Post or Page

When composing a new post or page, authors should refer to the Reference section for details on writing for the web. The following is a handy checklist to help support those efforts.

Content

• Every post/page should have a meaningful title. See Writing for the Web for reference material and SEO for production details.

• If a long sentence can be broken up, do it.

• Avoid passive voice.

• Never use instructions that rely on shape, size, or visual location (“Click the square icon to the right”).

• Check all dashes, quotations, and apostrophes (em dashes not rendered as hyphens/en dashes, no straight quotes or apostrophes). See Punctuation for details on how to type these characters.

HTML

• No <h1> tags in the body of a post (multiple <h2>, <h3>, etc. tags are fine). Don’t skip heading levels (<h2> to <h4>) or go backwards (<h3> to <h2>).

• Markup is used to designate headings (<h2>, <h3>), lists (<ul>, <ol>), and special text, such as:

  • <cite> for cited creative works and exhibitions

  • <i> only for a technical term or foreign language

  • <span style="font-weight: bold"> gives the appearance of bold. Never use <strong>, <em>, or <b>and watch that WordPress doesn’t try and “help” you with your markup and put that code in there.

  • <blockquote> for block quote, make sure to add <p> tag within <blockquote> tag. Ex.: <blockquote><p>The quote from source</p></blockquote>. See Quotes for more examples.

Links

• All links must be descriptive:

  Example: “Read <cite>Title</cite>” or “Visit Artist Image Resource for more information.”

  Not: “Read More” or “Click here”.

• If using an external link (anything outside of cmoa.org), use the shortcode: [link_external url="http://" domain="" link_text="" screen_reader_text="(external link)"] Example: [link_external url="https://www.pghphotofair.com/" domain="pghphotofair.com" link_text="PGH Photo Fair" screen_reader_text="(external link)"] is Pittsburgh’s only art fair promoting photography within the contemporary art market.

• See Shortcodes for a list of all available shortcodes.

Images

• Add alt text to all images. (See Sponsor Logo guidelines for specs): Example: “A smoky portrayal of a city, showing industrial fog and the tops of crowded buildings”.

  Not: “Auguste Lepère, Quartier des Gobelins, 1889–1890” (this should be the caption)

• Image titles should be clear and free of unnecessary words/formatting:

  Example: “Influencers Pritzker Nouvel Header”

  Not: “Influencers-header-3000_New”

• Have you checked the “Post Thumbnail Editor” to make sure cropped views look okay?

• See Media Library for image sizing and processing.