Understanding Sections, Categories, Articles and Features

What are Sections, Categories, and Articles and Features, and how are they used at Cubic Yard?

Sections

Cubic Yard has several objectives and each objective is called a Section¹.  We may add, postpone or drop a Section as we identify your  needs, likes and dislikes.  There may be short-lived Sections created for special occasions much like a newspaper would have a one-time special Section such as “Election 2012″.

We also have an inventory of Sections we publish on a pre-determined schedule.  Newspapers usually have Sections inserted  on schedule also – “Your Community” inserted every Saturday, “Tax Roll” inserted the first working day of the month in which property taxes are due, etc.

The Sections, or objectives, for www.CubicYard.us are:

• News
• Reference
• Marketing
• Education
• Income

News Section

Cubic Yard classifies content as “News” only if, in our opinion, the content is about “recent and important events”.  Our definition of “recent” and our definition of “important” was made easier by looking at the key elements of our  Mission Statement, paying particular attention to the following phrases:

• “..  operate this site as if we are your business partner. We strive to build and maintain long-lasting business relationships ..”
• “.. CubicYard acts in a news gathering capacity and serves a communication role by reporting and commenting on public issues.  We focus on the gathering and publishing of news in the arena of HUD, VA and FHA regulations, Property Preservation, REO Property Preservation and Loss Mitigation.  We serve as the eyes and ears of the industry –  the watchdog, the guardian and the contractor advocate”
• “We research issues and report our findings”
• “We provide an atmosphere of opportunity infused with information and education”
• “We try to have it online before you even know you need it”
• “We strive to gain your respect by being the source of straight-forward and newsworthy content you can rely on”

Although we are fond of calling ourselves “the watchdog” and “the guardian” we realize our primary goal  is to be “the contractor advocate”.  Acting as “the contractor advocate” demands that we classify content as “recent ” if it is unlikely the majority of our members have seen the content and we classify content as “important” if it is likely the majority of our visitors can gain a personal or business well-being (the state of being happy, healthy, or prosperous) because we published the content.  Again, from our Mission Statement: “We report and comment and rely upon the good sense of our visitors to deliberate on our content and come to their own conclusions” which means we will do our best and let you decide if it’s good enough.

Reference Section

Our Reference Section really  sets us apart from other  websites.  Cubic Yard defines Reference as content the majority of which was created through the efforts and talents of others not associated with Cubic Yard.  In other words, we did not create the content; we only gathered the content and prepared the presentation of the content.  Although the functions within the Reference Section may display news content,  no content in the Reference Section will ever appear in the News Section.  The reason for this is that we have no control over the timeliness of the content or even the validity of the content and therefore we cannot honestly classify the content  as “News”.  We will publish the content as “Reference” and let you decide if it is “News”.  The perfect example of content within the Reference Section is our Snoopers™.   Snoopers™  present content originally created by someone not associated with this site.  We perform research to locate the content we wish to publish and then design a presentation method suitable for the data and our visitors.  In internet terminology this is often called a “mashup”.

Marketing Section

Marketing: The marketing section involves all other facets of Cubic Yard. Our primary objective is to enhance the exposure and popularity of Cubic Yard thereby enhancing the exposure and popularity of our members. We encourage interaction between our members and participation by our members resulting in a a combined effect greater than the sum of all separate effects.

Education Section

Cubic Yard publishes information from many sources that serve as educational material. In addition to keeping our content current we recognize and assemble critical material that is published as educational material.

Income Section

Cubic Yard has automated routines constantly searching for opportunities for our members. In addition to the automated routines, our staff is in contact with many industry contacts in search of additional opportunities to publish for our members benefit.

Categories

Categories provide a flexible method for us to organize both the navigation of the website as well as all the content of the website.

Here’s how it works.  A Section contains one or more categories, and each Category can have articles assigned to it. An Article will be in only one Section but may be in more than one Category within that Section.
For example, Cubic Yard has a Section called “News”, and categories within Section titled “Company News” and “Contractor News”.

Articles about companies would be assigned to the “Company News Category” and articles about Contractors would be in the “Contractor News Category”.

What if the Article is equally relevant to both Categories?  Cubic Yard could  put the same Article in both the “Contractor News Category” and “Company News Category”, both of which are in the “News Section”.

Articles

Cubic Yard defines an Article as original, human-created  content to be displayed on the site. An Article normally consists of text and can contain pictures and other types of data. Articles form only a portion of the information published on Cubic Yard.
Think of articles as pure content, independent of the way it might be presented. For example, the same Article might be shown with different fonts, colors, headings, and background, and might be shown in different locations on the page.

Features

Features are the various tools we create for our members. Examples of features are our specialized search engines and databases.