Getting started

• First thing you want to do before anything is fill out your bio section in WordPress. Make sure to include a photo of yourself, information about yourself and your social media accounts. This is VERY important and must be completed before anything.
• To change your avatar after you have registered visit your profile page, and select change avatar from the drop down. Or you can also click here.
• To enter your bio, you have to do it both in the front end and the backend of the site.
• On the backend of the site, you want to enter in your social media accounts. Same goes for the frontend.

Article Preperation

• Strive to create ORIGINAL content. News that comes from rival sites do not perform as well as news that is original.
• Always check to make sure the news you are submitting is not already on the site. We don’t want the same article twice. Use the search feature if you have to.
• Always mention in your article where you got the news from at the bottom or within the article and INCLUDE A DIRECT LINK.
• Time sensitive posts: If you have a post that is time sensitive, let Steve know right away that way we can get it out. Don’t post news from a show that ended more than 6 hours ago. Chances are that people that wanted to read the news have already read it. Basically, if you are going to post “What Happened After RAW?”, that needs to go up directly after RAW. It’s useless the next day to post it because chances are 20 other websites already have it up.
• Keep news current. Do not post week or month old stories/interviews.
• Always get your news from the ORIGINAL source. If you see a story from Wrestling Inc or Sportskeeda, chances are it could have came from somewhere else. Figure out where, and get the news first hand. This will avoid leaving out an important of information out or stuff that was taken out of context from a 3rd party site.
• If you use a quote from another site, be sure to hash tag that site at the bottom of the post with LINKBACK. (Thanks to SITENAME for the above quote)
• Do not post rumors that can’t be confirmed by a reliable. Basically, don’t post Sportskeeda or Cageside Seats rumors unless it comes from a reliable website. If you have questions about this, run it by Steve before you write it up.
• Do not post filler news. Filler news is basically news that no one cares about, such as WWE stock updates, Kofi Kingston appearing at K-Mart on Friday. Stuff of that nature. We want stories that people are actually going to read. This includes “on this day” or “birthday” posts. Too many low performing articles can have a negative impact impact our site’s synication and reputation.
• Try to stay away from indie news unless it’s something super major. Like CM Punk doing an indie show, or an injury or a WWE guy working a Impact Wrestling show. For the most part people don’t really care about what goes on outside of WWE and AEW. The numbers don’t lie.
• Topics to post: Controversial topics, rumors, spoilers, Twitter drama, storyline updates, interesting interviews, breaking news.
• All articles must be wrote within WordPress.

Preparing your article to be published

ARTICLE TITLES

• Providing a unique and proper title is one of the most important parts to publishing a successful title. When writing your title, you want to make it stand out and be descriptive as possible but try not to have it TOO long.
• You also want to make sure you are using the proper formatting. Below is a proper example of how an article tile should be wrote out and below is are examples of how an article title should NOT be written.
• Try to switch up the keywords used in your headlines. Basically, don’t use the same phrases over and over. If your headlines start to all read and sound the same, changes are they are trending downward in performance.

“WWE Planning to Draft Roman Reigns to SmackDown Live”

Here is a bad example of a title would be:

“WWE planning to draft Roman Reigns to Smackdown live.”

Body of post

• The body of the post is where the information about the article will go. In this section you want to make sure you user proper spelling and grammar.
• You also want to include a good opening paragraph and a good closing paragraph that pertains to the article.
• The opening paragraph can be used as a tool to keep the reader informed of the current on-goings of the subject.
• The opening paragraph should also include keywords that are also used in your titles. (If possible)
• The closing paragraph is the section of the article where you want to close out what you are writing about. You can also use this paragraph as an opportunity to encourage the reader to leave feedback in the comment section.
• Within your article, you want to include as much information about the subject as possible. It’s always good to include photos, videos and social media postings, if available. This helps fill out the article.

Article formatting, crediting, linking and backquoting

• When you write an article, you will need to include certain elements. One of those elements is quotes. When using quotes from another website, you ALWAYS want to include a backlink to the site as to where the quote came from. If you wrote the quote yourself, invite other websites at the bottom of your article to credit our publication if they use our quotes for their website. IE: “Please credit Ringside News if you use this article for your publication.“
• Always add a backlink to previous articles when you can that relates to the topic. Not only does this help with SEO but it also helps the reader navigate and keeps them informed incase they missed something. You can learn how to add a backlink by watching the video below.

• Speaking of linking, you will want to link to the phrase for sourcing and/or article backlinking. Below is an example:

“Tommy Dreamer recently shared his excitement over Mercedes Mone’s impactful debut on AEW’s “Big Business” themed Dynamite episode during segment on the “Busted Open Radio” podcast.”

• Notice how the phrase is linked for the back link. This is how we prefer to do it.
• We do the same thing for social media mentions, as seen below:

In her Instagram post, Lynch conveyed her deep sense of honor in representing her home country and her profession in such a significant setting. 

