Setting Yourself Up to Submit Articles on ChinoHills.com
(For ChinoHills.com Writers Only)


Please take a minute to familiarize yourself with our Editorial Guidelines & Rules. A graphical representation of how to submit articles is at the bottom of this page.

  1. Writers Profile - (Before getting started, make sure that you are logged in.) Please have your Profile complete. Your First and Last name will be automatically listed at the top of any articles that you submit. Your Byline will automatically appear at the end your articles. This gives you (and us) credibility and is a useful promotion tool for businesses. If you submit good articles, you are seen as an expert in your field. We ask that your profile be completed with contact information listed in case we have to contact you for any reason.

  2. Your Writer's Byline - You are allowed to create a Writer's Byline of up to 255 characters which may include your phone number and/or email address. Contact information is allowed but not required in a Byline. Try writing the Byline in the "Third Person". If you need help or ideas, contact us.

    Example Bylines:

    "John Doe, is President of XYZ Assistants, providing In-Home care for seniors. He can be reached at 909-590-1000."

    "Joyce is a student at Chino Hills High School. She enjoys playing chess, soccer, and reading."

    "Bob Jones is a local resident and parent. He has three boys and is a coach for the Chino Hills Little League. Email him at [email protected]"

  3. Self Promotion in Articles - This is not allowed. Information about you or your business is allowed only within Your Writer's Byline. We will remove any self-promotional text within articles and eventually remove writing priviledges if this rule is broken more than once. If you wish to promote yourself, your business, or an event, please contact us about our advertising rates.

  4. Please Comply With Our Consistent Formatting Rules...

    Category -     For each article published, you are required to choose a Category (often already done for you), then create a Title and (optional) Subtitle.

    Title -     The Title Should Be Capitalized Like The Sentence You Are Reading Now. On the other hand please... DO NOT FORMAT TITLES IN ALL CAPS. In addition to being in bad taste online, ALL CAPS is considered YELLING AND SOMEWHAT RUDE. We don't want our readers to get the wrong impression. Titles should also be brief; ideally less than 10 words or so.

    Subtitle -     The Subtitle (which is optional) should be a single sentence summary of the article in regular sentence format. Subtitles appear in bold text above the standard article text.

  5. Length of Articles - Ideally, articles should be between 200 to 800 words. We're not against longer articles if they offer some real value to the community.
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  6. Article Frequency - We are happy to accept one-time articles or press releases for news, organizations, ideas, or events that interest you. If you are wishing to write regularly, the ideal frequency would be to submit one article per week and no less than one article per month. Ask us about a blog within the site if you have frequently updated content. We are open to offering regular feature sections for dedicated or prolific local writers. If you are writing for a Non-profit, you may include schedules, calendars, activities, news, and information about your fund raising events too. Frequent multiple submissions from any one author in too close a time period will be interepreted as abuse. Please request advertising rates if you wish to have a more frequent presence on our site. Also, remember that as a regular writer, you are allowed to add contact information and in some cases, a link in your byline (you need to request any links)..

  7. Duplicate or Reposting Articles - This is not allowed. Please time your article(s) the best you can if they are related to an event or time sensitive subject. Reposting an article as a reminder or for extra publicity is not allowed. It also negatively affects our search engine rankings. If you wish to promote a special event, please inquire about our advertising rates. We will be happy to help you promote through advertising.

  8. Grammar, Spelling, & Usage - We assume that you can write with reasonable skill. However, feel free to ask for our editorial input. We are happy to offer suggestions to you so that your articles are professional. Great writers still use editors to help with ideas, spelling, and grammar. So don't hesitate to send us your draft article before publishing. If you've saved an article as a "draft", let us know. We can see it and we'll send you some edit ideas for the article. Some writers like to write their article in MS Notepad or another text editor. This is ok, but many text editors like MS Word, etc. can add funny looking, unknown, characters to the finished article, so check how things look if you are copying and pasting from a text editor. Also, please don't be offended if we edit your article slightly after it is published. It's our site and image and sometimes we just have to do that to correct things that get overlooked. We always try to maintain your original intent.

