| Issue #5 | June 6th, 2015 | Volume 1 |
Edition
Badges Earned
Crown (Exceptional Member)
- Doc Croc
- ChronoSloth
Maxim Tomato (Featured)
- Space Invader
- Steroid Gamer
- AbyssalOblivion
- Justicescooby
Frog (Jr. Author)
- ZB
- Rhutsczar
Metal Box (Recruiter)
- Rhutsczar
Box Hat (Top 10)
- The Watchman
Fire Flower (Editor)
- Doc Croc
E-Tank (E3 Participation)
- Doc Croc
Map (News)
- Doc Croc
Rings (Sega)
- Doc Croc
- Rhutsczar
Super Leaf (Author)
- Doc Croc
Hammer (Hardware)
- Gingerbot
Propeller Mushroom (40 Posts)
- Gingerbot
Poison Mushroom (Bio)
- ChronoSloth
Lightning Bolt (Newsletter)
- ZB
Kuribo's Shoe (Flickr)
- Sarus Vakarian
Banana (Tumblr)
- Justicescooby
Badges 3.2!
Five new badges are out, lifted straight from Symphony of the Night...well, all except one; the "Copy Flower" was too good to pass up for its purpose. Check out the key for more info on the new additions!
We'll also be handing out the Strength Bracelet (from The Legend of Zelda) to those that "Like" the site and/or individual artices on the site on StumbleUpon! Have you? Let us know!
Have you earned a badge that you haven't yet received? Let us know!
Fresh Meat:New Member Spotlight
Let's give a warm, crispy, greasy welcome to Nerd Bacon's newest Baconeers!
- MsPoisonIsland (Ellie)
- SuperTaroBoy (Jordan)
- Media Fiend (Domenick)
Welcome to the meat grinder!
Member Appreciation
by NerdBerry
Did you know that ChronoSloth is one of our most established authors? With 36 articles (and counting), ChronoSloth, better known as Justin, has been with Nerd Bacon since February of 2014. He quickly established himself as a go-getter and brings tons of positive energy to the NB team! But what many of you don't know is that Chrono is very active behind-the-scenes at NB. He reviews member applications, spruces up our static listings, fills in missing SEO from our days before SEO, and keeps the site interconnected with an eye on internal links. Thanks for all your awesome efforts Justin! Looking forward to many more decades of baconness with ya!
Upcoming Twitch Events
June 10th - 7pm EDT: Nerd Bacon Plays!
StarFox 64 with InfiniteKnife
June 11th - 7pm EDT: Girls Got Game
Borderlands with Sarus Vakarian & Nerdy Friend
June 17th - 7pm EDT: Nerd Bacon Plays!
Resident Evil: Revelations 2 with InfiniteKnife
June 18th - 7pm EDT: Girls Got Game
Borderlands (Part 2) or Borderlands 2 with Sarus Vakarian & Nerdy Friend
June 21st - 7pm EDT: Nerd Bacon Plays!
Resident Evil: Revelations (Part 2) with InfiniteKnife
HTML Tips and Tricks
Horizontal Lines
Sometimes it's nice to add a horizontal line when formatting an article. Maybe you're doing a Top 10 list, or maybe you're breaking down a compilation of games. Instead of adding blank paragraph breaks (pressing "Enter/Return" for more blank space) in the editor, try throwing horizontal lines in.
Remember, to use these tips and tricks, click on the "Text" tab at the top right of the editing box.
The simplest way to add a horizontal line is to enter <hr /> on a blank line. This will produce a horizontal line as long as the parent div, in this case the main content box. It'll look something like this:
You can also control how long it is by using inline style attributes. You can define these in terms of pixels, but you'll get greater consistency by defining them by percentage. To define the width, you'll need to type something like this: <hr style="width: 50%;" /> - and be sure to keep all those marks intact. We're saying we want a horizontal line that is as wide as 50% of the parent div. It'll look like this (the gray box around this area is the div in this case):
You'll notice that the above example was centered, but this will not happen by default in WordPress. To center a line, you'll have to add another snippet of code that tells the browser to put equal margins on the left and right. Here's what a horizontal line at 50%, centered, would be coded as: <hr style="width: 50%; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" />.
You can also do other things such as control the color of the line as long as you give it some height. I think the above examples tend to work overall, but we'll take a look a few more complex examples. Let's try this code: <hr style="width: 30%; background: red; height: 5px;" />:
To control just the color of a line (with no height) you'll have to use "border color." Here are a few examples below; but remember, WordPress will not automatically center your lines, don't forget about the margins! You can also enter color as 6-digit hex codes for colors, just be sure to precede it with "#" as in "black" = "#000000".
