Thursday, June 24, 2010

Examiner Publishing Tool Update

Ever since I started working for Examiner.com they have been doing update after update after update on their publishing tool in attempts to make it more user friendly. The updates have successfully made some things easier to use - like posting at all - but has also made some things an absolute nightmare to do - posting multiple pictures or strategically positioned pictures.
Well, Examiner.com has up and decided to change the entire publishing tool and is going to Examiner.com2.0. The official release date for this is unknown, but Examiner does keep sending e-mails that writers need to back up their work if they have any articles that are in unpublished mode.

Furthermore, the e-mails have stated that any articles that were done using the current publishing tool(s) - there are two - will not be able to be updated ever again. The articles will migrate with you to 2.0 but they will remain as they are forever. This sucks a bunch considering how many articles can be repeatedly updated with the publication of a few more articles.

The solution if you want to continue to be able to write with that article? Back up the article, unpublish it and then publish it when 2.0 is finally released; obviously wait to unpublish the article until the actual date for update is set.

So what's that mean? It means you'll lose your search engine ranking, any backlinks you may have formed, any aging the article has done - as most online writers will tell you, good articles age like wine, not milk.

So you'll have to start from scratch. So... does that article need to be continuously updated or can you abandon that article to leave it as it is and just make something new with the same information once 2.0 is released?

I have a few articles that list a variety of body piercing types, such as this article about curved barbell body piercing jewelry that I used to update everytime I added a new article about a specific body piercing type listed. Rather than losing all the aging it has done, as it was published almost a year ago, I'm just going to let it fall to the wayside. It will continue to bring in whatever it brings in and I'll make a new article to update if I feel I need it.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I totally sympathize with you. This whole publishing tool issue is getting very old - it does not seem to be getting ANY better, worse if anything. - Dallas Live Music Examiner

Willi_H2O said...

I'm done after a year with Examiner.
Too much drama, headaches and no pay. I've woken up from the fog of the dream of paying my bills using the Examiner writing/publishing platform.