Long-form articles and series

An article is the long form: a title, an optional subtitle, a cover image, and a body built from headings, paragraphs, lists, quotes, code, images, videos and dividers. Articles can be personal or owned by a Space.

Write an article#

1. Open New article. If you belong to Spaces, choose whether it is yours or the Space's — writing a Space article needs the write capability there.
2. Give it a title, and optionally a subtitle and a cover image.
3. Write the body in the editor. On the web, type / for blocks — heading, list, quote, code, image, video, divider — and use the formatting toolbar for the rest. In the app, the toolbar above the keyboard sets headings, lists and quotes, bold, italic, strikethrough, code and links, and adds a divider; images and videos in the body are added on the web.
4. Add up to 10 tags. Tags filter article lists, and a public article also appears on the matching hashtag page's Articles tab.
5. Save draft (Create draft in the app). On the web a draft you are still writing is also saved automatically as you type, and Preview shows it as readers will see it.

A draft is visible only to you and to the people who manage articles in the Space that owns it.

The article lifecycle#

An article is in exactly one state:

Your own article publishes straight from draft. In a Space with Require article review turned on, writers submit instead, and someone with the approve capability — an admin or the owner — approves or rejects it. A rejection carries a reason, which the author can read.

Schedule sets a publication time instead of publishing now.

If you need to take a published article down, Unpublish in its menu returns it to your drafts and stops it being served publicly. Publishing it again goes through the same steps as the first time.

Public and members-only#

Your own article can be marked Public, which makes it readable by anyone, including people who are not signed in, and gives it a Public badge. Without it, anyone signed in can read it. If your account is private, only your followers can read your articles, whether or not they are marked Public.

A Space's article is not marked one way or the other: it is public exactly when its Space is. A private Space's articles stay with its members.

Saving an article's media#

Allow saving in the editor decides whether readers can save the article's photos and videos; it starts from your privacy setting, and you can always save your own. See Saving photos and videos.

Series#

A series groups articles that belong in order — a course, a multi-part write-up, a season.

1. New series, with a title and an optional description.
2. Open Manage series and add articles to it.
3. Reorder them. The order you set is used everywhere the series appears.

Readers can Follow series from its page.

If some articles in a series are private drafts you cannot see, the list you reorder leaves them out and says so. They stay in the series and keep their place when you save.

Version history#

Whoever can edit an article can open Version history from its menu. It keeps up to three earlier versions of what readers saw — kept whenever a published article's title, subtitle or text changes, or it is unpublished — newest first. You can compare an earlier version with the current one, name a version to keep it (up to ten named versions stay beyond the three), and Restore this version; what it says now is kept as an earlier version.

Reading an article#

Articles show their author or owning Space, a cover, and their tags, and can be liked, commented on, and bookmarked like a post. A published article has a stable address you can copy and share.

Deleting#

Deleting an article is permanent and is confirmed first. Authors and Space article managers can delete; a moderator removing someone else's article goes through moderation, which notifies the author and is recorded.