Constant-Content has tons and tons of articles. Sometimes the biggest challenge that we face is helping people find the articles that they need for their projects. Consequently, we’ve introduced News Feeds to make things simpler for publishers to find what they are looking for and to keep up to date on the latest articles in their niche.

Introducing Search and Author News Feeds

For the uninitiated, News Feeds are a technology that allows you to subscribe to a stream of information. With a News Feed you subscribe to the stream of information once and you will receive an automatic update in your news reader every time there is new content posted on Constant-Content. This video does a great job of explaining RSS News Feeds.

How does this work on Constant-Content? For the past few months we’ve had news feeds for each of our categories. This made it possible for you to tune into the latest submissions in each category and keep abreast with the latest articles submitted in that category. Now, in addition to the category news feeds, we’ve introduced two new options, the Search Results News Feed and the Author News Feed.

Search Results News Feed

Now you can create a search query that will turn up articles that meet your topic, license type and price requirements and then subscribe to that news feed and automatically keep up-to-date with any new articles that match your criteria. This is great because you no longer have to come back to Constant-Content and repeatedly do your search on the site to see if there are any new articles that meet your needs. To set up a Search Result News Feed, just head over to the Search section enter your keywords (and other criteria if you’re using the Advanced Search) and search. Once you find a search that is bringing up articles that are appropriate, hit the subscribe link and copy and paste the url into your favorite News Reader Application.

Author News Feed

The author news feed is a stream of the title, summary and price for each and every author on the site. If you have an author that produces dynamite articles in your field, now you can tune in directly to all the articles that they make available for sale.

With a news feed, prospective articles come to you instead of you having to repeatedly go searching for them! It’s a great way find and purchase relevant content for your site or publication!

In the life of every website there comes a time where the old design starts to show its age and look, well, dated.  And since we wanted to tune up the site and see its success last long into the future, we’ve spent a significant amount of time developing a new look for the site.

For Customers

In terms of how the site functions you’ll find that things are very similar to the previous version.  For customers, you can still make requests for unique content, search or browse through the archives of articles, communicate with authors and buy the content that you need to develop a health flow of visitors to your site.  From the customers side these changes are almost entirely cosmetic. One thing that customers who have been using the site for some time will notice is that the category system has changed significantly.  Previously we had all the articles separated first by writing style and then secondly by topic.  We’ve changed that so articles are simply separated by topic.  This should make it easier to see all the content that we have available in the topical areas that interest you.  In doing this we have had to pair down the number of categories.  Consequently, some of the more specific topics are no longer on the site.  Among the categories that got the ax was Articles >> Middle Ages >> Dragons and Travel >> Canada >> Yukon.  Not that they aren’t worthy categories, but they didn’t see a particularly large amount of action.  We’re hoping that using the search function will allow you to find the specific articles that match your purposes.

For Authors

You will notice a number of changes, although the basic process of submitting articles, responding to requests, accepting of refusing offers is effectively the same.  That said they will also notice some that we’ve consolidated a number of the pages in the authors account to simplify the process of being active and involved in the Constant-Content community.  There are some small changes here and there which authors who have been writing with us for some time will notice, but like any good design project we’re hoping that in fact you don’t “notice” that many changes and that the improvements that we’ve made will feel natural and easy to use.

As always if you have any suggestions for improvements or get stuck somewhere by all means let us know.  The best way to get in touch is to send an email to support@constant-content.com. We’ll be rolling out regular blog posts highlighting new features of the site in the coming days to help you get acquainted with the new look and feel.