<hr style="width: 80%; border-color: blue; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" />
<hr style="width: 40%; height: 10px; background: cyan; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" />
<hr style="width: 20%; height: 5px; border-color: purple; border-width: 4px; background: orange; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" />
Here's one last example using everything: width, height, margins, border width, border style, border color, and background color.
<hr style="width: 80%; height: 5px; background: green; border-width: 10px; border-style: ridge; border-color: lightseagreen; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" />
There it is, a short primer on using <hr /> tags in an article. Be careful though - don't go overboard with it! And normally you won't need to worry about the height attribute or even any of the colors. Simply defining the width and the margins should be sufficient for most purposes. Keep this trick in mind when you need to make a few divisions, especially in a longer or multi-sectioned article. Remember, unless you're 100% comfortable with what you're doing, save your work first and if you have an questions, let us know!
Did you know that...
Headings can be a great way to draw attention to different segments of an article?
Inevitably we are all forced to write an article that we must break into certain sections. Maybe it's a Top 10 list or maybe it's a news story with several distinct points of interest. Either way, using WordPress' built in "heading" feature for formatting can make a big difference.
Sure, you can embolden the text, even italicize it, and go as far as to change the color and the size...or you can use the built in "heading" feature to do all that for you and stay uniform with the site (as well as any changes we may make to the color scheme).
Looking at the editor, you should notice a drop down box in the toolbar that says "Paragraph" most of the time. Simply highlight the text you want accentuated (just a word or two or a title, not a paragraph) and select "Heading 4" from the list. It may not look like much has changed in the visual editor, but once you click "Preview," you'll notice that the text is larger, emboldened and colored the official NB green!
What are the other headings for? They do pretty much the same thing, steadily increasing font size. "Heading 1" and "Heading 2" don't get much use around the site due to their large size. Heading 4 is a good one to stick with; noticeably larger than the regular text but not freakishly huge. The next time you need to chunk up pieces of an article, don't hesitate to use headings to make an impact!
Nerd Bacon News: June 2015 (1)
Now is the time for E3 news to start rolling out in earnest, so get ready to start hunting down sources and brushing up on writing news articles if needed. If you've never written a news piece before, be sure to get in touch with us before writing an E3 news piece!
If any of you have any specific events, announcements, or conferences that you want to cover, please let us know immediately! We would like to cover as many facets as possible rather than loading several writers onto one piece of news, so it's first come first serve when it comes to claiming events. If you are going to claim one, be sure you can actually cover it when the time comes!
E3 is a great chance for us to gain notability and credibility. We encourage participation but we also want everyone involved to take it seriously.
Also keep in mind that we are happy to accept articles regarding E3 that aren't direct news. Not many people have jumped in yet, but we would love to hype up the event with predictions, questions, expert speculation, and the like. There will also be plenty of room for analysis and interpretation after the show, so just because the event is over doesn't mean that our coverage is! Stick with it! The Watchman gave us a great example of a pre-E3 article with his Top 10 Things I Want from E3 2015 (and a Couple that I Don't) article. There's a lot of room for flexibility here; go wild, have fun, and show off your expertise!
New "HTML Tricks" Section
Starting with this edition of Greased, we will be featuring a short section (on the right) of small HTML and CSS tricks you can do with your articles. These will be small things you can do after clicking on the "Text" tab of the editor to enhance your articles. We will not expect you to know these things, but we do want to put them out there for those of you more comfortable with messing around with the raw markup of articles.
If you're not comfortable using these tricks, then don't feel like you must implement them. They're totally optional. If anything confuses you, get in touch with us and maybe we can help you understand it a little better. I advise anyone playing with editing the raw markup to save their work first in case something gets really messed up. And always be sure to use the "Preview" function; how the HTML translates in the visual editor can sometimes be slightly different than what appears in the final product.
It is also advisable not to mess around with any HTML that's already there. Don't go around deleting or changing existing markup unless the tip instructs you to do so. Deleting random snippets of code (technically it's not code, I was just trying to avoid using the word markup again) can make everything a big mess very quickly! So, use these at your own risk and save your work beforehand!
Nerd Bacon Needs Reporters!
With so many of you stepping up to the plate and regularly churning out articles, we feel pretty confident inviting one, maybe two of you to become official reporters. The Watchman does a great job of keeping us up to date, but there is so much news out there that it's difficult for one man to cover. We would be interested in adding one or two official reporters to the staff. You'd still be welcome to write reviews at your leisure; the difference would be that your "quota" would now revolve around news pieces - 2 per week minimum. We'd actually encourage you to do more than 2 a week, but that's the absolute minimum we'll accept for a bona fide reporter.
