Welcome aboard!

I’m sure you know the basics if you’re here, but just in case: You should read the About page.

Okay. You’ve been added to the list by @mike_acton, now what do you do?

  • Make sure you have a user account and password for this site.
  • Make sure you are in the AltDevAuthors google group.
  • Set up a Gravatar.com account for the email address you are using to post. This is used to display your picture and show your bio information.

Please do a couple of things first – so we make sure the process goes smoothly:

  • Introduce yourself in the AltDevAuthors group.
  • At that point, you should be edited into the schedule. If you don’t see yourself on the schedule or if there are any other technical issues, just email the group (or macton@gmail.com)

FAQ:

Is it just for programmers?
Definitely not! No matter what your specialty or background is, if you’re one of us, come on in and share!

Do I need to be a #gamedev to participate?
Not strictly, no. We have some people that aren’t actually game developers, but that just share some interests with us.

How will I know when it’s my turn to post?
There’s a schedule.

How often would I be posting?
At the moment, the rate is 15 days. You should probably set up a reminder in your calendar! As we have more people, there will be more posts each day.

How do I post?
You log in to this site (there’s a link in the right panel) and post via the interface. You can use the visual editor, hand-craft html code via the HTML tab, or copy-paste from a google doc or your favourite HTML editor. Before you publish your article, consider using the Share a Draft link under the Posts section of the dashboard and emailing the link to altdevauthors@googlegroups.com for feedback.

What should I post about?
Post about whatever you want. It’s totally up to you. You can use what’s already there as a guideline or you can jump totally off the deep end and show us something different. It’ll all about you, man.

Some guiding principles to get you started:

  • Be personal! Use your own voice! We are not trying to be any kind of “definitive technical resource” here. The point is to share ideas, thoughts, feelings and ourselves with each other. Do not be afraid to express an opinion!
  • Be controversial! Don’t be afraid of saying something that people aren’t going to agree with. Controversy is interesting. It get’s people to think! Tell us what you believe.
  • Be inspiring! Share your hard earned lessons and bring let other people know how they can make their own world a better place too!
  • Teach! It’s easy to forget that the stuff you know isn’t common knowledge. No matter how big or small the topic, there’s someone out here that can benefit from your expertise – so let it shine

Is there a discussion group for contributors?
Yes! The #AltDev discussion group.

How do I get my author image to show up?
Create a gravatar account using the same email that your account is assigned to here. Configure a profile picture to go with your email address and make sure your biographical info is filled in. It’s automatic from there.

Note that you can use one gravatar account to manage profile pictures for more than one email address — your primary address setting for gravatar much match the email address registered for AltDevBlogADay.

Anything else?
I’d like each post to have content. Something which stands on it’s own. It’s perfectly okay to post a summary and link to your blog. But I’d like to make sure that if someone justs reads the summary they get something out of it. However, at this point the preferred method has been to cross-post the full content on this site and your own site. You definitely want to pimp your blog if you have one in your author bio though.

While I really like #iDevBlogADay (obviously), we’re not trying to do exactly the same thing. We are paving our own way and that’s totally cool.

For me this site is about two things:

  1. Getting us to post more. Anything that helps that is definitely a good thing. and
  2. Getting people to read the posts and (ideally) starting a conversation about them. Getting people to think and talk. Twitter’s been mostly the mechanism for that lately (and Facebook a little bit), so that’s where I’m concentrating on getting the ‘word out’ more about each post.

You might also like to read my thoughts on “17 Ways to Grow your Blog” for some more perspective on what’s important to me personally for #AltDevBlogADay writers.

Mike.

Notice to authors: Every author retains copyright to their own posts. However, if you are posting here you’re granting permission for me to post these articles indefinitely. You are also granting me permission to work with other sites to highlight some of our articles and potentially repost or summarize them. If you do NOT want your articles reposted on (any other) site, you need to let me know and I will exclude you specifically from those efforts.