The HubPages Insider

I'm lucky in that I started at HubPages right when the site was first beginning. I joined while it was still in its beta phase, which means the site was up and running, but was still being developed and debugged. (I'm the 227th person to join the site.) A lot of what exists on HubPages today wasn't here yet. And a few things that existed then (like adult content) are now long gone.

For new HubPages authors, learning how the site works can seem overwhelming. This Hub was created to give brand-new people an introduction for getting started with HubPages and to help those who have been here a while to become better users and authors. It's a gateway to a whole series of Hubs designed to help you with different parts of the process so that you can pick and choose the help you need in the moment and then come back for another chunk when you are ready.

Two things which didn't exist when HubPages first started out were the Learning Center and the forums. The forums didn't debut until the site was about a year old, and the Learning Center is even younger than that. In the very beginning, if you had a question, there was no place to ask except for emailing the Hub team. Much as they are today, the team is a lean, mean, admin machine and they have to split their time between helping users and keeping the site running.

The most accurate and always-available way to get an answer is to read the pages that HubPages has put up explaining how they work, aka The Learning Center. I really feel that understanding how the site works and the rules that govern it is the best way to get to be a top-notch Hub author. I can look up an answer in the FAQ or Learning Center much faster than the time it takes to post a question and then wait for an answer. One of the biggest benefits of being able to look up your own information is that you don't get wrong or misleading information. Unfortunately, a lot of not-quite-right information gets handed out in the forums. Be careful of that. The first person to answer you may be the quickest and not necessarily the most accurate.

Whether you are brand-new or an old-hand, read over and familiarize yourself with the three links listed to the right. These links are the best places to get the most accurate information about HubPages with the least waiting around for someone to answer you.

Certain things come up in the forums over and over and over and over and over... (you get the idea.) Here are some suggestions for having a better forum experience.

When you go to post a new thread or reply in the forums, a helpful message pops up next to where you are typing. It reads

"Please note that advertising and promotional posts in the forums will be deleted and may result in the closing of your HubPages account. Do not start threads for the sole purpose of promotion or posting links. Please use the Forums in the spirit of community! forum rules

Please check the HubPages FAQ before asking HubPages related questions in the forum."

• Don't respond to spam posts. There's a button which reads "report" and if you click that, it alerts admin. Don't worry, they will get the spammer. Just do NOT post a reply to the spam message, or it traps the spam headline and your post in the forum forever, and a lot of those make the forums look really bad. (A lot of Hub users haven't quite grasped this concept yet so do your best not to add to the clutter)

• If you are brand-new to the HubPages forum, here's a fantastic introduction and index, created by the community moderator Maddie. She's super helpful, and so is her post.

• There are different forum sections for various topics. It makes things more organized if you put your question or post in an appropriate section. Take a moment to read down the topics before you start.

• If you happen to post at a time when not a lot of users are on, you may not get an answer right away. Making multiple threads is a HubPages forum no-no. Don't worry, there are thousands of people using this site, you'll get an answer soon.

Your Hub Dashboard is the statistics page that you see when you go to http://hubpages.com/my/hubs/stats

Traffic Indicators - these are meant to be very general indicators of traffic trends. They show the simple ebb and flow of traffic and are going to appear and fluctuate regularly. If you want more detailed info, you will need to use Google Analytics to drill down and analyze the traffic for specific Hubs.

• Traffic Rising - this little red triangle means that general traffic trends on that Hub are up. For a Hub that doesn't get any or only get a few views, just a handful of new views can cause this to appear. Red = heating up. Two triangles mean things are heating up faster.
• Traffic Falling - this little blue triangle indicates that a recent traffic peak for that Hub is now dropping. Blue = cooling off. A blue triangle is not bad and most often appears after a big increase in views, when that spike is naturally ending.

Hub Errors and Problems - These are technical flags for your Hubs. They are still live and viewable, but something's wrong.

• Broken Link - This black triangle with an exclamation point means that HubPages has found a broken link on your Hub. This can be a text link, or a video link. The Broken Link screen will show you all the broken links across all your Hubs simultaneously. If a Hub as too many broken links, it can be unpublished for revision by the HubPages team. When you go view the Hub, the broken link is highlighted in yellow so it's easy to find.

• Ads Disabled - the newest addition to the stats dashboard means that an automated filter has suspicions about the content of a Hub, and whether it fully meets compliance with the Google AdSense TOS standards. The Hub is still published and viewable, but all Google ads have been suspended until such time as an admin team member can make a manual review. Even if you edit the content or tags of the Hub, the ads disabled flag won't clear until that manual review occurs.

• Missing Summary - It used to be that HubPages auto-generated a summary for your Hub if you didn't write your own. These small descriptions are used as introductions for your Hubs on the HubPages site, and used by search engines. After the Panda update, it was decided that the auto-generated summaries might be viewed as duplicate content, and they were removed. You now have to write your own, and this little "A" will let you know if you miss that step.

• Contains Violations - This little red skull is a warning of a serious problem. It can mean that a site you are linking to has been identified as one which is trying to launch malware or some form of computer virus attack against anyone who clicks on the link. It can also be a signal that you have content that is breaking either HubPages' or Google's TOS. You want to investigate and fix any Hubs that show this symbol right away.

• Copyright Alert - this small red copyright symbol is not showed in the color key, but if you see it next to the name of one of your Hubs, it means that someone has stolen content from your Hub and published it elsewhere on the Internet. Going to the Hub itself will show you a screen that will give you the URL of the stolen content. It is up to you, the content owner, to defend your own copyrights.

Hub Status - The different colors of the Hub name will tell you the status of each individual Hub.

• Deleted - Bright blue with a line through the name means you've clicked on the delete button and you wish to get rid of this Hub. Once a delete button is clicked, the Hub will remain for about 24 hours and then it gets permanently deleted from the HubPages system. So you have a little while to change your mind, but once it's gone, HubPages won't be able to recover it so make sure you mean to really delete the Hub.

• Not Published - The pink name means that only you can see that Hub and it's not been published yet for the general viewing public. These scores do not affect your overall score and you can take as long as you need to work on your Hub.

• Submitted for Publication - This is the status of a Hub which needs to be reviewed by the HubPages administrative team before it can be published. Most likely this Hub was flagged for some sort of violation that needed to be fixed before it could be published again. If your account has been put under moderation because you've had lots of Hubs identified as being a problem, it could be that every Hub you make has to be checked before it can go live on the site.

• Needs Revision - The bold name and pink highlighting is the sign that something about your Hub violates HubPages Terms of Use. You will not be allowed to republish this Hub until it is fixed and then submitted for re-approved by the HubPages team.

• Irrevocable - This will only appear for Hubs that have been moderated and declared as being inappropriate content that is in violation of the TOS that absolutely can't be fixed and will never be allowed to be published ever. You'll have to do a few things wrong repeatedly and ignore the moderators to earn this special designation.