Interested? Let us know, and we'll keep an eye on you throughout the events of E3 and get back to you when it's over. Your E3 articles will be a great judge of how well you can report the facts. Keep in mind that, while not mandatory, it'd also be great for reporters to go above and beyond and seek out exclusive pieces for us such as interviews or previews of new games. This offer is open to anyone with 10 or more articles, so give it some thought, let us know we should be keeping an eye on you, and show us what you're made of throughout E3!
E3: How We're Gonna Do It
With all the news surrounding E3, we want to try to tackle this in as organized manner as possible. Writers are welcome to bang out small news pieces whenever and about whatever, but when it comes to the big events, we'd really like to know ahead of time who plans on tackling what.
These will be issued on a first come, first serve basis. If there's an event you want to cover, let us know as soon as you can and we'll be counting on you to cover that specific conference/speech. We want firm commitments - only "sign up" to cover an event if you're sure you can cover it. You may also want to throw second and third choices at us just in case. Or if you prefer, you can let us know what events you'll be available for and we can get back to you with what no one has claimed.
We think this will be the easiest way to cover it, but if you have any other suggestions on what could be done to best cover E3 with the least amount of chaos, hurry up and let us know!
Also keep in mind that there are two types of ways one can present a news article. The first is to keep things 100% neutral and report just the facts: clean, succinct, and sourced. These are great for breaking news. The second is by adding in a little bit of your own expertise to the mix. What does this news say to you? What implications does it have for the future? While this is definitely opinion oriented, it is more fact based than simply saying, "I want this to happen." Instead, it's saying, "based on this information and my own knowledge, this is what I think will happen." If you want to get the most out of E3, considering typing up quick articles with the raw facts so that we can put them out there as soon as possible and then following it up with a more detailed analysis of what this information spells for the future.
SEO is hugely important when it comes to E3 articles! Don't forget to nail the SEO sections in your E3 articles. SEO is not about throwing as many tags as you can out there; this will only dilute its importance. Instead, focus those tags on exactly what you're covering. Try to stick to as few words as possible but don't be scared to put a few exacting phrases in there. Simple combinations of words work best, but not too simple. You don't want them to be vague or ambiguous. We know we can get the news out there quickly - making sure that search engines find our articles is the real hurdle. If you've worked hard on an article, make sure to work hard on the SEO and Tags areas so that your article will be seen and read!
A handful of us will be hanging out on the backend ready to get articles published as quickly as possible. We may even need to enlist a few "war-time editors" to help with the load. I've got a few of you in mind, and for those of you that do have editing privileges, keep in mind the above note pertaining to SEO and Tags. It's not just about a well-written and informative article, it's about making sure that it gets out there and that people read it!
Review Spotlight
- Alien Carnage - PC - Action Zero
- NerdBerry says:
I'm excited to see Action Zero continue his saga of the Apogee Software games on the PC. That is why I am including this review in our spotlight. Early in his NB career he promised his audience that he'd cover the entire Apogee Software DOS Box set. I'm glad to see him continue on this journey and was thrilled to see another oddball DOS game in the mix! Good stuff Donovan! - Action 52 - NES - ChronoSloth>
- I don't know how ChronoSloth ever had the patience to drudge through this disasterpiece of a game, but it pays off. Tackling something like this isn't easy, and we applaud Justin for taking the road less traveled.
- Konami as Pyramid Head: Silent Hill's Second Death - ChronoSloth
- This is one of the most original pieces The Bacon has seen in a while. It's easy to bang out an editorial and to rant and rave about whatever might not be going your way in the video gaming world, but ChronoSloth takes it to a whole new level with this amazing piece that draws parallels between the events of Silent Hill and the real-life events surrounding the reboot's cancellation.
- Has the Death Knell Sounded for the PS Vita? - The Watchman
- NerdBerry says:
This news article is a great read. It covers a topic that makes us all say "nooo! why?!" I like how David K. (The Watchman) says, "Although House’s exact quote has not been referenced by any major news outlet..." showing that he did his homework enough to put together this article. He had to prove that this was true even though there's no official reference. Great stuff.
Want to Flex Your Writing Muscles?
We've been putting this out there for a while now, but with so many of you quickly becoming authors and with several new members as well, it's worth pointing out again.
Most of us have some nerdy interests outside of video gaming (I know I do) and we want to provide a way for those of you who might want to write about other nerdy pursuits to do so. Once you've become an author, we will extend to you the option of maintaining your very own column on whatever subject you'd like. It can stick within the realm of video gaming if you want - a column about the artistry, or great composers/pieces of video game music, or even something like "Games You Can Play with a 6 Year Old;" perhaps you're an expert on a certain franchise and want to get into some really in-depth discussion about it - any kind of fun spin you want to put on your column is fine. A lot of people have come to us wanting to discuss various aspects of the industry; once you become an author, you'll have your chance!
