New- Auto-Save Every 2 Minutes

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This new feature is a “Behind the Scenes” function programmed with AJAX that will Auto-Save all of your article changes and updates once every two minutes.

This feature is enabled/disabled through your Account Preferences, when you log into your Membership Account. (**In order for this function to be available, and to work properly, you MUST have JavaScript enabled in your browser.)

How Does the Auto-Save Feature Work?

While it sounds easy, there are quite a few different ways that this works with both your New Article Submissions and Existing articles.

1. NEW ARTICLE – If you are creating a New Article Submission, once this feature is enabled your article will be saved to “draft” status after the first two minutes of typing. If you are still working on the same article after another 2 minutes goes by, your updates and changes will be saved, and a “Draft” will be created. All updates are saved to this same “Draft” file. This will continue every 2 minutes until you “Submit This Article” that will queue your article for Editorial Review.
2. INACTIVE/PROBLEM ARTICLE – These would be articles that you have already submitted to us, but have yet to go through the Editorial Review Process. If you choose to “Edit” your INACTIVE article, it will be placed in an “Auto-saved Draft” status until you choose to “Update This Article”.

   PLEASE NOTE: In order for the article to be placed back in queue for Editorial Review, you MUST select to “Update This Article” once you have opened it for editing. If you do not do this, the article will remain in the “Auto-saved Draft” status, waiting for you to re-submit your changes.

3. ACTIVE ARTICLE– These would be articles that have already gone through the Editorial Review process, and are live on our website. If you choose to “Edit” your ACTIVE article, it will be placed in an “Auto-saved Draft” status, REMOVING IT FROM LIVE STATUS, until you choose to “Update This Article”. Once you are ready to submit your changes you will select “Update This Article”, the article is then placed in queue for a Re-Review by our Editorial Team.
   
   PLEASE NOTE: Your article will remain INACTIVE until you select to “Update This Article”, and send the changes through for an Editorial Re-Review.

Important Things to Remember!

• Once the new Auto-Save feature is enabled, it is enabled for the entire account, and is not “per article” or “per edit”.
• Once you open a LIVE article to EDIT, it is removed from LIVE status, and is placed in a “Auto-Save Draft” status until you select “Update This Article”.
• You can toggle the Auto-Save on and off at the bottom of the article submission form at any time.
• Auto-Save will always apply changes to the current copy of your article. In the case of a New Submission, it will create a draft and continue saving to that copy up until submission.

PLEASE NOTE: While the “Auto-Save” function will save to your CURRENT copy, the “Save as Draft” button will create a duplicate copy of the article you are working on.

This article auto-save feature is *ON* by Default. You can disable it at any time with each article or you can disable it for all submissions in your Account Settings.

The objective of this feature is to help save original content by authors who may lose their Internet connection and/or close their browser before submitting a final article draft. Let us know what you think of it?

This feature took us (6) weeks of programming to deliver. It seems like such a simple function, but required 6 weeks to work the bugs out. Hope it saves some author frustration when writing articles within our article submission form (instead of copy and pasting from your text editor/word).

Posted by Christopher M. Knight on October 18, 2007 at 10:13 am | 4,450 views