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Frequently Asked Questions

General Questions

Do you show hyperlocal news outside the United States?

Not at this time.

How do I sign up or sign in to Outside.in?

No account or profile is required to browse Outside.in.

Outside.in for Bloggers

How can I get my stories to show up on Outside.in?

Register your site with Outside.in for Bloggers. Your site must have an RSS feed for your stories to get into our network. It's best if your RSS feed publishes the full text of your stories so that we can scan it for mentions of locations. Read more about why full text feeds are so important on our blog.

Your stories will show up on Outside.in when users search for the neighborhoods, towns, cities and places that you mention in your posts. They may even appear on the Neighborhood News Pages of our major media partners in your area! Either way, you'll be seeing more traffic from us.

I've submitted my site to the Outside.in network, but my posts still aren't showing up on Outside.in. What should I do?

First, check your RSS feed to see if it contains the entire text of each story or just the first few lines of each story. To ensure the best GeoTagging possible, you should publish the full text of each story in your feed. Read our blog post about full text RSS feeds for more information. If you're not publishing the full text of your stories, go into your blog's feed settings and change them to publish the full text.

If you're already publishing the full text of your stories in your feed, check your stories for mentions of a city name, town name or neighborhood name. If you don't find any, that's why we're not GeoTagging your stories. In the future, make sure you include either a city, town, or neighborhood name in your posts to get them distributed on Outside.in.

If you do find a city, town, or neighborhood name in a recent post, go to Outside.in and search for that location name. Look for your story under the "Blog Posts" headline. If you don't see it, go to the bottom of the page and click "next" to see the next page of results. Repeat this process until you find your story. If you start to see stories that are older than the one you wrote, then the issue is a little more complicated and you should email us.

What can I do in my posts to help Outside.in automatically catch all the regions and places I write about?

  • When you write about a place, neighborhood or city, meantion it by its full name in your post.
  • Use GeoRSS to indicate a specific location that your post is about. We'll attach that point to your story, plus all the neighborhoods, cities, and other regions that contain that point. (See more about GeoRSS below.)

How do I use GeoRSS?

GeoRSS Namespaces

In the tag that sets the version of your RSS document, add the following

xmlns:georss="http://www.georss.org/georss" xmlns:geo="http://www.w3.org/2003/01/geo/wgs84_pos#"

For instance, update this tag:

<rss version="2.0">

To this:

<rss version="2.0" xmlns:georss="http://www.georss.org/georss" xmlns:geo="http://www.w3.org/2003/01/geo/wgs84_pos#">

Latitude/Longitude Pairs

There are two ways to indicate a latitude/longitude pair associated with a post in your story:

1. GeoPoint

Before the </item> tag of your post, include a <geo:Point> that contains one <geo:lat> value and one <geo:long> value as follows:

<geo:Point>
  <geo:lat>40.704110</geo:lat>
  <geo:long>-73.986781</geo:long>
</geo:Point>

To indicate multiple lat/lng pairs, repeat the entire phrase:

<geo:Point></br>
  <geo:lat>40.704110</geo:lat>
  <geo:long>-73.986781</geo:long>
</geo:Point>
<geo:Point>
  <geo:lat>40.75570967636433</geo:lat>
  <geo:long>-73.98639678955078</geo:long>
</geo:Point>

2. GeoRSS Point

You can also indicate latitude/longitude pairs by including the latitude and longitude separated by a single space within tags:

<georss:point>40.704110 -73.986781</georss:point>

What if I don't understand these instructions?

If you still have questions, ask us for help.

How do I sign in to Outside.in for Bloggers (formerly known as GeoToolkit)?

Once you register your site with Outside.in for Bloggers, there is no need to sign back in. We will automatically distribute your stories across our network and send traffic to you. Rest assured, we'll be in contact as soon as new tools and tips become available. Email us with questions, comments and requests.

How do I submit a blog?

Submit any site that publishes an RSS feed to Outside.in for Bloggers. Once we've crawled your feed, your stories will show up on Outside.in when users search for the neighborhoods, towns, cities and places that you mention in your posts. They may even appear on the Neighborhood News Pages of our major media partners in your area.

If you receive an error while trying to submit your feed or you don't receive the confirmation email from us saying that we've crawled your feed, check to make sure that your RSS feed is linked from an alternate tag in the header of your site.

Miscellaneous

How do I update something posted on the site?

If you see an error on Outside.in from a post in our system that was updated after we grabbed it, please send a note to editor@outside.in. We do not create any of the content that we feature on the site—it all comes in from external sources. As such, we do not censor or edit other publications' words, but please drop us a note if you see something that is inconsistent with the original publication and we'll do our best to update it.

How do I get my place or business listed on the site?

We're not a commercial listing site, but if you have a place to submit, send it our way: editor@outside.in. Be sure to include the proper name, address, city, state, and zip, and category of the place (restaurant, park, place of worship, etc).

Can I send Outside.in event listings?

Sorry, but we don't accept press releases or event listings. Our content comes from the great online publishers and blogs in our system, so we leave the events to them! However, if you have an RSS feed of events, send it to editor@outside.in. and we'll look into including it in the list of feeds we crawl for stories.

How do I submit a story?

For now, we've suspended the submit-a-story feature, but if you publish a blog or site, you can submit it at outside.in/geotoolkit. If you know of a great local site we should include, please send it our way: editor@outside.in.

How do I submit a place?

If you have a place to submit, let us know: editor@outside.in. Be sure to include the proper name, address, city, state, and zip, and category of the place (restaurant, park, place of worship, etc). If you notice an error in the name or address of a place on our site, please notify us at editor@outside.in. We'll change it as soon as possible, after double-checking that you're correct, of course!

What if I have a question that is not listed here?

Drop us a line with your question.

Legacy Features

As of September 29 2009, website features requiring an Outside.in user account including 'Neighbors' profile pages, discussions and Buzz Maps are no longer available.

Will my Neighbors page continue to be accessible by the public?

No. After September 29, 2009, no one will be able to view your Neighbor page.

Can I access or migrate my Outside.in user account and profile information?

No. After September 29, 2009, you will no longer be able to access your Outside.in user account.

Can I delete my Outside.in user account and profile information?

Yes. Email your username to contact@outside.in.

I signed up as a Blogger (via GeoToolkit) before September 2010, am I affected?

No. We have retained all GeoToolkit Blogger accounts and associated them with the Outside.in for Bloggers offering referenced above.

Does this affect Outside.in for Publishers?

No.