Today we are launching what we think will be a very helpful new article element. Our first new article element since we launched InfoBarrel 2.0 is the Google Maps element. This element will allow you to embed Google Maps within your content providing even more value for your readers.

According to Google, 1 in 5 searches is now localized, so providing Google Maps will help make it easier to show readers where popular destinations are in cities and towns around the world. Hopefully this new element drives people to share information about places they’ve travelled, places in their own city or places they would like to travel to.

Here is a video showing you exactly how to use the new feature:

If you would like to see the element in action, take a look at the following article:

http://www.infobarrel.com/Coquitlam_Trails_-_Hiking_and_Leisure_Spots_in_Coquitlam

We know you don’t post every article you create to your social profiles, but when you want to, we want to make it easier for you.  So in order to do so, we’ve created a new tool available to InfoBarrel members called Social Connections.

With Social Connections you can sync your social accounts with InfoBarrel (currently only Facebook is available) and when you submit your article to be published, you will be given the option to post a link to your freshly published article on a number of social sites.  While Facebook is the only available option currently, we should have Twitter and Google Plus added soon!

For those of you who share your articles with friends and families on Facebook and Twitter, this will help you save a little time.

Hey Guys,

Some of you may have noticed a little red flag next to your My Content link in the header and on your My Content page next to an article title.  This is a little notice to let you know that there is a flag on your article that needs to be addressed.

As a side note, I’d like to encourage everyone to make use of the flagging feature (found at the bottom of every article) to help you fellow IBers make their content the best it can be.

All Spam/Inappropriate/Duplicate flags go to us only.
Flags for Grammar/Spelling/Formatting got to both the author and us.

Thanks,
Kevin

Hey Guys,

In our quest to deliver higher quality content, we decided to introduce references and bibliography to the article writing process.  Adding a source to your article is done in a very similar way to adding media.  The sources box appears on the right of the editing screen of a text element as shown below.

To add a new source just click the Add Source button and a window will pop up that you can put your source information in.  Currently your can reference material from 5 types of sources:

• Books
• Encyclopedias & Dictionaries
• Magazines & Newspapers
• Websites
• Reports

When filling out your source material make sure to include as much information as you can.  There are certain required fields for each reference type.  For example, books require the title, publication city, publication company and publication year.  Once you have put all the info in, save it and it will pop into your sources list.

Now that you have a source, you can reference it in your article.  To do this, put your cursor at the place you want your reference and click the insert button.  This will add a numerical link in your article surrounded by two square brackets (as you can see in the above image).  Don’t worry that the number in the brackets is high, it will be adjusted when you save the article. If you want to delete the reference link out of the article, simply delete it out, making sure to delete the brackets as well as the numbers.

If you want to edit your source you can click the edit button to pop up the same window you used when creating it in the first place.

The last button, delete, deletes the source from your sources list.  If you have removed a source from your list, make sure to remove any references to it in your article.

Make sure to give it a try and let us know what you think.  If you have any questions, comments or ideas for making the process simpler let us know.  I’ve created a forum post for everyone to talk about this.

Good luck and happy writing!

Hey everyone,

As you may or may have noticed we’ve been testing a variation on the ad layout that has the top leaderboard ad being removed and doubling up on the cube ads at the bottom of the article.  We’ve had better CTR with this ad layout than the other so we’ve decided to switch it up so everyone can benefit from it.

Please leave any feedback you have on this forum post.

Enjoy everyone!

Just wanted to drop a quick note that we’ve added Google’s +1 (plus one) to article pages.  You can see it in the by line and at the bottom of every article page.  It functions pretty much like Facebook’s Like button, except it also has some search benefits.

To learn more about +1 check out this article: http://www.google.com/support/profiles/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1047397&p=sign_up_about_plusones

It looks like stuff has mostly calmed down after the Google Panda update and people earnings are starting to return to normal.  Over the last couple of weeks, we’ve been discussing how we can best secure InfoBarrel from these updates and algorithm changes in the future and the thing we kept coming back to is credibility.  By increasing the credibility of the site and the authors, readers will continue to come back regardless of what happens with Google or any of the other search engines.

So, over the coming weeks and months we’re going to be introducing, different tools that should help everyone here build up their web-cred.  One of these tools will be a References or Work Cited element that you can use to cite sources you’ve referenced for your articles.  We’ll also be trying to encourage people to start using their real names or pen names in their byline, so that readers can identify a real person with the article they are reading.  Some of the other things we have planned we’ll be keeping under wraps until they are closer to launching so they can come out with a bang.

