Creating Content on Merbunity.com
We all know it… Merb needs tutorials. So. Lets write some.
First thing that you’ll need to do to create tutorials (or screencasts) on merbunity.com is to signup for an account. Once you’ve done this, come back here and lets get cracking.
To get started, you need to go to the Tutorials link, and select new.
This will bring you to the new form.
Description Field
The detail field is a short description of what your tutorial is about. It shows up on the tutorials listing page, and also in the feeds. A quick introductory is all this needs to be, and when you look at the main tutorial, you can see from this tutorial the description takes a back seat.
Detail Field
This is the main body of your tutorial. You can put textile markup in here, along with raw html. Be careful to escape script tags if you need to in your tutorial since we scrub them out.
If you need to include images or similar skitch is a great tool that lets you embed images directly into another page.
You can keep coming back to your tutorial as long as you need to since it’ll stay a draft until your ready to move on.
Got Code To Include?
Easy. Wrap it in a code tag, with class=”html” or ruby or javascript or SQL or a number of others. For example:
class RubySample
def self.code
"Cool"
end
end
RubySample.code == "Cool" #=> true
Ok It’s Done. Now What?
Well, once your happy with your draft, click the publish button. It won’t show up immediately on the public index for tutorials if you just signed up, because you’re not yet a publisher. It’s gone into a pending state, where you can discuss it with people who are already publishers, and tweak it. Don’t worry about the comments on it at this stage. They’re only for when it’s pending. They won’t show up when it’s published.
When the publishers are happy, and you’re happy, the publisher can publish your tutorial :)
That’s it. It’s done.
I have to get a publisher to publish it for me?!!
Yes. This hopefully will keep the content on the site of a high quality. It gives the merbunity a chance to determine what it wants to see on the site, and gives you tips on what the merbunity expects. Don’t worry though, once you’ve released 3 tutorials or screencasts, you become a publisher and can help guide others with their contributions to the merbunity :)
Once you’re a publisher, you can publish news as well :)
What Can I Write a Tutorial About?
Anything as long as it’s relevant to the Merbunity (Merb Community). It could be on an ORM, a cool hack you’ve done on Merb, a gotcha, anything you like.
Well… I think that’s about it. What are you waiting for? You can help make Merb Great!
Comments
On May 11, 2008 at 10:44 uggedal says:
I would advice against using text-align: justify. Since browsers does not implement word hyphenating it tends to give very ugly results.
On May 11, 2008 at 10:50 hassox says:
Thanx for the heads up uggedal. I’m definitely need inspiration when it comes to all things graphical ;) I’ll get this in the next update.
On May 13, 2008 at 10:21 knowtheory says:
Nice hassox! i was looking at the empty tutorials page going “you know what this needs? A tutorial on creating tutorials” :P
On May 13, 2008 at 19:27 river says:
This seems like a cool site, and a very nifty idea. Congrats for starting this, guys!
(By the way, you used the wrong “your”/”you’re” multiple times in this meta-tutorial. Just a heads-up. :) )
On May 13, 2008 at 22:23 hassox says:
@river: Thanx for the heads up. I always seem to manage to bugger those up. Hopefully I’ve caught them all now :)
On July 03, 2008 at 02:29 jarkko says:
A couple more:
“a draft until your ready to move on.” “Well, once your happy with your draft,”
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