may be less than ideal.
iv. If you plan to upload a video to You Tube, take note that the
Thumbnail for your You Tube upload is the frame that is dead center
in your video. Use a video editor to count the frames in your video,
go to the frame that is in the center. Now paste a still image in this
center frame that will represent your thumbnail. If your center of the
video is an odd number, paste your thumbnail in two or three frames
at the center. When the video plays back, these will not affect
playback to the point of distraction, it will just appear as a glitch. Now
save your video with the changes and upload it to You Tube. Give it
an attractive name, etc, and consider the keywords in advance so
when you enter them, they are already well thought out.
v. If you plan to upload images, note that these images each
alone has to be 150K or less in size. You can have as many images
as you like so long as they meet this criteria.
vi. If you plan to enter a link make sure you have any permission
that may be needed, but more than anything, make certian your link is
valid. "Test is before you Paste It."


14.) To summarize now, you go to the main Products Page, choose
a main category and then a subCategory, select the first, most
popular product, there should be an Add New Tip link on the
subsequent page. If there isn't one, go back a page, choose another
product until you find a product with an Add New Tip link. Not every
product will have an Add New Tip link. Once you are adding a new
tip, drop the "Please Choose an Option" list down and almost always
choose: All xxxx, etc.


15.) TAKE NOTE NOW. Once you have posted your Tip, it cannot
be edited later. You can add comments, but you cannot make
changes. So make sure its ready for 'prime time' before you post it.


16.) Now that you have a Tip and or Trick posted successfully, you can scroll to the bottom of your "Your Profile" page and you will see a list of your Tips and Tricks. From here you can right click one, "Copy Link Location" and then paste that into a solution. Best way to do this is to use text similar to "Please see a Tip I posted on this subject located here." and the highlight whatever text you choose and make a link of that to your Tip.


17.) There is a length restriction to be aware of in the Write your Tips text box. Be aware of that.


18.) If you have any problems, questions or need a bit more
guidance, you can find me at: http://www.fixya.com/users/worldvet
Use the Ask Me button to send me a board message and I'll get
back to you as soon as the Request gets posted and I see it in my
profile page or I get an email notification.