> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.snowdoughnut.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.
# Creating an article
> The process for taking an article from brief to published: pick the area, fill the brief, agree the outline, draft in the template, brief any creative, check it, publish it, and record it in the register with a review date.
Run an article from first brief to published, registered page. Confirm it belongs in the library, fill in the strategy, draft against an agreed outline, produce anything visual it needs, check it, publish it, and record it so it gets maintained.
This process uses the [**article brief**](/article-brief), the [**article writing template**](/article-writing-template), the [**article standards**](/article-standards), the [**article brief library**](/article-brief-library), and the [hero](/hero-article-register) or [supporting](/supporting-article-register) register.
## What you'll end up with
Three things that point at each other:
* A completed brief in the [**article brief library**](/article-brief-library) recording the question, the new information, the reader, the proof, and the outline.
* A published article, drafted in the [**article writing template**](/article-writing-template) and linked from the brief.
* A row in the [hero](/hero-article-register) or [supporting](/supporting-article-register) register with an owner, a last-updated date, and a next-review date.
One person, the [**owner**](/glossary#owner), is accountable for all three, and stays accountable after publication. That is the part that differs from most briefs here: an article is not finished when it ships, and the register row is what carries the ongoing commitment.
## Before you start
Confirm these before you open a brief:
* The article belongs to an area in the [**article library**](/article-library-overview). For a hero article, that means one of your named authority areas. For a supporting article, it means it has a home in an existing cluster.
* Nothing already covers this. Check both registers. An overlapping article usually means updating the existing one instead.
* You have someone who can answer the authority question. If nobody can say why we answer this better than anyone else, the brief will stall at its first section, which is the brief working correctly.
* The [**customer profile**](/customer-profile-library-overview) this article serves exists in the library.
## The process at a glance
Check the registers for overlap and confirm the area is one you can defend.
Start with the authority question and the new information. Everything else follows from those two.
Collect the statistics, quotes, and sources before drafting, not after.
Get the heading structure signed off before any body copy is written.
Save it to the article brief library, then give the writer the brief and the template.
Charts, diagrams, and original photography go through the creative brief process in parallel with drafting.
Write into the article writing template so the metadata is produced alongside the copy.
Edit against the brief, then run the pre-publish and GEO checklists.
Publish, add the inbound internal links, and paste the live URL into the brief.
Add the row, including the next review date, before you close the job.
## 1. Confirm the article belongs
Open the [hero](/hero-article-register) and [supporting](/supporting-article-register) registers and check nothing already covers this question. Overlapping articles compete with each other and split the internal links and authority that should have accumulated on one page. Where something close already exists, updating it is almost always the better move.
For a hero article, confirm the area is one of the authority areas your team has named, and that a slot is available. The hero set is capped on purpose. Adding a twenty-first hero article means retiring one, not stretching the cap.
## 2. Fill in the article brief
Copy the [**article brief**](/article-brief) and start with the two questions at the top: what this article answers better than anyone else, and what new information it carries that a reader could not get from a model directly.
Answer those before anything else. They determine whether the rest of the brief is worth filling in, and a brief that stalls on them has told you something useful about the topic.
Then work down: the reader, the questions being asked, the entities, the message, the proof, the outline, the links, the publishing plan, and the maintenance plan.
## 3. Gather the proof
Collect the statistics, quotes, and sources named in the brief before drafting starts.
Proof gathered after a draft exists is proof found to fit sentences that already exist, which is how an article ends up citing something that does not quite say what the sentence claims. Gathering first shapes what the article can honestly argue, and occasionally changes the argument.
Chase permissions now too. A testimonial without sign-off and a number nobody can source are both much cheaper to discover at this stage than during a final review.
## 4. Agree the outline
Get the heading structure agreed before body copy is written. At outline stage a structural disagreement is a rearrangement. At draft stage it is a rewrite.
Test each heading against the question it answers. A heading with no real question behind it usually will not stand on its own, which matters because sections are what an answer engine pulls out and quotes. The [**article standards**](/article-standards) hold the hierarchy rules.
## 5. File the brief and hand it over
Save the completed brief to the [**article brief library**](/article-brief-library) before writing starts, so the strategy is on record from the moment anyone begins.
Hand the writer the brief and a fresh copy of the [**article writing template**](/article-writing-template). Confirm they have the proof, the customer profile, the outline, and the [brand voice and tone](/brand-voice-and-tone) reference.
## 6. Brief any creative
Anything beyond text goes through the [**creative brief process**](/creative-brief-process) with its own brief and its own creator: charts, diagrams, illustration, original photography. Link each creative brief from the article brief's creative requirements section.
Start this in parallel with drafting rather than after it. A finished draft waiting on a chart nobody briefed is one of the more common reasons an article sits unpublished.
## 7. Draft in the template
The writer drafts into the [**article writing template**](/article-writing-template), which produces the copy and the publishing metadata together rather than leaving the metadata to be improvised at upload.
Two things get written last, once the article exists: the meta title and the meta description. Both are summaries, and a summary written before the thing it summarizes is a guess.
## 8. Review and check
Edit against the brief rather than against preference. The brief's question, message, and boundary are the standard, and a note that points to one of them is one a writer can act on.
Check the article delivers what the brief promised:
* It answers the primary question, in the opening, before the setup.
* The new information is actually in the piece, not implied.
* Every statistic and quote carries the source recorded in the brief.
* The structure matches the agreed outline, with one H1 and no skipped levels.
Then run the [**pre-publish checklist**](/article-pre-publish-checklist) and the [**GEO checklist**](/geo-checklist).
An article that drifted from its brief during drafting is not automatically wrong. Sometimes the writing found a better argument. Update the brief to match, rather than leaving two documents that disagree, and note why it changed.
## 9. Publish and link back
Publish the article, then do the two jobs that are easy to skip on launch day:
* Add the inbound internal links from the existing pages named in the brief. This is work on other pages, which is why it gets forgotten, and an article nothing points at is isolated regardless of quality.
* Paste the live URL into the brief, so the brief and the article point at each other.
## 10. Record it in the register
Add the article to the [hero](/hero-article-register) or [supporting](/supporting-article-register) register with its owner, published date, last-updated date, and next review date.
The register row is what makes the article maintained. An article that never gets a row will not appear in any review cycle, and nobody will notice until it has quietly stopped working.
## Exceptions
* **The article is a small update to an existing piece.** It does not need a new brief or a new register row. Update the article, change the last-updated date, and record what changed in the register's notes. The [article maintenance process](/article-maintenance-process) covers this.
* **The article is time-sensitive news.** A short news piece can skip the outline sign-off and most optional sections. It still gets a brief and a supporting-register row, so it can be retired later rather than sitting there indefinitely.
* **The article is abandoned mid-draft.** File the brief with a note on why it stopped. The research in it is usually worth keeping, and the reason it stalled is often the authority question.
## Related resources
* [**Article brief**](/article-brief) The fill-in workbook this process runs on.
* [**Article writing template**](/article-writing-template) Where the article is drafted.
* [**Article standards**](/article-standards) The defaults the article is checked against.
* [**Article maintenance process**](/article-maintenance-process) What happens after publication.
* [**Article library overview**](/article-library-overview) How areas and tiers are decided.
* [**Creative brief process**](/creative-brief-process) For any visual the article needs.