Obituaries, Events, Announcements: How to Post For Free on Patch

By AUTUMN JOHNSON (Patch Staff)

Dear Patch Readers and Contributors:

Do you have an upcoming event to tell the community about? An opinion that needs to be known in your town? Have you attended a local event and want to share a photo or two? Do you need to post an obituary? Or maybe you you would like to announce an birth, engagement or award? It’s free to post those on Patch!

Login to our Contributeville Patch page and post it and share your news!

Here’s how to get started:

• Please go to http://contribute.patch.com and login to the site with your Patch account. If you need a new account, to reset a password, or you’re receiving an error message, file a ticket at http://support.patch.com. Make sure to fill out the correct form so you get what you need!
• Note: New users must create accounts by filling out a new user request form at http://support.patch.com. Why? Because only verified users will be posting content on Patch. So give us some information — your email address, why you want to post, choose “create an account” from the drop-down menu, and our Support Team will get back to you.
• After you’ve logged in, you will be brought to a page called My Contributions. You will see all of the content you have posted to Patch on this page and the following page. From there, you can edit or delete a previous post, or start a new one by clicking the “+ Create Article” button. If you have saved a post, it will be at the top under My Working Queue.

When creating a post, you will need to follow these steps:

• Your community is already assigned for you in top right corner of the page. If it is not, you will need to start typing the name of your community and it will appear. Click it when it appears to “assign it.”
• Your category is Bulletin Board or Classifieds.
• Enter your headline, description, article text and add a photo. Please don’t use all capital letters, it’s like shouting at your readers. Also remember, you don’t want to be an unfriendly user — publish once a day, please!
• Click “Publish Immediately” and the “green arrow” button, if you’d like your story to be posted right away. If your arrow button is orange, you must look back at the form and see if you are missing any of the required fields. A red-text error message will tell you what is missing.
• You can also click “Schedule,” choose a time in the pop-up box, and the “green arrow” button.
• You can also click “Save Draft” and the “green disc” button, if you’d like to save your post to work on later.
• Note: You must click two buttons in order to publish your post now.

Don’t forget: You can always edit your own stories while you are reading them! If you are on your local Patch and are looking at one of your stories, click the small “P” icon next to the dateline. Click that to access “Moderation Mode.” You will be brought back to Contribute.Patch.Com to make your edits or deletions. You do not have access to edit anyone else’s stories, just your own.

You’ll notice that blog categories are no longer on Patch. All user content is now found on the Patch Bulletin Board. So how do you find all your content in one place on your local Patch? Click your byline to be brought to your profile page on Patch. The link will look like this: http://patch.com/users/user-name ... That is your new “home” on Patch and where all your readers can find your content!

Please note that our Calendar and Events sections are currently under construction. You may still post events by following the steps above and listing them in the Bulletin Board.

If you have any technical problems, please submit a support ticket by clicking here.