Community Magazine General content guidelines
These content guidelines apply to articles published in the Joomla Community Magazine. Most of the guidelines are common sense, but we list them here anyway.
- All articles must be in English.
- Use your own words. If you wish to use the words of somebody else, quote them, citing the source.
- Do not use AI to write your article for you. If your writing is terrible, either choose another volunteer job or let us help you become a better writer.
- Do not use any copyrighted material unless it's released under a free use license such as Creative Commons or compatible. If you use such copyrighted material, make sure to give proper credit/attribution.
- If you use copyrighted material that demands authorization from the author, make sure you have that authorization before you post.
- Do not propose/link to
- any site that contains adult content, sexually oriented material or might otherwise be considered offensive.
- any site that contains warez/copyrighted software/materials that can be downloaded illegally.
- Any post containing an inappropriate link will be rejected or removed and the author will receive a warning.
- We also don’t allow:
- commercial advertising, including advertising of any services and/or products not fully compliant with the GPL license.
- articles deemed to be self promotion, advertising, or spam. Making excessive, inappropriate and unnecessary references to your products and websites is considered self promotion.
- Any post containing advertising, self promotion or spam will be removed or rejected.
- The Joomla Community is centered on Joomla and its community, Open Source software and other internet- and website-related topics. It is not a place to promote ideological, religious, or political matters. All such discussions will be deleted.
- We’re a magazine by and for the Joomla Community. Articles insulting or attacking people in this community, Joomla Leadership, the Board of Open Source Matters, or Joomla in general, will be rejected. Constructive feedback is perfectly acceptable. If our editor thinks your article is crossing a line, they may ask you to rewrite (parts of) your article.
- As an author, you are responsible for the content of your articles.
- Your articles are considered a contribution to the Joomla Community Magazine; as a rule of thumb we don’t remove articles unless there’s a very good reason.
Information about the author should go in the author bio, not in the article itself.
Article structure
Make sure your article has an introduction (the part before ‘read more’) of at least 25 words and maximum 100 words. If there's no general intro, your editor will add one.
The number of words for your article as a whole can vary and depends on the subject. If your article is well-structured, with clear headings and paragraphs that are not too long, our readers will be perfectly capable of reading the whole article. Unless it has over 4000 words: then split it into two or more logical episodes (at JCM we love a good series).
Add headings
The intro and the first paragraph after the intro don’t get a heading, all others do. If you don’t add headings yourself (H2, no styling, no classes necessary), our editors will do this.
Add screenshots / illustrative images
A picture says more than a thousand words. So if you’re writing a how-to, make sure to illustrate it with screenshots (in English). An image can be used both to illustrate and is a natural break for long texts. See below for image requirements.
Add a conclusion
End with a conclusion in which you round it up: if you’ve put a question in the intro, for example, you can summarize the answer in your conclusion.
Editing process
Once you’ve submitted your article, one of our editors will check it. If the content in general is acceptable, they’ll start editing your article: they’ll remove typo’s, spelling and grammatical errors as well as additional formatting (see Styling guidelines below).
Content quality
At the Joomla Community Magazine, we want to provide valuable content. That is why our editors read every article and check if your content makes sense to them. When it doesn’t, they may:
- ask you to team up with someone who knows a lot about your topic
- ask you to rewrite it
- offer to work together with you on the article (for example in a Google doc)
- reject it
If a specific part of your article is unclear, they may ask you to rewrite that part, or they will provide a rewritten part of the article as a suggestion.
Possible reasons for rejection
Your article may get rejected:
- if it doesn't comply with the general guidelines
- if we have a similar article published already and yours is not telling us anything new
- if it's an attack on Joomla or its community
- if it promotes insecure practices that can harm people's website
- if you refuse to rewrite (parts of) it when asked by your editor
Styling guidelines
In a paper magazine, authors usually don’t get to style their articles themselves. Magazines have designers for this.
The Joomla Community Magazine works pretty much the same way: we need consistency throughout the whole website and our template provides this.
