There is already a page on the technical aspects of adding posts. This page is more about how to make content on Radio and TV that will serve the public better. But if you need technical assistance with the things described in this page (eg exxerpt, tags, categories) then please consult that page.
One thing to always bear in mind, is that these sites are visited by great numbers of the general public who aren’t disciples. In particular, thousands of people come to Radio Sri Chinmoy each day looking for spiritual and meditation music, which means they are seekers. And for many of those people, Radio Sri Chinmoy is their introduction to Sri Chinmoy and the Centre.
So here are a few areas to think about when adding good content:
Title – Try not to make it too long! For example, with disciple music, it’s OK to leave out the group name if it will make the title really long and confusing for a new user.
Be sparing with the use of quotation marks. If the quotation marks span the entire title, then in general it’s best to omit them.
Excerpt – Always add this. It appears in listings on the front page, musician pages, category pages and tag pages. A good excerpt will inspire visitors to click on the post.
Keep it to 1 sentence if possible – less than 100 characters. Avoid adjectives or hyperbole – a matter-of-fact approach works very well here.
Category (TV site only) – you only need to tick 1 box here, or 2 boxes at most, even if more of them theoretically fit the description. If you tick a child category (eg Female singing groups) there is no need to tick the parent. Proper use of the Categories function helps to automatically generate really powerful category pages which many people will visit.
Tags Very important to add these, as these generate the related posts. There is a very good how-to on adding tags in the other page.
Page summary – You can definitely make this at least 2 sentences. This is one real opportunity to introduce newcomers to Sri Chinmoy and the Centre. Again, we put facts over adjectives here – we try and give a sense of who Sri Chinmoy was by what he did. The facts will speak for themselves because they are so amazing. Similarly describing disciple music in a very humble and factual way also creates a powerful impression.
Disciple names – we were asked to use full names wherever possible, as it gives a sense of real human beings. For example with disciple recordings, people then get a sense of real human beings participating in and creating this musical output.
Of course there are a few instances where using the full name somehow sounds awkward, so you go with what is natural.
An Example
Title: Sri Chinmoy’s poems, recited by Phoolanjaya Beale
Post summary: Phoolanjaya from Auckland, New Zealand offers two soulful recitations of aphorism-poems by Sri Chinmoy. The poems are mostly selected from the Seventy-Seven Thousand Service Trees collection, which Sri Chinmoy began in 1998, and in which he had written 50,000 poems by the time of his passing in 2007.
(we can use Phoolanjaya’s first name here as full name is already in title. Saying where she is from gives sense of a real person. Then we can say something very factual but still pretty astounding about Service Trees. Its a bit of a skill to find these nice ‘angles’ that offer seekers nice windows into our path, but one well worth learning.)
Excerpt: Two recitations taken mainly from the Seventy-Seven Thousand Service Trees collection.
Muscian/group: Sri Chinmoy Centre poetry (Note we didnt click the parent category here)
Tags: New Zealand, Phoolanjaya Beale (new), poetry recital, Recitation, Seventy Seven Thousand Service Trees (new)
(Even if tags are imperfect, its best just to add what comes up in autocomplete and make a note – for example poetry recital and recitation should be merged. The location and people involved get their own tag. A new tag is also created for Service Trees – it wont help to generate related content now but might in future if there are other Service Trees related material.)