I’ve set up a forum post so that everyone can get their say in and offer any other ideas they may have.

Note: We won’t be doing any article sweeps, so no need to worry about that.

Hey everybody,

Today we are launching something we are pretty excited about!  Today we are launching InfoBarrel for charities.  Every few months we will choose a new charity and our users will be able to be given the option to donate any of their articles to the cause.

Our first charity will be the Huntington Society of Canada.  We have chosen The Huntington Society of Canada as Ryan McKenzie, one of the co-founders of Infobarrel.com has a sister who is suffering from Huntington’s Disease.  Ryan’s sister Courtenay was diagnosed with Huntington’s disease in 2006 and has been in a constant battle with the disease ever since.  Recently she was lucky enough to get to carry the Olympic torch for the 2010 Paralympic games in Vancouver BC.

Our goal is to raise $2500 for Huntington’s Disease prior to moving on to our next charity.  Once we get the program running smoothly, we will be looking to the community to help us decide which charities to support.

How it Works
Writers can pick and choose which articles they would like to donate to charity and can easily change them from charity to personal articles at any time through the ‘My Content’ control panel.  When an article is donated to charity, 90% of the money generated by said article will go to charity.  2% will still be paid to the referring member and 8% will be used for server expenses.

Our ultimate goal is to have a database of tens of thousands of charitable articles allowing us to generate very generous donations to a number of charities month in and month out.

For more information on InfoBarrel for Charities, checkout http://www.infobarrel.com/InfoBarrel_for_Charities

To read our weekly updates on how much we’ve raised for Huntington’s disease, check out our Huntington Society charity page at http://www.infobarrel.com/InfoBarrel_for_Charities_-_Huntington_Society_of_Canada

For those of you who aren’t constantly monitoring the InfoBarrel forum, I’d like to introduce to you a bunch of changes and updates we’ve done to the site.

This week has been very busy here and we have plenty of cool new things to announce. So without further adieu, here is what we’ve done.

UserVoice Feedback Button – Gone
After a year of complaints about the Feedback button on the side of the site either interfering with functions of the site or slowing the site down we’ve decided to remove it.  Between our community forum and our contact us form, we feel there is more than enough options for providing feedback.

Navigation Bar
We’ve received a lot of feedback that having the expandable navigation bar at the top of the site made it difficult for new users to figure out how to post content.  To rectify this, once you’ve logged in, the navigation bar will now stay open.

Forum Speed
The forum was running kind of slow before so we tweaked a few pieces of code to dramatically speed it up.

Forum Post Count
Interested in knowing how many times you’ve posted on the forum? We now have a  statistic to show you exactly how many posts you’ve made.

Duplicate Image Titles
Previously when uploading an image to the site, if a similar image with the same title existed, you would have to reupload your picture with a different title.  This feature has been updated so even if an image exists with the same title, it won’t stop you from creating another.

Category Functionality
In the past, people were having issues finding the correct category to publish their articles in.  The method we employed to hunt down you category was just plain difficult to use.  We’ve implemented a new method that shows you your category structure in a treed out view.  We’ve also provided a search function that will give you numerous suggestions if you type in a keyword.

Auto Tweet
One of the keys to making money on any web site is exposure.  Our goal at InfoBarrel is to supply our contributors with the absolute largest arsenal of tools to maximize the traffic and revenue to their content.  Our latest feature allows you to authenticate your Twitter account with InfoBarrel and whenever you publish an article, InfoBarrel will automatically post a link to your article with the article title on your Twitter page.  This might only take a minute or two to do by hand, but we believe the more time we can save you in the promotional department, the more time you have to focus on creating great content.

Hey Guys,

We’ve wanted to be able to put Amazon product ads in with your articles for quite a while now and today we’ve put it together.  You are now able to ad in an Amazon ad by choosing an Amazon product category and then by typing in some keywords to help select the products that will appear on your article page.  You can ad in these new options on any existing article as well as any new article.  To add in the keywords and category go edit your article(s) and you should see and Amazon Products Link box on the right side.

You also need to signup and attach your Amazon Tracking ID to your account.  You can Sign up for Amazon here: https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/.  Once you have signed up, log in and grab your Tracking ID, located on the left hand side of the page when you log in, and paste it into your My Account page on Infobarrel.

Enjoy, and, as always, let us know if you have an comments or issues and we’ll help you out.