That means extra styling such as different fonts, Google Doc / Microsoft Word formatting or extra classes will be removed. You can safely use:
- Headings (H2 for all headings in the body text, H4 for subheadings)
- Bold
- Italic
- Code formatting (for code blocks)
If you add footnotes, link lists or a bibliography, use the default paragraph font so everyone can read them.
Images
You probably got this from the General content guidelines already: only use images that are royalty-free and otherwise free to use. Create them yourself if necessary. Size: maximum width of 1200 px. Use a tool like TinyPNG to reduce the file format.
If you want to use images of people, try to keep them neutral and search for images in which everyone could feel represented.
If you’ve interviewed someone, please ask them for an image of at least 500 x 500 px (for the cover image of your article) with one of the editors, through Mattermost or email.
Our designers create the cover image for each article.
You don’t even have to provide a source image (you can, but you don’t have to; if you have an image you’d like to be used in the cover, contact one of the editors).
Responding to comments
Happy comments
On the JCM, most comments come from people who are happy with what you wrote. Those are the easy ones. Say thank you, so the commenter knows you’ve read it.
Comments asking for help
Then we have the comments of people saying they tried to do what you explained in your article, didn't succeed and now need help. Or they want you to help them out for their specific situation. Think carefully about how you're going to respond to those. We’re a magazine, not a support forum. Check your article: are the instructions clear enough or do you need to make them clearer? Edit your article if necessary.
Unfriendly comments
Last category are the unfriendly comments. The ones that say your take on the topic is rubbish.
The ones going: yeah you say that but you don't mean it because you don't care.
Or: this will never work out.
Or: you don't have a clue what you're talking about.
You may be tempted to respond right away. Don't. Wait for a bit. If you feel you need to say anything so the commenter at least knows you’ve read it, keep it neutral: “Thanks, I’ll get back to you”.
After you’ve taken time to think (or cool down), try to find the objective points in the comment and respond to those. Ignore everything that's not factual. If the commenter has a point, change your article accordingly. Then thank the commenter and tell them which part you’ve changed: “Fair point, I’ve rewritten the second paragraph. Thanks.”
If a comment is rude and you feel attacked by it, don’t assume you have to accept it because you think the editors have allowed it. We may have overlooked words that seem perfectly neutral but are still harmful for you. Know you’re not alone. Report the comment and we’ll take action.
Making changes to your published article
When you discover your article has typos in it, or spelling or grammar errors, you can correct those yourself. The article will need to be approved by one of the editors again before your changes are visible.
Inform your editors about the changes: if you're on Mattermost, ping one of them: “hey, I found a typo in the first paragraph, I’ve corrected it, could you reapprove?”. That way they know what changed.
If you’ve had a comment stating parts of the article are incorrect or incomplete, you can change those parts. In that case, post a comment in which you thank the commenter and tell them you’ve changed the content as they suggested.
If it's a big change: add a note at the bottom (like this: “Edited: second paragraph was missing crucial information, thanks for pointing this out Anja”).
This is also good practice if you’ve changed the content because you had a useful insight or something.
Submitting your articles
Although you don't have to tell us in advance you’re working on an article, we really appreciate it if you do. Then we can add your article to the issue plan for that month and our designer can make a cover pic for it.
Here's more information about becoming an author: https://magazine.joomla.org/all-issues/january-2023/how-to-write-for-the-joomla-community-magazine.
And this article explains how to submit your article: https://magazine.joomla.org/all-issues/march-2023/submitting-your-articles-to-the-joomla-community-magazine.
Join the team or not?
As an author, you can contribute occasionally, no strings attached. You can also join the JCM Mattermost channel and still contribute occasionally. If you’ve written a substantial number of articles and you're doing so on a regular basis, the JCM Team Leader may ask you if you want to be part of the team. We have authors who are contributors and authors who are team members. The difference lies within the expectations: contributors write whenever they can, members write at least 10 articles per year. So while joining our Mattermost channel is a good start, it doesn't make you part of the team (yet).
Anything we can improve?
Do you think these guidelines can be improved? Please email us: