APAP's blog is an active forum for current political, legislative and some cultural issues, all from a progressive point of view. We provide updates on elections and campaigns and posts that help make politics more accessible to the community. We are seeeking the help in the following areas: POSITIONS AVAILABLE EDITORS - Our blog features editors who cover assigned topics like education, immigration, labor, housing, civil rights and more. If there is an area that you feel you can provide insightful commentary and analysis, please let us know. Since these posts are more in-depth, we expect editors to post a minimum of once every two weeks. CONTRIBUTORS - Contributors are individuals who don't have an assigned area, but can cover a wider range of topics. These posts can be shorter, but we expect more frequency from the contributors, at least one post a week. DESIGNERS - APAP needs designers to help create and edit images and logos for the site. To apply, please send the following to apafp (at) apaforprogress (dot) org: • Name and one-paragraph bio, including location • Area of interest • Writing samples (two posts) • Preferred user name and password QUICK TIPS ON POSTING When you create a post, please do the following: • We are trying to drive more traffic to the blog. If you just follow the guidelines below, this can drive a lot more traffic from Google to the site. • Create Google-friendly headlines. Make sure your headlines have keywords in the title. Generally speaking, Google likes very straightforward headlines in the title of your blog post. For instance, this is not a very good blog post headline: Barack Wows the Audience At His Farewell Speech at the DNC '08 It's too idiosyncratic for Google to figure out how to index within its database. Instead, write the following title: Barack Obama's Acceptance Speech at the 2008 DNC Impresses Everyone Notice the difference? All the keywords come early: "Barack", "Obama", "Acceptance", "Speech", "2008 DNC". There's also no use of idiomatic language that makes it tough on Google. Don't believe me? Try doing a search using those titles in Google. • Never leave a post uncategorized. If you think your post deserves a new category, do NOT post it. Send e-mail to eugenia@apaforprogress and have someone create a category for you. • Use the "Insert More" tag (the button after the link/unlink buttons that has 2 white rectangles divided by a line) after a paragraph or 2, especially if you have a long post, so that it doesn't take up all of the space on the homepage. This also helps us track what people are interested in reading when they click on the "Read More" link. • Always tag your posts. These tags can be as idiosyncratic as you want it to be. Let your humor and spirit shine in the way you tag your post. Also, be thorough. If you talk about 15 celebrities/politicians and mention 5 places, I hope to see 23 tags. That's right, one tag for every important thing in your post. • Always fill in the Excerpt section. That's used for the RSS feeds. Make it sweet and short to the point, preferably with a directive like: "Read about Obama's killer speech at the 2008 DNC. Prepare to cry and be proud of his achievements as the first black presidential candidate of a major political party". HOW TO POST AUDIO 1. Click on "Dashboard". 2. Click on the "Add New" link under Media on the left half side of the screen. 3. Select the file you're going to upload. As soon as you double-click on the file you want to upload, Wordpress will start to upload the file. Wait for a while. It will then show you a screen that asks you to fill in a Title, Caption and Description. Please do that. 4. Click on "Save All Changes". 5. Go to your post. 6. Put the cursor where you want to add the audio file. 7. Click on the musical notes at the top of your post. It will show you an "Add Audio" screen. 8. Click on "Media Library". 9. Click on "Show" next to the file you want to add. 10. You will a Link URL field at the bottom of the screen. Select it all by dragging your cursor over it and hit CTRL-C. You will need to copy and paste this to your post. Example: http://www.apaforprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/news071024_freelancers_tyte1.mp3 11. Hit the little X on the top right of the "Add Audio" screen. 12. Then make sure you have the right URL to it. In your post enter: [audio:the_url_you_just_copied] Example: [audio:http://www.apaforprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/news071024_freelancers_tyte1.mp3]