General

I accept press releases and guest articles for posting on this site. There is no charge for posting. The item must be about composite materials or a closely related field (for example, mechanical or aerospace engineering, or materials science).

Press releases should be e-mailed to Barry Berenberg at composite.guide@about.com. Put multiple files into a ZIP archive. Total file size should not exceed about 300 kb. If it does, please contact me before sending the file. (I only have a rural telephone line, so large downloads can tie up my machine for a long time.)

Guest articles should be submitted using the forms for for individuals or for businesses and small publishers. Articles may still be sent by e-mail, but please fill out the form first. Instructions for article preparation are below.

Press Releases

Press releases are permanently archived online. Links initially appear on the daily news page; they are later moved to the news archive. Headlines are featured on the home page and in the weekly newsletter.

Suitable topics for press releases include new product or service announcements, calls for papers, corporate news, and research news. Other topics may also be acceptable. I reserve the right to reject releases which I don't feel are appropriate for this site.

Press releases should be submitted in plain text or simple HTML format. If HTML, please try to limit tags to paragraph (<p>), heading (<h4></h4> only), and character formatting (such as <i></i>). Links to your site or e-mail address may also be used. Word processor files (such as MS Word) are also acceptable, but please keep them simple. Images will not be used, so please don't send them.

You may suggest title, keyword, and description meta tags, as well as a headline for the article. I reserve the right to edit these items. In general, I don't edit press releases unless there is an obvious problem.

Guest Articles

Articles are permanently archived online. They will be featured on the home page for a minimum of one week and in the weekly newsletter. You will be given a permanent URL for the article to which you can link. The article will be indexed on the site, and will be spidered by internal and external search engines (the same is true of press releases).

Suitable topics for articles include product or service case studies, book or software reviews, conference summaries, or tutorials. For an idea of the range of topics, please visit the article archive. Case studies may promote a product or service, but they should not be a pure advertisement.

As with press releases, I reserve the right to reject or edit submissions. Because more effort is involved in producing articles, please contact me before you start writing to make sure it is an appropriate item for this site.

HTML is the preferred format for articles. Plain text or word processing files are also acceptable, but the format should be fairly simple. Please do not use macros (such as Javascript) or dynamic HTML (DHTML, CSS, etc.).

There is no restriction on article length, but remember that online attention spans can be short. Use headings to separate sections in the article - this also makes it easier to divide the article into multiple pages if necessary. Use <h3></h3> for major headings and <h4></h4> for minor headings.

Images should be no wider than 400 pixels. If you require a larger image, include a smaller format (thumbnail) in the article as a link to the larger image. Name the thumbnail and full-size image similarly (such as image.jpg and image-tn.jpg). Please use width, height, and alt attributes in the image tag.

Tables are acceptable, but try to make them look good at 400-600 pixels wide. Wider templates can break our templates, and it is difficult to edit them. Likewise, text between <pre></pre> tags should be limited to about the same width.

The bulk of the article should be formatted without any <font></font> tags - in other words, it should use the default text fonts and colors. Limited use of alternate fonts and colors is acceptable. Similarly, avoid changing background colors or other such formats, either for the entire document or within tables.

Do not optimize your article for a specific browser. I test pages in both Netscape and Internet Explorer. If a page causes trouble in either, I will ask you to fix it.

Finally, you may include suggestions for title, keyword, and description meta tags.