Using the workflow interface to edit and publish pieces - The-Balance-FFXIV/balance-static GitHub Wiki

Using the admin interface to interact with content published and made by the respective job staffs on the Balance website is a relatively straightforward process. The following document aims to explain and show how to use this process to guide you through editing pieces that are ready for it -- walking you through the process, the states a document can be in when it comes to the Workflow page, and how to publish a page.

  1. Access the admin interface here, using the GitHub account that you were invited to the project with.

  2. Click on the "Workflow" link at the top of the page. This will lead you to a page that lists each of the documents currently in the works for the site, and the respective statuses they have assigned to them by either their writer or the review staff.

Workflow interface

  1. Once you've accessed this page, articles will show as either "Draft", "In Review", or "Ready". Documents in the "Drafts" status are still being worked on. You could edit them if you wanted to, but this status typically denotes that the content within is subject to change at any time, and thus it generally isn't worth spending too much energy on doing so at this point. This is also where articles that people porting guides should put guides they are currently working on.

Documents in the "In Review" status are documents that the author has completed and are pieces that are ready for editing. It's worth beginning to take a peek at these documents at this point, as it's unlikely (though not impossible) that the entire structure or content of the document will change at this point.

Lastly, pieces that are in the "Ready" status within the Workflow interface are pieces that are ready to be pushed to published status once a lead is done reviewing the piece one final time.

As a general rule, you should be contacting either the author themselves or someone on that job's staff before making any content-related change to the guide, with the exception of if you're helping to edit and are also on the job's staff. We want to avoid making corrections that we think are right without being intimately familiar with the job ourselves.

The interface mentioned will look like this:

Editorial Workflow Page

  1. Once this is done and the piece is ready to go live, you can push it to a live page by locating the Publish button in the top-right of the page. Clicking "Publish Now" will push the piece live on the website in a short period of time after. You're done!

Note: If you are not a lead, you probably will not be using this much. Ping one to get things published immediately or immediately after review by the editing team.

How to publish

The site will be using AP Style for the articles. A simple guide to AP style can be located here. The highlights that will most likely be relevant for our uses are as follows:

  • Ordinal numbers are spelled out for numbers one through ten. Numbers higher than this will use 10th, 11th, etc. The exception to this, for our use, will be when the number is referring to a potency, or a gauge gain, in addition to referring to GCDs, as phrasing such as "5th GCD" is more familiar to a majority of readers than "fifth GCD". Things such as "this gives you 1 charge", should still be changed.
  • AP style dictates to use the Oxford comma when it is necessary to avoid confusion, and to avoid using it in situations beyond this. Ultimately, this isn't a massive deal for our own use, but it's best to try to be uniform from a stylistic perspective.
  • Figures should always be used for ages. This includes for expansions. For example, say: "Heavensward, the 6-year-old expansion from Square Enix".
  • Unless an abbreviation is exceptionally common (think DPS), the first use of an abbreviation should be spelled out. This includes the abbreviation for jobs. Subsequent uses can utilize the abbreviation in question.
  • Abbreviations should be capitalized in a uniform manner. (E12S/O3S, oGCD, GCD, DPS, SkS, SpS, etc.)
  • Phases should be capitalized. "Phase One, Phase Two", etc.
  • Names of enemy attacks should be capitalized as well. (Gaols, Fury's Fourteen, etc.)
  • Names of difficulties (Savage, Ultimate, Unreal, etc.) should be capitalized.
  • Status effects and the like should only be capitalized in situations where you're referring to the debuff itself. Specifically referring to Vulnerability Up as a status should be capitalized. Generally saying there's a vulnerability up effect should not.

As always, there's more at the link, and I highly recommend reading it. These are just highlights that will likely be the most common points of reference for a website such as the Balance. If you have any questions about this, please ask either myself or one of the other content reviewers in the channel to ensure we've got the correct answer before pushing a piece live.