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LXer Story Submission HOWTO

Many of our readers find interesting stories on other sites that we might want to link to here at LXer. Others want to write insightful - or sometimes, inciteful - editorials, tutorials, and other articles to be published through LXer. Both are welcome.

To submit a story, log in and use the "Publish it here" link. Before you go "hog wild", though, please take a moment to read these instructions.

Two kinds of stories

  • A link to a story on another site. Most submissions are this kind. Fill in the headline, source, author, link and a short lead, and leave the body empty. Readers click through to the original.
  • Your own article, published on LXer. Leave the link empty, use "LXer" as the source, your name as the author, write a short lead, and put the article itself in the body.

The form, field by field

  • Headline - The story's headline, normally the one the original article uses. Up to 100 characters.
  • Source (required) - The publication or website hosting the article: LWN.net, The Register, a project's blog, and so on. For your own article, "LXer".
  • Author - The author's name, if known. For a press release, just put "Press Release".
  • Link to external article - The full web address of the article, starting with https://. Copy it from your browser's address bar after the page has loaded, so it points at the article itself and not at a search result or a tracking link. Leave it empty for an article published on LXer.
  • Lead (required) - A sentence or two, around 200 characters, that tells readers what the story is about and why it matters. The first paragraph of the article often works, or write your own. Please do not paste the whole article here (see Copyright below).
  • Body - Only for articles published on LXer. For a long article, break it up with sub-headings. For a link to another site, leave the body empty.
  • Categories - Two lists. Tick Groups to pick the projects or companies the story is about (Debian, KDE, Kernel, Red Hat, ...), and Story Type to pick what kind of story it is (News Story, Tutorial, Reviews, Security, ...). One or two of each is plenty; if nothing fits, leave it empty and the editors will choose.

Formatting with Markdown

The lead and body use Markdown, a plain-text way of formatting. The toolbar above each box puts in the marks for you, so you do not have to remember them. A quick example: 

## A sub-heading

Some **bold** and *italic* text, a command like `uname -r`,
and a link to the [Debian website](https://www.debian.org/).

- a bulleted list
- with two items

> A quotation.

Pressing Enter starts a new line; a blank line starts a new paragraph. Tables, footnotes, code blocks and LaTeX math ($E = mc^2$) work too.

Click the ? button on the toolbar, or the "Formatting help" link below the body, for a cheat sheet with examples of everything. It is also its own page: Markdown help.

A few things to know:

  • HTML and the old BBCode tags ([b], [url]) are not used any more: they are shown exactly as typed.
  • Pictures in members' submissions appear as links to the picture. The editors can place pictures in a story.

Preview, then Add news item

Each box has its own preview: the eye button on the toolbar shows how it will look, and the side-by-side button shows your text and the result as you type.

The Preview button below the form shows the whole story as it will appear on LXer, with the headline, source and lead, and lets you keep editing. It also checks that the lead and source are filled in: if one is missing, the "Add news item" button is hidden until you fill it in and preview again. Please preview your story, especially an original article, before clicking Add news item. After that the story is in our hands and you cannot edit it any more.

What happens next

Your story goes to the pending queue, where the editors review it. They may fix the headline, lead or categories, so it is worth getting them right yourself: our editing may not suit your taste. Approved stories go into the publishing queue and appear on the newswire in turn, about an hour apart, so a story can take a few hours to show up on the front page.

We are not required to publish a story just because you submitted it. Many submissions never make it to the newswire: duplicates of stories already on LXer, stories off topic for a Linux and open source site, and advertising are the most common reasons. Please look over the front page to make sure the story is not already there. If you have a question, please feel free to contact the editorial team.

Please do not copy and paste someone else's entire article into the lead or body. Republishing an article without permission is very bad, as in against the law. Provide a short lead and a link, and let the original site have its readers.

And don't forget the main thing - Have fun!

Add a story to the newswire