A platform for writing about the important points
Basic Introduction
We want more and better information. Today, when an interesting news story happens, I scour the internet and read many redundant articles in search of information. It's way too hard.
PointPress sites list the important points in the news. And they also can collaborate with each other and with the users to make sure they have excellent coverage.
How do we do this?
You read an article and think it has some good points. So, you list those points on your site with a link to the original article. There are probably multiple articles with good points on the same story, so you will probably list points from them all. All of those points will be listed together in one convenient outline for your readers.
For example, there are many articles on Nadal in the US Open. Those articles are collected together in a story called "Nadal Wins 2011 US Open". The reader has quick access to all information about Nadal's victory.
Collaboration is very simple and powerful. Your users can post articles to your site and you approve them. Also, you can include one or more or all of the points in someone else's news site into your own.
Introductory Frequently Asked Questions
- Can I create a news website with this platform for free? Yes, you can. Every site even gets a domain name and you can also configure your own domain. You can also style your site and upload a logo and a background picture. It's completely free and you can place your own ads and monetize your site.
- Can I create my own personal view of the news with my favorite topics? Yes, you can. And you can even share it with your friends.
- What's the difference between a story and an article? Articles are written by journalists and stories are the events that these articles are about. Create an outline for a story called, "The death of the honey bees." Get points for this outline from many different articles. The articles will have all sorts of different names. But they are grouped together into one story. Story content is gathered from one or more articles.
- Is this an RSS reader? RSS readers do check multiple sites for articles. But, RSS readers don't tell you the important points in articles, or create stories from multiple articles. RSS readers are great.
- How do I get my own domain for my site? Go to www.netfirms.com or any other registrar and register a domain name. Then point the CNAME record to host.pointpress.com and in manage sites tell us the name of your domain.
- How do I use a CNAME? "www.example.com" can have a CNAME. "example.com" might not be able to have a CNAME and so you should just redirect to www.example.com and then point www.example.com to host.pointpress.com
- Can I make money with advertising? Yes, we make it easy to put ads on your site.
- How can I suggest a new feature? Just tell us at contact@pointpress.com
- How do I ask a question? Ask contact@pointpress.com
Poster Frequently Asked Questions
- Why don't all my topics show up? Only the 14 most popular recent topics show in the nav. The rest people can search for by clicking search.
- How do I add an article to multiple topics? You just type in multiple topics into the topics box and separate them with a comma.
- Why are there no comments? PointPress is made for productive and efficient users. So they probably won't have time to chat, and if they want to contribute they'll want to contribute an articles, stories, and points. We will make it possible to integrate 3rd party chat software, if you wish, and recommend that you use also consider a facebook or google or yahoo group for your community section of your site. However we encourage you to encourage your users to also contribute to your stories.
- How do I add multiple articles to one story? If two articles have the same Story name, then they'll both be added to that same story. In other words, just choose the first article's story name for the second article too. For example, let's say you want to create an in depth story outline on the Revolution in Libya. Come up with a descriptive story name "Revolution in Libya" and then add an article and use "Revolution in Libya" as the story name for that article. Then use that same Story name for the next article and so forth and so on.
- How do I add articles to someone else's story? There are two ways. When posting an article, use that story name and just submit it to their site. If it's on your site, then just post an article to that story.
- How do I review submissions of articles to my site? This is an option in the advanced section of the Manage sites system.
- How do I put another site's stories into my site? This is an option in the advanced section of the Manage sites system.