FAQ & Tutorials

You can focus on writing the best content. We'll jazz it up for you and spread the word about it.

Before I start

What is Zemanta?

Zemanta is an editorial assistance tool that uses sophisticated technology to analyze textual content and present writers with recommended related content. It operates "in the background" and does not require the writer to search for content – it automatically presents the related content to writers, and leaves the final editorial decision, as to whether to include that content, up to the writer. For a more technical explanation on how this is accomplished, please read an overview here.

The Zemanta Movable Type Plugin gives you simple point & click enrichment of your blog posts in real-time, while you type. It suggests tags, links, photos, related articles, and much more. These assets and attributes can make your blog posts more compelling and informative to your readers. For instance, the inclusion of a picture in a blog post will make it more compelling. Tagging your posts will make them more discoverable by search engines, but tagging can be a time consuming experience. Zemanta makes tagging a cinch. Writers can also add related articles - that appear at the end of posts - as a way to further inform readers and extend the conversation. Some writers also use the related articles as inspiration for their own blog posts.

With Zemanta by the author's side, the editorial process is much more efficient and the end product is enhanced for better readability and optimized for search engine discovery.

Why is Zemanta in Movable Type?

Six Apart and Zemanta Ltd. announced a strategic partnership to provide Movable Type users with the best content publishing experience. The features of the Zemanta editorial assistance tool are there to make your writing and editing experience better, easier, and faster. As with many features on the Movable Type platform, you can hide the Zemanta tool when you don’t need it (see instructions below).

While I'm using it

How do I hide the Zemanta tool while I am writing?

When you’re in edit mode, you can hide the Zemanta tool by clicking on the close button on the top of the sidebar frame.

When you want to enrich your blog post with images, videos, maps and related articles, just click on open and you will have instant access to point & click enrichment of your blog.

How do I disable Zemanta?

You can access options for enabling/disabling Zemanta via Display Options.

As with any of the Movable Type Display Options, you can simply deselect Zemanta there.

Alternatively if you are an administrator on your MovableType installation, you can disable Zemanta by going to System overview -> Plugins and disable the plugin there.

We're behind a firewall. Why am I getting this error message: "Can't connect to Zemanta API service"

For internal Movable Type deployments behind a firewall, the Zemanta functionality will not be available. This will not impact the operation of Movable Type. However, administrators may see the error message "Can't connect to Zemanta API service" in the Movable Type system log. To avoid seeing this error, the plug-in should be disabled by the administrator as described above.

How can I insert more than one image into my blog?

You can insert multiple images by dragging the image to your blog posts. See our tutorial on how to do this.

Where do you get images from?

They are selected from Wikimedia Commons, Flickr and various stock photo providers. Selection is based on contextual comparison of your text and the image's title, description and articles they were used in originally.

Where do related articles come from?

We index over 10000 top media sources and quality blogs of our users.

Can you link to my own pictures and posts?

Yes. You can add your Flickr account in Preferences and we'll recommend pictures from your account.

Can you link to my posts and my selection of blogs?

Yes, follow our tutorial on How to: Use Zemanta to recommend articles from your own blog(s)

Why do most of the links point to Wikipedia?

Placing semantically smart links is a hard problem. We decided to give you this tool and let you help us shape its future development. We will be suggesting links to many more sources in the future. Please share your expectations with us.

What's this reBlog button that appears in my blog?

reBlog allows your readers to quickly republish parts of your blog posts on their blogs, while at the same time giving you proper attribution with a backlink. See our reBlog tutorial for more details.

Personalization

Can I customize my settings and the content sources that are recommended to me?

Yes, there are personal preferences that you can customize. You can add your own RSS feeds (full article feeds only please) so that your own posts come up as related content. You may also add your Flickr account if you would like to use your own images more conveniently through the Zemanta tool.

Follow our tutorial on How to: Use Zemanta to recommend articles from your own blog(s).

Publishers that would like to limit the content recommendations to only their own content and provide a more uniform multi-user experience for their writers, should contact Zemanta regarding the Enterprise version of the service.

What are those little human icons on my images and articles?

This means that this content came from your personal sources, either your Flickr account or Friends and Blog feeds. You can setup more of the feeds in your Preferences./

What social networking services do you support?

Right now we support Facebook, MyBlogLog and Twitter for automatic friend aggregation, as well as Flickr for your images.

Please note that we can only recommend content that is actually entered into your friends' accounts. If your friends don't have a set homepage or use their real name on these services, we won't be able to recognize them by name.

Help, I can't log in to preferences!

Make sure that you've actually registered with Zemanta. The login in Preferences is not the same one as for your blog service and you need to register separately for the Zemanta service.

Under the hood

What languages do you support?

Right now we support only English, but if you blog in other languages and mention trademarks, universal words, and buzzwords Zemanta might still be useful.

How do you decide what is a good recommendation?

We analyze your post through our proprietary natural language processing and semantic algorithms, and statistically compare its contextual framework to our preindexed database of content.

How do I get my posts recommended to others?

You can send us a link and we'll consider it for inclusion. See our guidelines here: How to get your feed into Zemanta?

Are there any privacy issues I should be aware of?

Right now, we anonymously monitor the text you put into our demo for internal analysis, in order to make Zemanta's choices even more precise. We will not share this information with anyone else outside of our team.

Are you trying to replace the role of the blogger?

Hardly! We're providing the tools to make bloggers more successful at what they do, by accelerating and automating the work of gathering and filtering information. As a result , Zemanta makes your posts more compelling and informative--to keep more readers coming back.

What is an API key?

Think of it as an authentication token that allows us to know who and how people use our service. Every plug-in you install automatically gets one.

Anything else

Do you care about copyright at all?

Yes, very much. All content that we are recommending is copyright cleared - either clearly licensed as Creative Commons or approved by stock providers. When hovering over the image Zemanta prints out the license so user can decide if image license is appropriate for his intended use.

How can I get Zemanta to give me better recommendations?

Use proper spelling, grammar, and complete sentences. Zemanta works best if you just write naturally. It's also best to write a paragraph or so before expecting too much from the service. After you've composed most of your blog post, then watch as Zemanta automatically updates its recommendations for you. We also suggest that you write about a limited number of topics within the same article. And since every bit of feedback is valuable to us, please report any problems!

Can I remove the reBlog icon from posts?

You are under no obligation to keep it and can remove it if you wish. You can change its style under Preferences or even choose to hide it.

How do I uninstall Zemanta?

To uninstall Zemanta, please follow this uninstall guide.

Where do I get more help?

For questions or support, email support@zemanta.com or go to our Support Forums.

To learn more about Zemanta features and how to get the most out of your blog, visit our FAQ section, topic tutorials, or tips and examples from our power users.

Got more questions? Got feature requests? Drop in on the lively customer forums.

If you can’t find answers here or in the forums, you can always contact support and we’ll get back to you within a few hours.

FAQ & Tutorials

You can focus on writing the best content. We'll jazz it up for you and spread the word about it.

Before I start

While I'm using it

Personalization

Under the hood

Anything else

Before I start

While I'm using it

Personalization

Under the hood

Anything else

Got more questions? Got feature requests? Drop in on the lively customer forums.

Can’t find what you’re looking for?