AdLib Style Guide & Help

Ad Lib Content & Tags

With the new AdLib blog, we’re hoping to expand our content marketing offer to members, supporters and voters and ensure we create a new channel by which to disseminate the party’s news & views.

Any team can upload content to the AdLib blog, but it will need to be signed off by one of the three Heads with responsibility for Digital:

Head of Campaigns | Claire Halliwell | Claire.hailiwell@libdems.org.uk

Head of Digital Communications | Alex Marshall | Alex.Marshall@libdems.org.uk

Head of Membership & Engagement | Greg Foster | greg.foster@libdems.org.uk

Content style & housekeeping

For all written posts on the AdLib blog, we’re aiming for high quality, informative, funny, first person content.

The ideal minimum length is 200-400 words, but there’s no maximum cap on length.

Press releases shouldn’t just be uploaded as is, they should be adapted to read as if it’s been written in the first person – this is usually a simple matter of rewriting the opening line and removing the “commenting on” line.

The author should also be set to the person who the PR was released from, not the person who has uploaded it.

Slugs should not contain _ and only – should separate words. Also keep the slug to as few words as possible.

GIFs, jokes, sarcasm and a casual tone are encouraged at all times. Think Buzzfeed, but yellow.

Tags

Styling

There are two styles for our blog posts – with hero, and with video. Both require the sidebar to be off.

With the tag blog_hero – the page will have a full width hero image at the top. This can be enabled by a tag (detailed below) or by uploading an image that begins hero_  (dimensions, 1200x400).

With the tag blog_video_ you can pull in external videos into the heading of the post. Two external sites are currently supported – vimeo and youtube and you need to tell the system which you’re calling from (IE blog_video_vimeo_ )

Lastly, you need the video slug of the video you’re trying to display, which can be got from the URL like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ Would be “dQw4w9WgXcQ”

So, for a full example, to add this wonderful video to a blog, you’d tag: blog_video_youtube_dQw4w9WgXcQ

All elements of the blog_video tag must be present – and the video must be published in order for this to work.

Images

Key image are used for:

• Social media images
• Cards on the AdLib Blog
• Cards on National News Slider

Every single post requires a key image with the dimensions 1200 x 628. You will break AdLib if it doesn’t have one! You can upload them in three ways

1. With a tag – the library of images is here: libdems.org.uk/image-assets
2. By uploading a file that begins key_ to the files section
3. By uploading an image to settings à Social Media

You can also upload hero images sized 1200 x 400 (described earlier) using the same methods.

If you need new images added to the library, speak to Robin Rea or Greg Foster.

Calls to Action

Blog posts sign up forms can also be appended by any active campaign. This is also done with a tag.

Relevant campaigns increase the conversion rate and this should be done whenever possible.

Calls to action can be found here: libdems.org.uk/cta-assets

If you need a new one added, speak to Robin Rea, Bansri Buddhdev or Greg Foster.

AdLib Blog

Content can then be added to the AdLib blog with a number of tags. There’s three locations where something can be added outside of the normal newsfeed:

Top Banner Video

This allows you to add a video to the page header banner.

It uses the same format as with video blogs (see above) – but the tag changes slightly to: adlib_featured_

This needs to be refreshed every 30-60 days, or the video will disappear.

The page will need – at a minimum a headline, intro and excerpt in order for everything to render right.

Featured Post

Important posts can also be featured – this means they’ll occupy the large square sections, even if the original post drops off the main page.

To feature a post in one of these tag it with adlib_featured_post

1-2 articles a week should be tagged in this way.

Video Wrapper

Lastly, there’s a roll of latest videos on the page. This featured the four most recent posts tagged with adlib_video

Again, the process for pulling in the video is the same as for video blogs (see above) and ideally 1-2 videos a week should be uploaded.

Homepage

Finally, some tags can control what appears on the homepage. There’s two locations that content can appear. The home Featured Post box and the News Slider.

Featured Post

The featured post should ideally be refreshed 1-2 times a month. To put an article here, you need to upload a post with the tag sys_home_featured

You can also place a video in that spot using the tag sys_home_featured_video_ - the syntax is exactly the same as for video blogs. But BOTH the sys_home_featured and sys_home_featured_video_ tags must be present for it to display.

Lastly, you can upload a custom image just for the homepage – just upload an image that begins featured_

News Slider

The news slider appears across all Liberal Democrat Sites nationally – and to add a post to it, you just need to add sys_home_latest_press

This should only be done for voter facing content – and never member focused content.

Members Area

Certain items of Members Only content can be added to the members area, if it’s tagged with sys_party_notices.

Categories

We've recently implemented a new feature - categories. They allow us to more easily tell people what things are. We can also in future look to develop more advanced filtering implementations using them.

Each post should have one Category and can have multiple sub-categories (though only one sub-category will display).

Categories:

cat_news = News (fallback)
cat_member = Members
cat_adlib = AdLib Magazine

Sub Categories:

subcat_brx = Brexit
subcat_nhs = Health & NHS
subcat_edu = Education
subcat_ecb = Economy & Business
subcat_env = Environment
subcat_com = Families & Communitites
subcat_rights = Rights, Freedoms & Liberties
subcat_world = International Affairs
subcat_reform = Constitutional & Political Reform
subcat_training = Training
member_only = Party News (also activates the paywall)
subcat_party = Party News (does not activate paywall)
subcat_events = Events
subcat_conf = Conference
subcat_bye = By-election News
subcat_opinion = Opinion & Comment Pieces
subcat_video = Video
subcat_ge19 = General Election
subcat_corona = Coronavirus
subcat_latest = Latest News (fallback)