guidelines.md

author	date	categories	collection	series	series-index	template
Team Koding	2014-08-04	koding	guide	contribute	1	series.toffee

Overview and Guidelines

When submitting guides to Koding University you must understand the document structure, as well as writing styles. Guides on Koding University should be formatted in a similar style and tone. This guide will outline some guideliness for guide submissions to adhere to.

Note that while these should be taken as best practices more than absolute law, submissions may be rejected if they deviate too far from the guidelines.

What is Koding University?

Koding University is an Open Source, statically generated site. Each document is stored as Markdown files found in the KDLearn Repository. The actual implementation code is hidden in the dotfile directory named .metalsmith. We'll go over this directory in the Previewing guide.

File Structure

By keeping the content in the main directory, and hiding the implementation, the file structure becomes content first. Meaning that at the root of the repo you see the actual content structure. You do not need to know how to compile the site, or any real implementation details, just write markdown!

As an example, lets look at the markdown file that you're reading now.
If you look at the repo, you'll see a file named contribute/guidelines.md. This file compiles to http://learn.koding.com/contribute/guidelines/index.html. Notice how the path contribute/guidelines is the same for the source and output html? Below are a few more examples.

• ./contribute/index.md becomes http://learn.koding.com/contribute/index.html
• ./guides/markdown.md becomes http://learn.koding.com/guides/markdown/index.html
• ./faq/one-more-step.md becomes http://learn.koding.com/faq/one-more-step/index.html
• ./guides/your-new-guide.md becomes http://learn.koding.com/guides/your-new-guide/index.html

See the pattern? Each file can be accessed from the same name on the website, minus the .md. ./foo.md becomes /foo on the website.

That means if you add a file, either markdown or image, it will be added to the site with the same location relative to the project root.
It's not hidden away in some obscure and complicated file structure, what you see in markdown is what shows up on the site. Content first.

Recommended URL Structure

Now that you understand the File Structure and how it correlates to the generated URL, we recommend that you adhere to the following naming conventions for your document URLs.

0. Guides should be within the kdlearn/guides directory.
1. Your filename should describe your guide in clear wording.
2. Be concise. Try not to have more than 5 words for a filename.
3. No special characters. Plain words and hyphens only. Example: foo-bar-baz.md.

Title and Description

A guide's title and description are also very important to the document.
These will be how people find your guide.

The title is your Markdown Header 1. It should be similar to the URL, concise, no more than 7 words.

The description is the first paragraph of your guide, directly following the Markdown Header (title). Explain what the guide is about, and what the technologies being explained are. Keep it to a single paragraph.

Headers are awesome, use them.

Headers are a great way to separate content sections. They stand out, can be linked to directly, and have levels built into them without nesting indentation.

These are preferred over ordered lists for larger sections. Ordered lists are great for small steps, headers are great for larger steps / instructions.

Don't forget, headers with levels (## Header1, ### Header 3, and so forth) should be used to group content just like you do with HTML's <h2>s and so forth. You can review Header Markdown here