You can also take things in a different direction and discuss other interests; music, movies, books, food, electronics, puzzles...all fair game. For an example of these "side projects," go to the Beyond Bacon hub and check out both Music @ The Bacon (with separate columns from both NerdBerry and The Cubist) as well as Sidemeat. We'll also be glad to set up something like this for you. All we really want is a common theme; instead of just talking about every movie you've ever seen for example, pick a topic like, "favorite sci-fi flicks" or even "my favorite movies." It doesn't have to be super-specific, just something to tie the content together.
When you have a column of your own, you may not want to write in it forever. Maybe you only have 8 or 10 articles in mind. Or maybe you start running through your favorite books and run out. In that case, we'll "close" the column, mark it as "complete," and guess what - you'll be free to start another one! The reason for "closing" a column is so that one writer doesn't have several open projects at once and multitude of scattered, unrelated articles floating around the site. The possibilities are endless, and if there's ever been something else nerdy you wanted to discuss, this is a great opportunity to do so.
Currently these areas are sort of ill-publicized and tucked away, but the more participation we have and the more articles we can boast, the more we'll make it a point to drive visitors to these side projects and the more we'll begin to treat them as their own entity.
The only thing we ask is that your regular output of reviews still accounts for roughly 50% of your total output. That means that, at most, half of your "NB time" can be devoted to your side project. We still want reviews and we don't want anyone to retreat too far into their own side projects, but for productive members this shouldn't be an issue. Give us a review, write a piece for your column. Or even do it by twos - it doesn't have to strictly be 50% all of the time, just "roughly 50%." I know some of you out there have stuff to talk about - let's hear it! This offer is available to all current and future authors, so make the most of it!
ZB Speaks on "Quality Over Quantity"
Baconeer ZB wanted to share a few words with the NB community regarding quality over quantity; important advice that we should all heed:
I’ve read a few reviews here and there in which I have spotted formatting issues and inconsistencies. While it may seem minor, formatting is key to making us all look organized and professional. Be sure to preview every article you write and check to see that the final product will look good. And even if you think you have it down, it doesn’t hurt to review some of the formatting guidelines. While it may be tempting to rush reviews out, we will all look better in the long run if we are sure to double check our presentation. Our editors work hard, so let’s do our part to give them as little to do as possible.
And if you notice any kind of mistake when reading a fellow Baconeer’s article, let them know. Let’s all help each other out to spot the things that may slip past someone else’s eye. After all, nobody is perfect - we are all bound to overlook something and make even the silliest of mistakes.
Great advice for anyone looking to advance! I would also like to point out that while contacting the writer over any issues is a reasonable course of action, it's probably best to contact an editor (Doc Croc, NerdBerry, or The Cubist) first. Do not leave comments that point out typos and errors - these look really bad to visitors!
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Following, adding, subscribing, friending us earns you a badge! It can be hard for us to tell when this happens, so please let us know!
CONTACT US
Administrators
- NerdBerry -
NerdBerry@NerdBacon.com - Promotion, advertising, funding, events, social networking, editing, concept & direction. - The Cubist -
TheCubist@NerdBacon.com - Tech support, maintenance (badges, newsletter, membership management, etc.), graphics, editing, concept & direction.
Assistant Admins
- Variand -
Variand@NerdBacon.com - Twitch support, site support, concept & direction. - ChronoSloth -
ChronoSloth@NerdBacon.com - Link supervisor, general management & maintenance. - InfiniteKnife -
InfiniteKnife@NerdBacon.com - Twitch support.
Editors
- Doc Croc -
DocCroc@NerdBacon.com - Editing, publication, and scheduling.
Authors
- The Watchman -
TheWatchman@NerdBacon.com - Current affairs specialist, head reporter. - Gingerbot -
Gingerbot@NerdBacon.com - Reporter. - Justicescooby -
Justicescooby@NerdBacon.com - Senior writer. - Steroid Gamer -
SteroidGamer@NerdBacon.com - Senior writer.
Get Involved! Get Greasy!
Hey! Listen up! We want you guys to help out and be a part of Greased! We'd love for you to send in comments, questions, and any other newsworthy information that might hold relevance to other members. We'll consider any other ideas you may have as well, so don't be shy. Make Greased yours!
Site Developments
We've seen a lot of amazing work over the past couple weeks and it looks like a few of you are really starting to get into the E3 spirit! I know we've been talking about E3 a lot lately, and we'll probably still be able to talk about it for a while after it's over, but then we'll enter into the doldrums of summer where we'll need everyone's help to keep us fresh and active.
