Frequently Asked Questions

• Register for membership. You will be sent an email to confirm your membership.
• Depending on your email address, for example: if your email address is a freely available one and not associated with the business website URL, IFCMN may ask you to provide proof you are involved in some way with the flooring industry.
• Login
• From your 'User Menu' select 'Publish', you will be presented with an Editor into which you input your content. See below about meta data and the editor functions

Important - Meta Data Information & Editor Functions

IFCMN will only publish news if the following mandatory meta data information is included:

• Title must be included - a maximum of 60 characters is permitted. This is for search engine purposes, anything more than 60 characters will be truncated.
• Main article content introduction - or lead in, write a brief introduction to the article, usually one paragraph is enough for this. Try to include some of the article/news keywords in this.
• Main article/news - can be continuous of the introduction, or it can be a 'follow-on' seperated by a 'READ MORE' button. An example an instructions to be found in the membership area.
• Meta Description must be included - a maximum of 140 characters is permitted.
• Meta Keywords must be included - it is best to use a maximum of 7 keywords. Keywords should be those included in the title and description - again, this is for search engine purposes.

Meta data is part of the html code that search engines spiders (robots) look for to categorize search results. Therefore, it is important to establish and use at least one or two main article keywords in the article/news title; also in the meta description. It is always good practice to use no more than seven of the main article/news keywords in keyword meta data, these main keywords should be in the top (approx one third) three or four paragraphs of the article/news.

Editor Page Break & Read more buttons

• Pagebreak Button - use this if your article is exceptionally long. Place your mouse cursor where you need the pagebreak and hit your keyboard 'Enter '. You will be presented with a window to enter a pagebreak title. This action will create a table of contents (TOCS) for at the head of your article which makes for better reading.
• Read More Button - If you use this, only the introduction (lead in) to your article will be shown to readers. To read the full item, they can click on the Read More tab in the intro.
• Examples and instructions are to be found in the membersip area.

Images

• The first time you use the editor and the image function, a folder will automatically be created for your use. This is tied to you membership so nobody else can use it. You can upload one image (1 image).
  
  Image specification:
  Maximum width, 400 pixels
  Max resolution, 72
  Format, jpeg, gif or png
• Image alignment - withing the image manager you can select from: Left align, Right align or Centre. You can also set the image left or right margin, we recommend 20 pixels.

When you are satisfied with your article, click on the save button.

What happens next

• Article are not published automatically, IFCMN administrators will be notified on each article submission, the article will then be checked for errors before being activated.
• The article, as well as being shown in IFCMN categories, will also be added to IFCMN on Twitter.