Portal and New Topic Guidelines

by **cal_el** Sun Mar 29, 2015 4:16 pm

I thought it would be worth laying out how the Portal works and introducing a couple of guidelines for making new topics now that we are trying a new posting format.

Don't feel as if you need to follow these to the letter, just take them for what they are: How to make your posts look good on the Portal page for the site.

How The Portal Works

When a topic is made in Gaming the first post is treated as a news item for the Portal.
The first 5000 characters of the first post (including images and videos within these 5000 characters) are shown on the Portal.
All replies to the thread are listed as comments on Portal posts.
Whenever someone replies to a thread the topic is bumped to the top of the Portal with the first post being displayed again.
Currently the Top 5 Gaming threads with recent activity are featured on the Portal.

New Topic Guidelines

Make sure the name of the thread makes sense.
Try to include an image, embedded video or gif near the top of the first post.
Centre all images, videos and gifs. (Just highlight the image, code, link, etc and hit Centre in the Post Editor)
Preview, Preview, Preview! (Use the Preview button )
Share your New Topic! Those G+, Tweet and Like buttons on the right are there for a reason!

If anyone has any suggestions for further guidelines or wants me to tweak things on the Portal page let me know below Smile