• Notice how the “In her Instagram post” links directly to the actual url for the post.

• To include a quote in your article, you want to use the blockquote option, as seen in the video below. You will also want to add italics to the quote manually.

• You may also need to add headings to some sections of your article. You can add headings to your articles to make certain text items stand out. Like seen below.

Category Selection

• You want to make sure you select the proper category for your news. A lot of authors often forget this step and it causes extra work for the administrator and slows down approval process.
• Stay away from the “Featured News” category, as the administrator that approves articles will select which articles go in this section.

Tags

• Don’t worry about adding tags. Our setup is designed to populate the tags automatically after the article is live.

Featured images

• You always want to have a featured article attached to your article. Often times we will change these for marketing purposes. You want to make sure with your photo selection, you chose a photo that best illustrates the story.
• If your story is about someone dying or some upsetting news, you do NOT, and I repeat DO NOT want to attach a photo of that person smiling. The article should be a reflection of feeling/vibe you are writing about.
• To add a featured image, you can do so by clicking “FEATURED IMAGE” on the right hand side of the screen. There you can search for an image that is already in our database. Try not to use the same photos over and over.

• If you can’t find any image, you can always google one and upload it. If you make your own photo, it NEEDS to be 800PX by 500PX. This size is optimized best for our site.
• Try to make sure there is a good aspect ratio on the photo. Basically, don’t have a photo that is super long or looks un-proportioned.
• A good size photo can be seen below:

• As mentioned above, always try to include elements into your article. Some of those elements can come from social media. To include YouTube Video, Tweet from Twitter or Instagram post: Just paste the url in the body and it will automatically display when the article is published. Facebook videos you will need to add an “HTML” block and paste the hardcoded html.

• Once you feel that your article is completed, it’s time to submit the article for review.

FINALIZING/SUBMITTING Article for Review

• Make sure you have all the links to any sources you have gotten news from. Not only is this good for SEO but we also don’t want other websites emailing us about stolen content.
• Double check to make sure EVERYTHING is completed before submitting for approval. That includes proper spelling, grammar and paragraph spacing.
• Once you feel your article is ready, change the state to “pending review”, as seen below.

• If you’re article is time sensitive or you have any other questions, you can contact Steve.

Results Coverage Guidelines

Getting started

• Results coverage pretty much has the same guidelines as the article guidelines as above in regards to formatting.
• Results coverage is live on-going coverage of a wrestling event. These results need to have a preview for the show up at least ONE HOUR before the event. This is basically an introduction for your coverage. It should include the confirmed matches for the show, what time the show starts, and a section/paragraph (call to actin) that encourages your readers to react in the comment section.

Headline formatting

• One of the most important things about coverage is the proper formatting of the headline. All headlines need to be as followed:

“WWE RAW Results Coverage, Reactions and Highlights for January 11, 2021”

• It needs to be written EXACTLY like that. Do not deviate from that format.

Results formatting

• You always want to have an opening paragraph to the show. It’s always best to try to get the start time, name of the show and the date for the show in the first/second paragraph. You also want to encourage the reader to leave feedback in the comment section. Below is an example . (You can copy and paste this one every week if you want)

It’s Wednesday and you know what that means. AEW Dynamite will go down
tonight and Ringside News has got you covered with live play-by-play results
coverage for the January 1, 2021 episode.

Start time for AEW Dynamite is at 8:00 PM EST. Match-by-match highlights and results from the show will take place on this very page. Feel free to leave any reactions in the comment section below. The card for tonight is as follows.

• After that at the end of your opening and introduction, you will need to add a single line that will remind the reader to refresh the page for updates.

Category selection

• Make sure pick the promotional category along with the show category. So for RAW Results, you would select: RAW Results, WWE Results and WWE News.
• Make sure you make the PRIMARY CATEGORY the name of the show. So in this instance, the primary category would be: RAW Results.

Updating the results

• Try to update your results AS MUCH AS possible during the show. This actually helps your shows rankings on Google. Going 10-15 mins without updating will make your results fall off the first page. Good rule of thumb is try to at least get updates in every 5 mins or so. Try to get your first update for the show WITHIN 3 mins.
• IMPORTANT: After each update, you need to make sure you click the UPDATE

Scheduling the results

• Once you have results formatting down, you will need to start scheduling your results to publish ONE hour before the show starts. So if the show starts at 8PM, you want to schedule WordPress to auto publish at 7PM. Once you have done that, the “Publish” button will read “Scheduled.” You click that to save it and then you can exit out.

Final Notes

• Try to not include too many of your personal opinions within your results. This could anger the reader and we don’t want to have a reputation for being biased. Aim to write unbiased results.
• We encourage you to add tweets from Ringside News, WWE, AEW or whatever promotion you are covering in your results. This isn’t a must but it helps add visualization to your results and should only be done if it doesn’t impact your coverage.

If you have any other questions, don’t hesitate to reach out to Steve.