Adding Related Content to Your Sharing Page

The latest release of hy.pr gives you the power to customize your sharing pages like never before. You can now feature additional and related content for each hy.pr link you create, allowing your readers direct and instant access to any content you like, whether it’s related articles, videos, images, music – anything that lives on the internet!

When added to your sharing pages, your related content will appear to the right of the content preview. So, when a reader enters one of your hy.pr links into her browser, not only will she be able to share your content with her social networks, she’ll also be able to connect directly to your related content.

Managing Your Related & Publisher Content Categories
There are two new types of content that you can add to your hy.pr sharing pages. These are Publisher Content and Related Content. The screencap below shows how these new content links will appear when added to your sharing pages.

Before you can add these types of content to your sharing pages, you must access your account to activate the content categories you’ll make available to your readers. To do this, login to your hy.pr account at http://hy.pr.

Once you’ve logged in, click on the Profile button at the top, right-hand corner of the page. From the Profile Page, click Related Content.

* Publisher Content
On the Related Content Page, you’ll see two sections. The first section, at the top of the screen, is for Publisher Content. The Publisher Content section is used to create the links that will appear automatically at the top of every hy.pr sharing page. These could be links to your Twitter, your Facebook Fanpage, your RSS Feed, a static Subscription page – any sort of link that is related to your publication and would be appropriate no matter the content of the sharing link.

Under Name, type the word or phrase that you would like to appear to identify your link. Under URL, type the URL to which you’d like to link. When you are finished, scroll to the bottom of the page and click Save, or continue to the hy.pr associated content section to activate your related content categories.

* hy.pr Related Content
Under hy.pr Related Content, you’ll find a list of potential content categories for your related content: Video, Picture, RSS, Music, etc.. To be clear, this is just where you’ll select the general categories that you’ll make available to your readers and not the specific links that will appear on your sharing page. To activate one or more of these categories for use with your hy.pr links, simply check the box next to the categories of your choosing. Next to each category, you can also add a subhead that will appear in cases when there is no sharing link associated with the related content.

Additionally, you can add a URL Stem to your category. The URL Stem is the portion of the URL that goes unchanged from page to page. For example, if your domain is www.domain.com, you may have many URLs that are simply variations upon this root, like: http:// domain.com/earth, http:// domain.com/wind, http:// domain.com/fire. In this example, the URL Stem is “http://domain.com.” If you were to add “domain.com” as the URL Stem for your category, all you’d need to do when creating a related content link for a hy.pr link is fill in that last portion, e.g., “earth” or “wind” or “fire.” If this is still a bit confusing, don’t worry, we’ll come back to this part a little later in the section on Adding Related Content Links!

Once you have selected and edited the categories of your choosing, scroll to the bottom of the page and click Save.

* Adding A Content Category

hy.pr provides a list of several default content categories for you to choose from, but creating your own content categories is a cinch! Want to add related recipes, coupons or anything else you can think of to your related content categories? Just click the Add A Content Category button and fill out the blank fields with the name of the new category, a subhead and a URL Stem, if applicable.

FINALLY: Adding Related Content to Your hy.pr Links!

Now that you’ve activated your Publisher Content and Related Content Categories, you can add them to your hy.pr links! Navigate back to your list of hy.pr links by clicking the My hy.pr Links button at the top of the page.

You can add Related Content links to any hy.pr links you’ve created, new or old. Let’s begin by creating a brand new hy.pr link. To create a new hy.pr link, click the Create One hy.pr Link button at the top of the page. The hy.pr link editor will open at the bottom of the page, where you can create your hy.pr link just as you normally would, by adding a keyword and entering in the original URL.

However, now you’ll notice that there are additional buttons available to you in the editor. These are the Content Categories you added on the Related Content page.

To add related content, click the check boxes next to the Content Categories you’d like to add. With each click, additional fields will open up in the editor.

In the first field next to the content category you’ve chosen, you can add a subhead that will appear in the case that there is no sharing link associated with the content. In the URL field, enter the exact URL to which you’d like to link.

When you’ve finished, click the Save button.

Adding Related Content Links to Existing hy.pr Links
Don’t forget, you can add Related Content links to existing hy.pr links. To do so, just click on the check box next to the hy.pr link you’d like to edit. The link will open up in the editor at the bottom of the page, where you can add links following the same directions as above.

