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Contributing to the Meshtastic Blog

Purpose​

To foster growth and collaboration by sharing knowledge, updates, and innovations from the Meshtastic community.

Content Guidelines​

Acceptable Topics​

  • Focus on Meshtastic-related themes, such as tutorials, use cases, development updates, and technology deep dives.
  • Posts must be your original work. Prior content originally published elsewhere cannot be submitted, but posts may be republished elsewhere after being posted on Meshtastic's blog.
  • Posts should not duplicate a previously posted blog unless it is to update or revise the original content due to changes.

Unacceptable Topics​

  • Avoid self-promotion or commercial content.
  • Promoting the sale of hardware, cases, etc., or driving traffic to other websites is unacceptable.
  • Affiliate links are not allowed unless prior approval has been granted by the Meshtastic project.

Author Biography​

You may link to your personal work or website, but links to personal content can only be included in the appropriate author info, either in the front matter or the global authors file.

Content Rights​

Contributions are under the same CLA as Meshtastic’s other community contributions, aligning with the project’s open-source nature.

How to Submit a Post​

Preparation and Formatting​

Write your post using Markdown. Ensure the content is professional, informational, and accessible.

  • Save the file in .mdx format.
  • Name the file similar to the slug, ensuring it is concise but descriptive (e.g., a post with the slug recent-mqtt-broker-changes could use recent-mqtt-broker-changes.mdx).
  • Refer to the Docusaurus Blog Documentation for helpful tips and information about creating blogs.

Use the following best practices for accessibility (WCAG):

  • Use unique and descriptive titles.
  • Organize content with meaningful headings.
  • Use descriptive link text.
  • Provide meaningful alt text for images.
  • Keep your writing clear and concise.

Front Matter​

Your post must include the following front matter at the top:

---
title: The title of your blog post.
description: A concise summary of your blog post, typically displayed in previews or search results.
slug: A unique identifier for your blog post’s URL. It should be short, descriptive, and relevant.
authors: The author or authors of the blog post. This can reference the global authors file or include author information directly.
tags: A list of tags categorizing your post for easier discoverability.
date: The publication date in ISO format (e.g., `2024-10-23T13:00`).
hide_table_of_contents: Set to `false` to control the visibility of the table of contents.
image: The path to the image used for the social preview. Default is "/design/web/social-preview-1200x630.png". Custom images can be used but must include the Meshtastic logo (see below as to where these should be placed).
---

Images​

  • Optimize and compress images to the webp format using tools like Tinify/TinyPng or cwebp to improve load times.
  • Place any images used in your post in the static/img/blog folder.
  • Use concise filenames for images.

Submission​

  • Submit your post as a Pull Request to the meshtastic/meshtastic GitHub Repository.
  • If a folder for the current month does not exist in the blog directory, create one before adding your post.

Review Process​

  • Submissions are reviewed by project maintainers and other contributors.
  • The review ensures adherence to content guidelines, quality of information, and relevance to the community.

Frequency of Contributions​

Posting Limits​

  • Authors posting more than two posts per month may be asked to space out their contributions to allow greater diversity.

Tone and Length​

Expected Tone​

  • Contributions should be professional and informational.
  • The aim is to maintain high-quality, accessible writing that reflects the collaborative spirit of Meshtastic.

Length​

  • The post should be at least 500 to 700 words.
  • If a post approaches 3000 words, consider condensing the material or splitting it into multiple parts.
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