  9. Copyright - Articles must be original and/or you must have permission to post them from the author. You accept full liability for any copyright infringement on articles that you post. Note: Some writers are posting articles provided, with permission, by their suppliers or vendors. This is ok, however, we still ask that you make the article somewhat more your own by adding your own input. The reason for this is that search engines "ding" our site when we post "duplicate content". So if you are using an article word for word, with permission, that is also listed elsewhere, please add and / or reword it to make it more pertinent to Chino and Chino Hills and to make it more your own. Thanks.

  10. Advertisements in Articles - We do not allow advertisements as editorial. Articles should be about specific events and ideas or be of general interest to the community. We retain full editorial discretion and will pull articles that we deem, in our sole judgment, to cross the line between information and advertisement. If you have an idea that you are unsure of how to approach, or if you are unsure of whether it crosses that line, contact Joe at (909) 606 9175.

  11. This is a Family Site - Only G-Rated articles will be allowed at our sole discretion.

  12. Online Etiqutte - We don't want gripes and grudges to be played out in articles. Also, please be respectful of others and use common sense in what you post online. Of course, serious, thoughtful, and respectful reviews are welcome. We are also happy to allow articles on controversial topics as long as they are respectful and professional. One of our objectives is to make Chino Hills a better place to live and work so we are happy to add articles that cause people to think.

  13. Pictures - We really like when you upload a picture to go along with your article and try to have a picture for each article. Of course, pictures are not required but do add a nice graphical element to the article. Pictures must be less than 1 Megabyte in size and should be relevant to the article. We have licensed stock photography and may upload graphics to go along with your article. We reserve the right to modify pictures slightly so that they fit into the various elements of the web site. By uploading a picture you acknowledge that you have the right to use it and grant us the right to use it as well.

  14. Article Order - Articles appear in the Article Section of our site in the order they are submitted. On a regular basis our editorial team will pick articles from around the site and place them on the Front Page. But whether your news makes the front page or not, and subject to our Terms, we will try to always make it available to the public on our site. Please do not re-date / re-post articles. Re-dating or re-posting articles in order to manipulate their order in the Article Index is strictly prohibited and is cause for revoking writing privileges.

  15. Terms - By publishing an article, you agree to, and will follow, our Editorial Guidelines & Rules and our Terms. You understand and agree that Personaweb, Inc. maintains full editorial discretion on any submitted material and is not required to post it for any specific period of time.

  16. Comments - Other Registered Users are allowed to comment on your article. We try to monitor comments and will allow wide leeway in commentary and discussion by Registered Users as long as the conversation stays civilized. When we find it, we will not allow personal attacks, profanity, hate speech, plain stupidity (in our sole judgment), or any illegal content. We will do our best to monitor and delete these types of dialogues and/or users that continue to post them. Please report any violation of these rules to us along with the name of the specific article or comment where it appears.

------- First, it will help if you log in to your account in a new window and refer to this page while you are doing it. --------

 

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---------------------------------------------------------------------- A Helpful Tip ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

If you want to write your articles in MS "NotePad", here are some handy shortcuts to help. Once you finish the article in Notepad...

  1. Select the whole article (Ctrl - a),
  2. Copy the whole article (Ctrl - c),
  3. Log in and Open your "Edit Article" page at ChinoHills.com.
  4. Click (place your cursor) in the Body window of your Edit Article Page, and
  5. Paste the entire article into that window (Ctrl - v).
  6. Proofread the article directly in the "Body" window to makes sure (and correct) and "funny" characters that get pasted in from other programs.
  7. Make sure that "Publish" is selected under the Draft/Publish drop down box, and then...
  8. Press "Save Article".

We recommend Notepad or even better, Textpad (free trial at www.textpad.com ) because MS Word adds funny characters to the page upon pasting.
*** Characters that typically render funny out of MS Word are quotes and apostrophes, ellipses, hyphens, and/or dashes. (" / ' / ... / - ).***

 

---------------------------------------------------------------------- Viola! You're Published. It's Pretty Easy ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------