14 Jul, 2021

Last edited: 20 Jan, 2025, 4:18 PM

Article post type

This is an advanced post type and meant for long form content and stories. Publishing using this post type requires a minimum number of words.

The Article post can be edited as desired after creation anytime. Articles can be subscribed to and delivered to subscribers after creation anytime.

It has a featured image, title / heading field, a summary field, and the article body. Rich text is allowed in the body, together with images and links (which automatically generate a rich embed, or a media card depending on the source).

The featured image, title / heading, summary and article body fields are mandatory.

Rich text editing via the Long Form Editor#

Article post body use the Long Form Editor embedded in the post authoring tool. This is a Rich Text Editor (RTE) and further allows the post to be enriched with responsive images and tables, with shiny captions (which are very good for SEO).

The follow rich text formats are supported:

1. Heading
2. Sub-heading
3. Bold, Italic, Strikethrough, superscript and subscript
4. Numbered and bulled lists
5. Text alignment
6. 2 types of horizontal line
7. Quotes
8. Code block
9. Links
10. Images
11. Rich embeds
12. Products
13. Media cards
14. Simple table

Image handling#

Local image

Images are handled in the most seamless and convenient way possible. One does not need to worry about any aspect of image management when using the Long Form Editor. All the complexity is taken care of behind the scene, leaving you to focus on what's important.

Images can be inserted in myriad ways

1. Using the image button on the toolbar
2. Drag and drop from a folder
3. Drag and drop from another browser tab
4. Take a screenshot from anywhere and just paste!

The editor will automatically resize and compress the image before uploading to ensure fast download times.

When uploading, a visual spinner is shown so that the author knows that image upload is in progress.

Jpeg, png and webp image types are permitted. For security reasons, svg is not permitted.

Images can be individually captioned and the editor turns them into Alt text. Apparently, search engines go weak at the knees at such things.

Online image

The "search image online" icon on the toolbar allows one to search for an image on Unsplash and insert it, with Unsplash approved attribution. Read more in the product story.

Featured image

The featured image is a special image that displays at the top of the article. In order to allow creativity of expression, it is not cropped in any form to force fit into a theme - it is displayed in the aspect ration that you upload! Here are some examples:

1. https://revivaldisabilityproject.maincross.org/p/a-revolutionary-body-x59b8fsaidgd4h9
2. https://www.toontype.com/p/a-new-character-greg-heffleys-kid-boqynak61eysisik
3. https://www.haribagh.com/p/whats-haribagh-about-ayn85evql6k6w23u

Rich embeds / Media cards / Products#

Easily enhance the Article Post by embedding rich media from any URL - internal or external. Effortlessly add videos, audio, and social posts with just a link, boosting engagement and SEO.

Read the dedicated help article on this topic.

Simple tables#

Copy paste a table from any source and it will automatically resize itself according to the screen size.

Embeddables#

Rich tables

Need rich tables that will automatically scroll and resize? Here we go:

Carousels

Swipable carousels to showcase images or images with blurbs? Wheee, its there.

Data visualizations

Your stories are as interesting as you, so why limit them to text and images? Showcase data and statistics visually - enhance your article with different types of visualizations - pie charts, line charts, etc, all fully responsive. No third party tool or plugin required.

SEO and link previews#

Every post and page created using the MainCross Network CMS is filled to the brim with SEO and link preview goodness. Basic meta tags, Open Graph tags and Twitter tags are present for everything.

Titles and descriptions are used automatically for tags. The main or featured images where available are also used for tag generation. This produces rich cards when sharing on various platforms. Read more.

Portability#

Content copy-paste

You could copy content from any source and paste into the editor and it will JustWork :-). Give it a try, the output will be superb highly readable text using the selected formatting that we have carefully allowed for legibility. You can bring in text from online sources, word processing documents, excel sheets etc. All extraneous material will be stripped away.

The reverse is also true, any content copied from the editor can be pasted into any editor of your choice and is also fully portable between multiple editors windows.

Output

The editor produces the cleanest HTML for display & syndication etc. It is beautifully structured, and easily parseable.

Pro options#

There's more on offer for Pro accounts. Older posts being brought in from another platform can be back dated to match the original publication date.

A series of articles can be linked together as multi-part articles.

The article can be part of a Story Arc.

Multi-part articles

Want to publish a longer article? We have you covered. Publish your article in more than 1 part - as many as you want, and then link them together.

See an example here

Authored a multi-part article with friends or colleagues? Each author can publish their article and then link them all up. Our publishing tools are robust and serves your every need.

See an example here

Data journalist?

Perhaps stale data gathered at the time of writing the article just won't cut it for you and you want to showcase constantly updated live data for your story. We'll hook up to any data source for you and perform our very own data magic on it to have it show up on your article as tables or charts. Talk to us if you'd like to set up live sources for your data driven articles.

See an example here

Pages allow even more than article type posts#

Read more here about the Long Form+ Editor.

Subscribers#

This help article contains all the gory details.

Summary generation#

Article summaries can be generated using the inbuilt AIAssist feature. This is available only for Pro accounts.

Pre-publishing checks#

Before publishing, all the checks need to pass (denoted by a green checkbox). The publish button is not enabled until all checks pass.