Pull Quotes and Site Reviews

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Got a gold-star quote? Make it shine.

Ever written a sentence so fantastic that you think to yourself, “Gee, self, wouldn’t it be great if this sentence was in larger type and placed in juxtaposition with my article so as to entice readers and/or draw their attention to a key idea, while also visually interrupting large blocks of text and thereby combating reader fatigue?” (Or something like that.)

It’s called a pull quote—a crisp, concise statement or quotation harvested from your story and displayed prominently within the text. Pull quotes should be limited to one or two sentences. Make sure they’re not taken out of context, and use them sparingly for maximum punch.

Our SNO FLEX theme allows you to effortlessly create pull quotes with only a few clicks. You can even add photos to them! On your story editing page, follow these simple instructions:

  1. If you want an image in your pull quote, click on “Add Media.” Upload or select your image. Write down the number in the Photo ID field, then click the X to close. DON’T click “Insert into story.”
  2. In your story editing field, place your cursor where you want the pull quote to appear.
  3. Click the speech bubble icon in the toolbar. A series of four boxes will appear on your screen:
    1. Quote text–enter the text of your quote (no quotation marks).
    2. Speaker–enter the speaker’s name. Leave blank if not applicable.
    3. Quote alignment–type in “left,” “right,” or “center.” Story text will wrap around quotes placed to the left or right.
    4. Photo ID–if you wrote down a number in step 1, enter it here.
  4. That’s it! A line of shortcode will now appear in your story.

Spiff up your site. Clean up your categories. Polish your pages.
The new year brings the opportunity for a fresh start in 2015 — just in time for you to enter winter and contests. We know, life is not all about awards, but no one ever turns down a shiny certificate! At SNO, we just want to help you to get better.

As your partner in publishing online, the SNO Team will give it to you straight. Order a Site Review, and we’ll comb the site to give you tips to being a power user, insights to analytics, suggestions for your social media and more. Each section contains a list of action items, so a plan for improvement is already laid out.

A Site Review isn’t a critique. It’s not a contest, either. It’s a thorough report of all aspects of your site — those that are working well and those that might need a bit of improvement. So whether you’re entering a Pacemaker,Best of Show, a state contest or the 2015 SNO Distinguished Sites program, a SNO Site Review is going to be the best preparation.

Should you get a SNO Site Review? YES! says this Oregon adviser:
“By all means, make the investment. The analysis was money well spent. Commentary was supportive, corrective, and enormously helpful. Makes a difference when working with true professionals — colleagues, really — who understand all the joys and aches of working with what we hope are good journalists in the making.”
— David Bailey, Lincoln High School, Portland, Ore.

A Virginia adviser says the SNO Site Review process was valuable:

“It was incredibly detailed and helpful. It almost became a checklist of what we needed to do to improve. I loved the suggestions about content and coverage but was really appreciative of suggestions for working on the back end of the website.”
— Valerie Kibler, Harrisonburg High School adviser and 2010 Dow Jones News Fund National High School Journalism Teacher