We Started a Blog!

Question

A Blog!?

Back in December we talked about starting a community blog, much like you'll find on some other StackExchange sites. We have now officially launched PiVersify on tumblr.

Our goal is to publish community written articles on topics that frequently come up on this site, or are a demonstration of cool projects we've done with Raspberry Pis. Ideally, there'll be an article every weekend, but we may publish a little more if we get a large amount of community contributions.

Who's running it?

Primarily, me. I, Jacobm001, am the Editor in Chief as @SteveRobillard likes to refer to it. Additionally, the three moderators, @SteveRobillard, @Goldilocks, and @Ghanima will help with curating content.

What are you writing about?

The first post discusses some of the basic pitfalls people run into while installing software on the Raspberry Pi. After that, I'm planning on starting a series on Tmux. The series will include things like installing software from source, scripting tmux, and more. :)

How do I contribute?

We've created a github repository to store articles that will be published. There's currently two folders, draft, and master. Files that are in master are published, or have been queued for publishing. Those in the draft branch, are well, drafts.

To contribute, simply fork the draft branch, write your content, and submit a pull request. We'll review the submission and post it when appropriate.

For those of you who'd rather not use github (why?): send an email to [email protected]; please use an easily accessible file format, e.g. plain text, rtf, or github flavoured md.

What can I write about?

Anything that's related to a Raspberry Pi! Unlike our main site, we're going to be much less restrictive about topics that are exclusive to the Raspberry Pi. If you have a tutorial that you think would be a good lesson for Linux beginners, that's great!

Suggested topics:

• Linux tutorials
• Configuring operating systems
• Your awesome projects
• Something else?

A Bonus for Community Contributors

You may remember the site's Christmas Giveaway. @Ghanima won a Pi, but has decided he would rather contribute it to the blog. So, it's been decided that it will be awarded to the community member who contributes the most popular article in the next 3 months.

Answer 1

How to submit an article to the blog

1. If you haven't already, go to Github and create an account
2. Download Github Desktop from here and install it. Follow all on-screen instructions to sign in etc. Keep it open in the background.
3. Go to the repository here and click the 'fork' button in the top right:

4. When the repository is 'forked' to your account, click the 'clone' button to download it to your computer

5. When it prompts you where to save the project, leave it as the default (My Documents\Github\Repo-name) or put it somewhere else. Press OK and wait for it to clone.

6. Navigate to the repository and make your changes (i.e. copy paste your article, written in markdown, into the root of the project with the filename in the format YYYY-MM-DD_post_title.md)

7. In Github Desktop, use the dropdown in the top left to switch to the drafts branch. (switch to the drafts branch rather than PiVersify/drafts, as this is your forked copy)

8. Click the 'changes' tab at the top of the screen. Add appropriate descriptions etc, then click the 'Commit to drafts' button.

9. Sync by pressing the 'Sync' button.

10. Make further changes, edit, proofread, etc, and create a new commit each time. When you are finished, make a final sync.

11. Press the 'pull request' button in the top right. Switch the branch to be merged to PiVersify/drafts. Add an appropriate title and description.

12. Wait for your request to be accepted! *

---

^{* Your request is not guaranteed to be accepted}

^{** I haven't actually tested this personally, but it should work. Please feel free to make any changes.}

Answer 2

I've just noticed a couple of problems with the blog:

• Inline code (and possibly code blocks) do not have any styling, and hence show up as normal text. It would probably be a good idea to implement this styling, given our subject.

• Level 3 headings (<h3>) and possibly smaller headings format as normal text

---

Also, I may be nitpicking a bit, but would it be possible to write the blog post filenames in the format:

YYYY-MM-DD_post_title.md

That way the files will be sorted in Github in order of publishing date, and hence will be easier to match up with the posts on the blog itself. Alternitavely there could be a separate folder for each month.

Answer 3

This is very interesting, and I have read most of the Blog posts.

How is a normal raspberrypi.stackexchange.com user supposed to find it?

There is no link on the web page or Tour indicating how to get there. I am not sure myself, I seem to have stumbled over it.

Answer 4

"draft" and "master" are git branches, not directories (I hate the term "folder", it reeks of Windows)