Sharing your blog articles on NOFOREIGNLAND

Our blog integration feature allows you to publicise your blog articles directly on NOFOREIGNLAND.

We don't host blogs. Instead, our software scans your blog articles, hosted on whichever site you choose, to identify links you've included back to our site.

In order to assert that you are the author of the article, we also require that you insert a link to your boat in the article.

What are the benefits of blog integration?

• By generating links to your article from NOFOREIGNLAND, you increase your potential audience.
• By inserting links from your articles to NOFOREIGNLAND, your readers can visit our map to see exactly where the place is, and find out more about it.
• Your blog articles benefit our community by providing articles specifically relevant to places they are interested in visiting. Anyone reading about a place on our site, will see the links to your article and have the option visit your blog and read it.
• We will also notify anyone following your boat in their activity feed when you publish a new article on our site. This could be friends and family, boats you've met on your travels, or simply someone who likes your writing style.

Getting set up

If you haven't already added your blog URL to your boat details you must do this first:

1. click the Edit details  button on your boat details page
2. Copy your blog's home page URL into the appropriate field
3. Save your changes

On your boat details page, you should now see a "Blog" tab in your boat's "Social media" section. Under this tab there will be a button labelled My blog dashboard.

Using the Blog dashboard

The Blog dashboard is where you manage all the blog articles you choose to publish on our site, and where you can discuss any issues with one of our reviewers before publishing it.

Each article you add will be listed like this:

Each listing includes:

1. The thumbnail image that will be used to promote your article
2. The title for the article
3. A list of places we have detected links to in your article, in the example shown there are 6 links:
   
4. The state of the article on our site, in the example the state shown is LIVE. From the dashboard you can click on the icon to find out what the state means.
5. Lastly, on the right is the ellipsis button, containing a list of commands you can use to update the article:
   

The commands allow you to Publish/Unpublish your blog, or Request a reviewer's assistance. You can also check the articles Revision notes (i.e. your questions and reviewer feedback), and Edit the article to update the thumbnail images, the title, or check for new links.

Sharing an article

To share your blog article on NOFOREIGNLAND follow these steps:

On your blog site:

1. Edit the article you intend to publish and add a link to your boat on NOFOREIGNLAND.
2. Add links to any places you discuss in your article.
3. Update the live version of your article on your blog, to publish it with these links included.

From your blog dashboard on NOFOREIGNLAND:

4. Tap the button at the top of the page to add a new article, enter the URL for your article, and press the Scan article button.
5. The scan results will report any problems, you will need to address these before moving to the next state. Problems could include:
• Cannot authenticate you as the author because your boat link wasn't found
• No place links found (you can still publish the article but there will be no reciprocal links generated)
6. When you're happy with the scan, press Save to return to the dashboard where you should see the article state is shown as PENDING_REVIEW.
7. Your article will now be checked by one of our review team. If you have followed the guidelines then it will be approved for publication, if there are concerns then it will be rejected along with a revision note added indicating the reason for the rejection. Don't worry if your article gets rejected once or twice, we might just have questions about it that we want to clear up before approving it.
8. If your article was rejected you should click on the button, read the review notes, make any requested amendments, and then (via the button again) request another review.
9. Once your article has been reviewed and approved you will receive a notification in your activity feed. You must then return to the dashboard, click on the button and choose the Publish command to make it live on our site.

We're committed to ensuring good quality content on NOFOREIGNLAND. For this reason we've included a manual review stage before we generate links to any external content. This should prove to be a fairly painless process in most cases, but might mean that your article is rejected once or twice, especially the first time you try to publish. Don't take this personally, we're here to help and if your article is rejected there will be a revision note added indicating the reason why and how you might address it. In some cases, we might even reject a perfectly good article simply to ask a question about it or to make you aware of an improvement you might like to consider.

Including links to places

All blogging sites allow links to be added to the text you write. Although the way it's done might differ slightly from one blog site to another, the principles are the same: someone reading your article will be able to click on the text to visit the link.

In a Wordpress blog, for example, it looks like this:

Once you've figured out how this works for your blog, the only other thing you need is the actual link URL.

To generate a link URL for a place on NOFOREIGNLAND, visit the place details page and click on the Share button. This will copy a link to your clipboard, you can then paste this value into the link URL on your blog.

Save your article, and try clicking on the links to make sure they work.

That's all there is to it!

Including a link to your boat

You can use the same technique described above for adding place links. Just use the Share button on your boat details page instead of the place details page.

Alternatively, if you'd rather have something that stands out a little more, and offers your readers a chance to see exactly where you are at any time, then you can copy the HTML for the following two examples and use them in your blog:

---

Example 1 - Tracking link

Click the image to try it out

<a href="https://www.noforeignland.com/home/map/boat//" target="noforeignland">
    <img src="https://www.noforeignland.com/images/noforeignlandLink.jpg" width="350"  style="max-width: 100%">
</a>

Copy the above HTML and insert in somewhere in your article.

---

Example 2 - Follow our boat link

Click the image to try it out

<a href="https://www.noforeignland.com/home/map/boat//" target="noforeignland">
    <img src="https://www.noforeignland.com/images/noforeignlandFollow.jpg" width="350" style="max-width: 100%">
</a>

Copy the above HTML and insert in somewhere in your article.

Don't forget, when using the examples above, to paste as HTML in to your blog
(for example, on Wordpress use the HTML editor).

---

Blog review guidelines

When you have submitted an article, the reviewer will check for the following:

1. You have chosen a thumbnail image that represents your article (not an advert banner or a spinner image for example)
2. Your boat link is included and clearly visible in the article
3. Any place links you have included are clearly visible in the article
4. There is no material in the article that in our judgement could be slanderous of offensive in any way to our readers.

Blog integration FAQ

Do I need to include a boat link?

Yes you do. We need to know that the article page belongs to you. Associating your boat link with it, gives us this reassurance.

I contribute to more than one blog, can I publish articles from both/all of them?

Yes you can publish articles from any blogs you write on. As each article is authenticated with a link to your boat, we can be sure it's yours regardless of which blogging site it's on.

Do I need to include place links?

No you don't. If your article discusses something unrelated to any places on our map, for example a "Cooking on board" article, then it makes sense that you can still publish it without linking to any places. However, if you discuss places in your article, then we urge you to include the links so that we can publicise it properly and present visitors to the place details page with a link to read it.

Should the links from my article be in a specific format?

No. You are free to present the link as you feel best: either as text or as links from images. All we ask is that the link is clearly visible to your readers.

When are links generated?

Link generation happens automatically whenever your article is in shared. Specifically it's state must be either LIVE or LIVE_PENDING_REVIEW. If you use the 'Unpublish' command for an article, its links will be deleted from the place details page, and the article will no longer be listed on your boat page.

What does it mean when a link has been disabled?

If we find a link in an article that we feel doesn't provide any benefit to our readers, we can disable it and remove the link from the place's details page. If you feel this has been done unfairly, you can use the 'Request review' command and a reviewer will take another look at it.

Is there an example blog article that I can see?

Yes there is. This article is the one used in the example shown above. It includes a link to my boat, and to six places we visited in the Cape Verde islands. I hope you enjoy the read.

I still have a question that's not covered in this FAQ, what can I do?

If you can't find what you're looking for here, please ask a question in our Help and Discussion forum.