URL Stems Revisited
Remember URL Stems from the Related Content page? If you set one up for a content category on your Related Content page, now you only have to enter the last part of the URL for your link to work! Let’s revisit the process step by step:

On the Related Content page, I’ll create a Content Category for my Flickr account.

I enter in the URL Stem for my Flickr account. This stem is part of every single image in my Flickr stream and never changes. Once I’m satisfied that the information is correct, I click the Save button.

Now I would like to add related Flickr content to one of my existing hy.pr links. So, I navigate back to my hy.pr links by clicking the My hy.pr Links button, and select the hy.pr link I want to edit by clicking the box next to it. Scrolling down to the hy.pr link editor, I see that my new custom Content Category is available. I click the box next to it to edit it…

…and, TA-DA! The URL Stem is automatically filled in for me! Now all I have to do is enter in the final portion and click the Save button.

Checking Your Work
After you’ve created your categories and added your Related Content links, how do you know that everything is working properly? Whenever you save a newly created hy.pr link, you’ll see a progression bar to the right of the description field. This indicates that our system is fetching information from your URL, including a snapshot of the web page. Once the snapshot loads, you can click it to go directly to the web page associated with your hy.pr link.

And, of course, you could always give your hy.pr link a try to make sure everything checks out!

To set up your email preferences, just click the Settings link at the right of the hy.pr sharing page, then click the radio button for the option of your choice.

If you have any questions or need any help, let us know!

A fantastic video created by the Hearst Corporation and featuring the leaders of five major magazine companies: Charles H. Townsend, Condé Nast; Cathie Black, Hearst Magazines; Jack Griffin, Meredith Corporation; Ann Moore, Time Inc.; and Jann Wenner, Wenner Media.

The video is the debut of the “Magazines, the Power of Print” campaign, that will be launched in nearly 100 magazines, reaching 112 million readers. Click the link to read the full press release. [Magazines, the Power of Print press release.]

We are very excited to announce that the hy.pr service is now a part of the UK edition of Runner’s World magazine! Beginning with the April issue (on newsstands March 5th), you’ll be able to share whole pages of Runner’s World’s print issues with your online social networks. Just look for the hy.pr link at the bottom of the page. Check out an example behind the cut.

The hy.pr tool and our parent company, Smub Inc., received a very nice write-up today on LesEchos.fr! The original article is in French, but you can click the following link for a rough French-to-English translation, via Google: Translated to English.

* Creating multiple hy.pr links just got easier. You can now upload CSV and Excel files directly to your hy.pr account to create new links. To upload a document, click Create Multiple hy.pr Links when logged in to your account.

* hy.pr access is now completely Blackberry compliant.

* You can now customize your publication’s share and save pages even further by uploading your logo to your account. Once uploaded, your logo will appear on every share and save page associated with your hy.pr links. To upload a logo, click on LOGO under the Profile section of you account. You will be able to upload an image directly from your desktop, as well as delete any previously uploaded image.

As always, we’d love to hear your feedback regarding changes and updates. Please feel free to contact the hy.pr team should you need anything at all.

You can now add a description to each of the hy.pr links you create.

Any information entered into the description field will appear on the share and save page when a reader shares your link. If you leave this field blank, hy.pr will automatically fetch and display your link’s meta data, if available. If no meta data is available, the description will remain blank.

You can now choose which social networking sites appear on your hy.pr links’ share and save pages.

hy.pr supports sharing to a large number of social networking sites. You may find, however, that your readers are most inclined to share your links with a few specific networks. You can emphasize these networks and reduce visual clutter by choosing which social network icons will appear on your share and save pages. Your selected networks will appear immediately, but your readers will still have access to all the networks hy.pr supports with just a click.

We have many more updates still to come. If there’s anything you think we can do to improve our service, please let us know. We welcome your feedback!

We’ve received a writeup on Print in the Mix. You can read all about it here: http://smub.it/dwyc!

Great news! We’re very excited to tell you that the hy.pr tool for print publications has just been integrated into the East Bay Express!

Starting with this week’s issue, you’ll be able to share and save the articles you enjoy in the print and digital editions of the East Bay Express with your favorite online social networks.

The East Bay Express provides news, arts and dining coverage for Oakland, Berkeley and the greater East Bay Area. You can read all about it on the East Bay Express site or pick up a copy of this week’s issue at your local newsstand!

We received a very nice mention on FolioMag.com today. You can read the full article at this link: http://smub.it/dmri

Want to share a link to this article? Copy & paste this hy.pr link into your browser’s address bar: folio.hy.pr/share.