Hello Experts!
We will now be issuing a special Expert Newsletter on a regular basis to help you along with being an Expert. It will include tips and tricks on making your pages really stand out, answers to frequently asked questions sent to Rob and Julia, a section where we highlight great work done by our Experts, as well as anything else we can think of that can help out.
The Expert Newsletter will have a set format so you can quickly become familiar with its structure. To make sense of all the info each Expert Newsletter will include a table of contents. Check out the T.O.C. to see what else this inaugural newsletter has in store:
Expert Newsletter 1 - table of contents:
- A Quick Note
- Tips & Tricks (copy & pasting,RSS feeds, etc.)
- Recent ?’s (user acounts, pics, layouts, etc)
- An Eye on U (BorrowedHeart, AJA74, Gx7, Benmuggeridge1)
- Contact Info
A Quick Note
First, we want to thank you all for doing a great job! We try to do things to spice things up and add some interest and fun for you such as this Newsletter and the Contests we have held. If you have any suggestions, comments, or concerns please contact us to make yourself heard. We also would love to hear what you enjoy most about the program so we can build on those things.
Tips & Tricks
Copy & Pasting:
We have had many of you contact us in regards to difficulties copying and pasting in the easy edit tool. A great tool to make this work by using key-commands:
- Highlight what you want to copy with your cursor.
- Next, on your computer's keyboard, press Ctrl + C (simultaneously press the Ctrl and C buttons).
- Then, click in the area where you want to paste the material and press Ctrl + V. The copied text should appear
This is a handy trick that you will likely find yourself using daily. (Keep in mind, unless you’re copying quotes, copied content should be edited a bit to be in your own words.)
RSS feeds – a way to keep your pages up to date
A great way to gather information for pages is to utilize RSS feeds. RSS allows you to retrieve information from your favorite websites without having to visit them directly. All the newest info gets sent to your “newsreader” as soon as it’s published.
Here are three good newsreaders (or “feed aggregators” or “start pages”) that provide a single page (or pages) for you to follow all of your favorite movie news
- Netvibes
- iGoogle
- My Yahoo!
- flixster for breaking Hollywood news
- flixstermovies for info on opening movies, new DVDs, and top box office updates.
”What websites should I follow?”
If your actors have websites or fan-sites that would be a great start. Film industry sites and online news-magazines such as Variety are another great resource for the film industry. Google “movie news” and check out some options. And don’t forget to follow the RSS feed
Follow Flixster on Twitter! We have two accounts
Follow us and stay up-to-the-minute on the film industry!
Flixster has the top movies application for the iPhone. Look up trailers and showtimes on-the-go! (Apps also available for the Android G1 and the upcoming Palm Pre.)
Recent ?’s
Before we jump into the ?’s, we wanted to remind you of the Expert FAQ. It’s super-helpful and may very well have answers for whatever is hindering you.“How do I access sub-pages?”
From your actor’s profile page, look just above the easy–edit button. There you will find tabs/links to the “Biography”, “Quotes”, and “Best Movies and Characters” sub-pages. Keep in mind to stay in good standing as an Expert these areas need some content (not necessarily a boat-load of info, just enough to be interesting).
“Can I be an expert for more then 5 actors?”
Yes. Before adding the sixth, we will look over your work and make sure the 5 you already have are meeting the minimum requirements that we ask of our Experts. If you have done that we will happily give you more actors.
“Can my friend be an Expert?”
Yes. Recruiting other users to help out with the pages you are an Expert for and/or to be an Expert for their own actors is encouraged. You can nominate them to us or just have them contact us directly. If the actor already has two Experts then we will happily put them on the waiting list.
“Some additions were made to the page I am an Expert for but the info is false/ inappropriate. What can I do about this?”
As you know from reading the FAQ, as an Expert you have the ability to revert changes made by any user. This is part of the really cool Expert admin powers that normal users don’t have.
To revert a change first look to the bottom of the mini-bio on your actors main page. In that area you will see some text that looks like this:
Click on “Content History”.This will bring up a list of all of the changes people have made to this page. You can see all changes people have made to all of that actor's pages by clicking the link at the top, "View all recent updates to your site".
Find the change you want to undo in that list. Usually, if it's to undo someone's erasing, find the one that lists "X words deleted". On that line, click on the little triangle to the far left. This will expand that line to show some options, which will consist of the following:
• "Make current version" - This takes the page back in time to whatever that line's version was
• "Delete this version" - Removes whatever changes were made during that change
Click on either option, and the page will revert accordingly.
An Eye On U
During the course of helping you all out we see a lot of pages grow from being simple and sparse to quite unique and jam-packed with interesting info. Way to go gang! We thought we would single out a few pages that have impressed us lately to give some props to those that put the work in, and hopefully seeing them may inspire others to come up with some cool designs of your own. Remember, there is no right or wrong way to build a page.First up is the Adrien Brody page which has none other than BorrowedHeart as his Expert. Check out the front page - we like this one because it tells a story with both words and pictures. The story telling aspect is a great way to draw in the viewer and keep ‘em interested in the actor while going through such detailed information.
Next we have the Christopher Walken Quotes sub-page which has AJA74 as Expert. The Quotes page is quite unique in its layout and looks great. Sometimes more is merrier, sometimes less is more. Here we get a bit of both, a nice minimal layout early on and a big payoff at the end.
We now move on to the Milla Jovovich’s Best Movies and Characters sub-page. Experts: Gx7 and Benmuggeridge1. This is a good example of getting creative with different colors, fonts, official movie logos, videos, image placements, headers and more. Lots of relevant eye-candy.
If you have seen or worked on a page you think deserves recognition please give us a holler and tell us your thoughts! We will have some more pages to share in the next newsletter – keep up the great work!
Contact info
For all things Expert related give a shout to RobGordonOr, e-mail him directly at: Experts@flixster-inc.com
For Technical Issues (“How do I add a table to this page, resize a photo, etc.”) send a message to Julia:
If you’re interested in the SuperReviewer, you can read more and nominate yourself here
General Flixster Support contact
If you have questions that may fall a bit outside the specialty of Rob and Julia, feel free to contact them regardless and they will help you out the best they can.
OK! We hope the Expert Newsletter has been informative! Drop us a line and tell us what you think :)
Have fun out there you Wiki-Wizards!
