Before you start ensure you have
- Created a GitHub account
- Signed the Particular Contributor License Agreement.
There are two approaches to contributing.
For simple changes the GitHub web UI should suffice.
- Find the page you want to edit on http://docs.particular.net/.
- Click the
Improve this doc
. This will automatically fork the project so you can edit the file. - Make the changes you require. Ensure you verify your changes in the
Preview
tab. - Add a description of your changes.
- Click
Propose File Changes
.
For more complex changes you should fork and then submit a pull request. This is useful if you are proposing multiple file changes
- Fork on GitHub.
- Clone your fork locally.
- Work on your feature.
- Push the up to GitHub.
- Send a Pull Request on GitHub.
For more information see Collaborating on GitHub especially using GitHub pull requests.
Each document has a header. It is enclosed by ---
and is defined in a YAML document.
The GitHub UI will correctly render YAML.
For example:
---
title: Auditing With NServiceBus
summary: 'Provides built-in message auditing for every endpoint.'
tags:
- Auditing
- Forwarding Messages
---
Required. Used for the web page title tag <head><title>
, displayed in the page content, and displayed in search results.
Required. Used for the meta description tag (<meta name="description"
) and displaying on the search results.
Optional. Used to flag the article as being part of a group of articles.
Tags are rendered in the articles content with the full list of tags being rendered at http://docs.particular.net/tags. Untagged articles will be rendered here http://docs.particular.net/Tags/untagged
Tags are interpreted in two ways.
- For inclusion of URLs:
- Tag are lower case
- Spaces are replaced with dashes (
-
)
- For display purposes:
- Tags are lower case
- Dashes (
-
) are replaced with dashes spaces
URL redirects are not currently implemented but will be included as part of the header.
The menu is a JSON text document stored at Content/menu.txt.
The directory structure where a .md
exists is used to derive the URL for that document.
So a file existing at Content\NServiceBus\Logging\NLog.md
will have a resultant URL of http://docs.particular.net/NServiceBus/Logging/Nlog
.
One exception to this rule is when a page is named Index.md
. In this case the Index.md
is omitted in the resultant URL and only the directory structure is used.
So a file existing at Content\NServiceBus\Logging\Index.md
will have a resultant URL of http://docs.particular.net/NServiceBus/Logging
.
Links to other documentation pages should be relative and contain the .md
extension.
The .md
allows links to work inside the GitHub web UI. The .md
will be trimmed when they are finally rendered.
Given the case of editing a page located at \Content\NServiceBus\Page1.md
:
To link to the file \Content\NServiceBus\Page2.md
, use [Page 2 Text](Page2.md)
.
To link to the file \Content\ServiceControl\Page3.md
, use [Page 3 Text](../ServiceControl/Page3.md)
.
The site is rendered using GitHub Flavoured Markdown
For editing markdown on your desktop using Git try the following.
Ensure you enable GitHub Flavoured Markdown by going to
Tools > Options > Markdown > Markdown Processor > GitHub Flavoured Markdown
Or click in the bottom left no the M
icon to "hot-switch"
Don't render YAML Front-Matter by going to
Tools > Options > Markdown > Markdown Settings
And checking Ignore YAML Front-matter
One addition to standard markdown is the auto creation of anchors for headings.
So if you have a heading like this:
## My Heading
it will be converted to this:
<h2>
<a name="my-heading"/>
My Heading
</h2>
Which means elsewhere in the page you can link to it with this:
[Goto My Heading](#My-Heading)
- Ticks are done with
✔
✔ - Crosses are done with
✖
✖
- Spell out numbers smaller than ten (not 2,3, etc.).
- Do not use "please".
- Do not add blank lines in code or between sections. (If a blank line is required, that usually means a heading or explanatory text is missing.)
- Use these:
- "click" (not "click on" or "press")
- "open" (not "open up")
- V3, V3.1 (not version 3, v.3, v3)
- NOTE: (Not "Note that")
- Present tense (not future tense)
- you, NServiceBus (not "we")
- to (not "in order to")
- Next steps (not "Where to go from here?" or "Where to now?")
- cannot, you would, is not (not contractions such as can't, you'd, isn't)
- double click, right click (not double-click, right-click)
- you (not developers or users)
- backend (not back end)
- Use these proper nouns:
- Particular software not Particular
- Particular Studio or Particular NServiceBus not Particular
- Visual Studio not visual studio
- NuGet not Nuget
- RavenDB not Raven DB
- Fluent not fluent
- PowerShell not powershell
- Fiddler not fiddler
- MVC 3 not Mvc3
- ASP.NET not Asp.Net
- Log4Net not log4net
- Intellisense not intellisense
- ServiceInsight not ServiceInsight
- Windows Azure Service Bus not windows azure servicebus
- First Level Retries not First-Level-Retries