Upload Photos & Videos

What do your eyes go to first on a page? Exactly. Go the extra mile to attach at least one image to each of your articles. This further explains your content, pulls readers into the story and just makes the page so much more effective.

Uploading Your Own or Permission-granted Photos from your Desktop

Photos you took yourself, in the public domain, or in free online photo libraries like Morguefile or Creative Commons licenses (advanced link at Flickr ) are permissible provided they are credited to the photographer.

1. To upload your own photo to an article, click the "upload your photos and videos link" in the right column on your article page.
2. You must have the graphic saved as a file on your computer.
3. Press the "Choose Media files" button to call up a directory on your computer where your image is located.
4. Select the image to make the file name appear in the window.
5. Press Upload Media and wait.
7. Fill in a Title for the photo (caption) using your target keywords and describing the people, place and activity of the photo. You can also add an expanded description or caption in that field.
8. Assign it to a Channel (same as your article) and sub-channel if applicable.
9. Tag the photos with the individual names of those featured, the specific building/park etc. in the city, and the name of what is happening
10. Assign the photo a location and press Next.
11. Press Go to Story when complete. It should appear on your article in the top right corner.
12. You can upload several photos at once and then arrange the order and default first photo by using the "Footage" tab in the edit view of your article and clicking on the image to drag it to where you want it to go. The first photo will be the largest on the View.

Photo Don'ts

• Do not use photos for more than one article if possible. Photos must be professional quality and close enough to see clearly at NowPublic’s display size.
• If you don't have a good photo, don't upload one.
• As lovely as we’re sure you are, don’t post photos of yourself or your children (dangerous) to accompany articles.
• And did we mention that we hate clip art – use it on pain of death.

Loading a Photo or Video First

If you start your story with a newsworthy photo or video, follow this step-by-step guide.

1. Click the “I’ve got photos & video” button on the top right of most pages.
2. Click Choose Media Files and select what you’d like to upload from your computer (up to a maximum of 50MB). Click Upload and the progress bar will indicate what percentage of your files have been uploaded.
3. Write a headline that describes the story of your photos (For example, “New Year's Eve 2009 Times Square”), and write the body text of your story.
4. Click Start A Story to tag and publish or click Add to my Library to save the story as a draft to edit and publish later.
5. Choose an appropriate Channel to which to assign the story.
6. Enter relevant keyword tags that very specifically describe your story.
7. Add a specific title and description (different from the headline of your story) and tags for each photo that you’ve uploaded.
8. If your story looks good to go, hit Publish and you’re done! If you want to make changes, you can save a draft or click the Edit Text tab.

Adding Photos to Someone Else's Story

Alternatively, if you find a story on NowPublic that you’d like to add photos:

1. Click the Add Flickr photos if you have a Flickr account and have entered this information into your account Settings field (click on your username, then Edit Settings, then enter your username and password in the fields for Flickr and save).
2. A window will appear that shows you tags associated with the article you could use (Choose Search Tags) search by clicking on one to add or remove it.
3. Or you could enter a new search phrase in the search window beside your second option "You Are Searching These Tags". Type any terms separated by commas and click search.
4. Thirdly, you could select the photos that have appeared with the existing story search terms. You would like to add by clicking on the '+'. Preview by clicking on the image.
5. Click Add to Story and then a message window will appear that will allow you to send a permission request to the Flickr user who owns the photo.
6. Enter a Subject line and customize the standardized note explaining which photo you want to add to which story. It will provide the owner with a link to click to approve or reject its use. Once it is approved it will appear automatically.

They can learn more about this request, and the context of the article in which their photos/video might be used by clicking on a link. Please note their photos always remain their property and they own them fully and outright no matter what. They can send a message to ip@nowpublic.com to change their permissions or to contact the Quality Assurance Coordinator at quality@nowpublic.com.

The process is identical if you want to click the link that says Add photos from NowPublic's library except that we already have secured permission from the photographers to use these photos so there is no need to be a Flickr member or to send a message.

Adding Videos to Your Story or Someone Else's from YouTube

1. Click the Add YouTube videos link in the right column of the article page.
2. A window will appear that shows you tags associated with the article you could use (Choose Search Tags) search by clicking on one to add or remove it.
3. Or you could enter a new search phrase in the search window beside your second option "You Are Searching These Tags". Type any terms separated by commas and click search.
4. Thirdly, you could select the photos that have appeared with the existing story search terms. You would like to add by clicking on the '+'. Preview by clicking on the image.
5. Click Add to Story and it will appear in the top right as a default.
6. To move it to the end of the story (preferable), put your mouse over it and drag it to the middle of the 3 columns that appear after the last word of text.

Reordering Photos/Video or Placing them Elsewhere in the Story

NowPublic uses "drag-and-drop" tools so that you can click on an image you've uploaded and drag it to before or after a photo that also appears or you can drag the photo or video itself to a different place in the story layout by pulling it to one of the 3 columns identified with a grey bar, or all 3, after the last sentence of text. Try not to interrupt the story if you can avoid it. Photos should be top left and videos bottom middle ideally.

Ustream

You can use the Ustream widget by clicking on the Advanced Editing link in the public view (top right) of your article. Mouse over the Thumbnails widget and drag it so that it covers a grey pixelated horizontal bar near where you want to place the widget and then turns solid grey. It will open with three fields. Give the stream a title, describe it and enter the url from ustream.com once you've chosen the steaming video you want to display.

Thumbnails

To show all the photos in their thumbnail view stacked vs scrolling horizontally, grab the thumbnails widget and place it where you want in the story as described above. You can order the content by most recent, most viewed or most recommended and you can set it to one, two or three rows of 3. The content will default to the story you're in but you'll still need to give the thumbnail grouping a keyword-friendly title.

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