If you want to edit a post you have saved previously, just login, click “Post new feature” and switch to the “Manage” tab. See screenshot:

As of now, you can not edit a post once it is online. If you need to do this, please contact me and I will make it temporarily possible for you.


If you have inserted an image and then accidentally deleted it, or if you want to re-insert it in a larger size, you don’t need to re-upload it. Just click the “insert image” button and select the “Media Library” tab. You should then be able to find your already uploaded image. See screenshot:

Here's a screenshot of the “post feature” area, with the important buttons circled. Hope it helps.

• Tip: Try clicking on the “fullscreen mode” to get a better overview when making your post.

• Tip: Always cover the basics, who, when, where, what, how, why. You can also write the “meta-story” (the story abut the story): Why you did the story, how you took the photos, what you think about it all etc.

• Tip: Please write at least 100-200 words. I personally consider 400-700 words a suitable minimum for web use. There’s no maximum, a 1000 or 2000 word article will also be fine! (There is a word counter on the right hand side of the text area.)

When all that’s done, go to the “Tags” field below and add your tags. Tags are keywords about your subject category. For instance, it could be something like health, poverty, lifestyle, food crisis etc. Don’t include country or continent name here. Stick to the subject.

Then go a bit further down the page to the “Category Field”. In order for your story to show up in the right places, make sure “all” is selected here. Furthermore, do one of the following 3 things – I repeat, just do one of them:

1. If you are posting news material, select the “News” category.
2. If you are posting a feature (a story that is not news), select one of the 6 feature-regions (Features Africa, Features Asia…).
3. If you want to post some news about Gaia Photos or yourself (a recent interview, award etc.) unselect everything (also “All”) and select “blog”. Your post will then appear on our blog.

Finally, select which one of your images you want to use as a thumbnail image on the web front page etc. There is a field further down the page called “Custom Fields”. Here, you have to select “Image” and write the image file name under “Value”. See example:

That’s it! Don’t forget to click “Save” (on the right-hand side, towards the top of the page).

• Note: An editor will have to approve your article before it appears on the web site. You can change you story as long as it has not been published on the site, but once published it becomes a little bit more tricky. So make sure it’s completely finished before you hit the “Save” button.

Uploading Your Images

When you’re making a new post and want to add some images, click on the image icon in the “Add Media” area of the post menu. Now there’s basically two ways to do it.

To avoid complicating things, please just upload one image at the time. (Technically it’s possible to do batch uploading, but it will automatically create a gallery that doesn’t always look nice. So for simplicity’s sake, one at the time.)

When it’s uploaded, you can write a caption and select size and alignment. The following sizes are available:
1.    “Thumbnail” : scaled to max. 150×150px
2.    “Medium” : scaled to max. 300 (high) x 270px (wide)
3.    “Full Size” : scaled to max. 500×500px
Then click the “Insert Image in Post” button.

• Tip: You can actually post images up to 630 pixels wide. To do this, choose “full size” above, “insert image in post” and in the advanced settings, click “original size”.

• Tip: If you delete an image from your post, it will remain uploaded. You can see it and re-insert it in: Add Media -> Image -> Media Library -> (select the image and click:) Show -> Insert Image in Post.

• Tip: To show two images next to each other, use “medium” size and align the first to the “left”, second to the “right”. Simple. Looks nice.

• Tech. issues: If you have installed Adobe FlashPlayer 10, the flash upload won’t work. Either downgrade to version 9 or use the “browser upload”. If you’re getting an “IO error”, it’s probably because your internet connection is unreliable. Just try to upload again.

Adding Audio

You can also add a sound-clip, an ambient recording, music etc. to your posts! In the post menu, after “Add Media”, simply click on the audio icon.

• Tip: This is a great feature that I for one intend to put to good use. But remember: You can’t just upload your favourite tune from your iPod. Like photos, music is often copyright protected and you need a permission from the artist. One solution is to create your own music(!), another one is to use “creative commons” (cc) music. Just remember to give due credit to the artist in your post. A couple of good places to find cc-music is http://gratisvibes.com/ and http://www.opsound.org/.

Formatting Your Text

Please start your headline with country name.

Please capitalize the first letter in all the words in your headline.

Please use Bold on headlines and hyperlinks.

Example headline  :  Nepal: Man Bites Dog

• Tip: No one likes to read a long text-piece that never pauses for a line break. Don’t be afraid of making some extra white space. Two or three empty lines between paragraphs significantly improves readability. Inserting sub-headlines for longer articles also makes it easier to read.

• Tip: Optimizing for Google

• If you are writing something that you want to be “found” on the Internet, think about the words and phrases someone would use to find your information. Search engines can't “see” a site. They can only “read” a site. Make sure you have quality word content for a search engine to examine and compare with all the parts and pieces to give your post a good “score”. Use keywords and key phrases in the headline and use them more than once as you write, especially in the beginning of the article, but not in every sentence.

• If your story is already posted elsewhere on the internet, it will help your ranking to modify it a little bit. Especially consider changing your headline as this is one of the most important places the search engines are looking.