I know it's a time of vacationing and outdoor activities and a general deviation from the norm, but try to stick with us when you can and keep the reviews coming! We don't yet have any big post-E3 plans, but some things we will be focusing on include a retooled approach to Twitch and a continuing focus on bringing new members aboard.
Also, Kelly a.k.a. Doc Croc has earned her stripes as an editor (and an author!) which is taking a huge load off of us. We've authorized her to act on our behalf and make decisions when it comes to editing and publication; she's proven to have an astute eye when it comes to typos and a competent understanding of our technical policies. We could still use another editor or two to keep anyone from getting overloaded. I know I've been in contact with some of you so just hang on until we get through some of the E3 craziness!
So, now let's see how Nerd Bacon held up last month (May) in terms of numbers...
Site Stats (May 2015)
Overall, May was a bit of strange month. When all was said and done, we only did marginally better in terms of traffic than we did in April, especially in stats that give us an idea of total traffic, such as sessions, users, and page views. The weird thing was we had a few major peaks and troughs - it's one of the most inconsistent months we've had on record. Some days we saw barely over 150 visitors while others we topped over 400. What this probably means is that certain articles are getting lots of hits as soon as they get up (when it comes to the peaks), though I'm not really sure where the valleys come from. Hopefully ZB's new efforts of Facebook will begin to make a noticeable difference shortly.
The other bit of statistical data is a little conflicting. Our bounce rate (percentage of users that hit one page on the site and then do not interact any further) was out of control this month. A couple of days it soared as high as 40% and spent the rest of the time jumping anywhere between 5% and 25%. An increasing bounce rate is inevitable as we reach more viewers, but this is just wild. This would seem to indicate that the quality of the traffic we did get was less than optimal, but another stat seems to suggest otherwise....
Page views were about the same as April, which means the increased bounce rate didn't affect the overall number of pages that were viewed. Even better, our average session duration is up - way up, to 2 minutes, 52 seconds - and that's a really great thing. Furthermore, the standard deviation for session duration was 47 seconds. This is similarly awesome; it means that roughly 2/3's of all of our visitors spent between 2 minutes 5 seconds and 3 minutes 39 seconds on the site, and around 95% of visitors were on the site between 1 minute 13 seconds and 4 minutes 26 seconds! I've theorized about the usefulness of "session duration" (as a statistic) before and the means by which it's calculated, and while it's difficult to tell what exactly these numbers are measuring, they have increased significantly, which means something. So even though our hits may not have shot up in May like we would've hoped, the quality of our hits has likely improved.
We also had less unique visits (however, we had slightly more overall visits than April) which is ultimately a good thing - it means we didn't lose any visitors, but it does mean that we're gaining return visitors, which is the key to success!
You'll also notice that we're making almost nothing of a dent in the female demographic. If any of the ladies on the site (Sarus, Doc, Ginger, Nerdy Friend) have any suggestions or ideas that might help to capture a female audience, let us know!
Let's work hard to make June and E3 a huge success. Sure, our June hits may be inflated, but hits are still hits, and we've got a good chance to grab the attention of newcomers and hopefully get them interested enough to pay us another visit!
Remember it all boils down to a very simple formula: more traffic = more ad-clicks = more money = your chance to get PAID!
For any of you experienced with social networking sites (even ones we aren't on yet!), please considering donating a little more time to us and help us pump those articles!
| Visits - May 2015 | ||
| TOTAL | UNIQUE | |
| Hits | 7,443 | 6.409 |
| % Increase over April | 1.49% | -0.43% |
| Average Per Day | 240 | 207 |
| Page Views | ||
| Total | 40,448 | |
| % Increase | -0.25% | |
| Average Per Day |
1,304 |
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Until Next Time...
As usual, keep up the hard work, and do what you can do give us that extra push during E3; even if you don't have any interest in covering the event directly, there are ways that you can help, such as making sure we get articles posted in a timely manner and help us spread the word on social media. Baconeer ZB is already stepping up our reach on Facebook and we've got a few others interested in social media proliferation as well. As always, the "standard review" will be happily accepted.
Remember that "Monday Night Twitch" (I'm sure we'll come up with some kind of cool name) will be coming circa July, so those of you wishing to stream might want to keep this in mind. In the meantime, keep reviewing, keep recruiting. We've been bringing in lots of new members but very few of them seem to be active. Let's encourage their activity and participation within the site and continue adding to our diverse and unique crowd!
| Issue #5 | June 6th, 2015 | Volume 1 |