Write For Fedora Magazine, Please!

Fedora Magazine is always looking for content to publish from the Fedora Community as well as from Fedora Project. This content comes from the community members like you. I’d like to begin with how I got started writing for Fedora Magazine, highlighting the community interaction that led to it, and finishing with my thoughts on the results. Also, the content itself, what is it Fedora Magazine is looking for specifically? What steps does a community member need to take to contribute? What is the process that an article follows?

Contents hide

1 How I started writing for Fedora Magazine

2 What gets published?

3 Where to start?

4 What to expect from the Editors

5 What are you waiting for?

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How I started writing for Fedora Magazine

On the 30th of July, 2018 Fedora Magazine published an article Clement Verna wrote about using VS Code for Python projects on Fedora https://fedoramagazine.org/vscode-python-howto/. I took exception to using a MS IDE for developing on Fedora Linux. I noted that there were readily available FOSS alternatives without having to resort to sullying your Fedora Linux installation. Clement merely replied with “Well write an article for the magazine about one or all of them”. How can you argue with that logic? I turned to Adam Samalik to help getting set up as a writer for Fedora Magazine. Paul Frields, and Ben Cotton were there whenever I had, well, pretty much any question regarding how to do … whatever with an article or with WordPress. With this type of help and community support, you know it can’t go wrong.

So I wrote my first article for Fedora Magazine, and it was published on February 18, 2019 https://fedoramagazine.org/building-flatpak-apps-in-gnome-builder-on-fedora-silverblue/. Since that first post, I realized that because of the community members I was supported by, it only takes a bit of time and effort to write a fairly interesting article. It also, coincidentally, takes the same effort and time to write a not so interesting post. For instance, like this one I tried for Awk https://fedoramagazine.org/awk-utility-in-fedora/. I really should have left that for someone with better knowledge in daily use of Awk. Oh well live and learn.
Writing for Fedora Magazine led to me becoming an Editor as well. Both roles are very rewarding for me as ways to contribute to the project and community regularly. I strongly encourage other community members who may be hesitant about where they can contribute, to take a look at writing for Fedora Magazine as a way to begin your contribution journey. I can honestly guarantee you will learn something along the way and have a bit of fun doing it.

What gets published?

The Fedora Magazine content that does get published is the result of direct input of ideas from the community about topics of interest to the community, or portions of it anyways. When deciding on what content makes it onto the magazine site, Editors take a number of things into consideration. We begin with the Fedora Magazine general content guidelines found at https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/fedora-magazine.
In particular the following …

The content of the magazine varies, but mostly includes:

General Announcements / News
Tips on how to use software in Fedora
Ideas for cool apps to try
Ways to more effectively develop software using Fedora
DIY hardware projects you can power with Fedora
… And everything else related to Fedora in general!

And there is of course the Fedora discussion area at https://discussion.fedoraproject.org. This is where articles get proposed in the Magazine category, and the ideas get discussed openly in the community. This will often result in dynamic discussion around the article proposal, even after the article has published! Lastly, there is content that Fedora Magazine will never publish, like any article that would breach Fedora Communities Code of Conduct, or couldn’t comply with Fedora Magazines Terms and Conditions.

Where to start?

Those are some pretty good reasons to start writing for Fedora Magazine right? To get started, you need to get access. For that you need a Fedora Account gotten from https://accounts.fedoraproject.org/#register. Then, you need to sign into Fedora Magazine’s WordPress Dashboard using that Fedora Account. Fedora Magazine tracks the articles through the various workflow stages using the project Taiga, so you must sign in there with your Fedora Account so an Editor can grant you writer access to the Fedora Magazine project. Finally you go to the Fedora Discussion Forum, Fedora Magazine Topic and join the conversation.

For ideas, if you don’t have an article in mind already, a good strategy is to review the Article Spec column on the Fedora Magazine Taiga Board. The articles listed in that column are already approved. Don’t be afraid to ask if you find one that you wish to follow up with, but it is already assigned to someone else. This is a community effort. Articles in the Spec column are not actively being worked on. Maybe that writer would like some help to move the article along, or just doesn’t have the time right now.

What to expect from the Editors

US English is the grammar and spelling guideline for articles Fedora Magazine publishes. The assigned Editor would normally help you comply with these. But if they involve more than simple spelling or grammar changes, the Editor would contact the writer to work together in getting the article ready to publish. The magazine is very much a team effort.