CodeProject Technical Blog FAQ

Table of Contents

• How do I submit my blog on CodeProject?
• How to select which blog entries I want on CodeProject?
• I use blogspot, how do I modify my RSS feed?
• I use a wordpress.com blog, how do I manipulate my RSS feed?
• I use wordpress on my own registered domain, how do I manipulate my RSS feed?
• How does your RSS feed aggregation work?
• Why isn't my blog entry on CodeProject yet? The status says "Pending"
• Why is there content moderation at the CodeProject?
• Why was my technical blog entry deleted?
• How do I update my technical blog entry on CodeProject?
• Can I submit multiple blog feeds?
• Are formats other than RSS supported?
• How often does content get pulled down from my blog?
• Will I have as great an audience with blog articles as with regular articles?
• Do you support <content:encoded>?
• What is 'LastPolled' and how does it differ from 'LastUpdated'?
• How do I change my technical blog entry's location?

1. How do I submit my blog on CodeProject?

   From the article dropdown at the top of the page:

   

   Or click this link to our Add Your Technical Blog page.

   Put in the title of your blog, and then put URL to your blog's RSS feed and not the URL to your blog's home page. This feed should include the full content of your blog posts – not summaries.

2. How to select which blog entries I want on CodeProject?
    

   • Place the keyword CodeProject within the <category> element that is the direct child of <channel>. This marks all items within the channel as consumable.
   • Place the CodeProject keyword within the <category> element that is the direct child of an <item>. This marks just the one item as consumable.

   • Leverage the Rel-Tag Microformat. Check out the links if you've never heard of them. It's really simple. All you need to do is place an anchor tag somewhere in you blog article's content. E.g.:

     <a href="http://anyurl.com" rel="tag">CodeProject</a>

     If you don't want this link visible, just use a style to hide it (e.g., style="display:none") – we'll still pick it up.

     The URL in the anchor can be any URL you like but we thought it would be useful to point to your blog articles page here on CodeProject: http://www.codeproject.com/script/Articles/BlogFeedList.aspx?amid=<your member id>

   Note that there is a minimum length of 1000 words for blog entries (excluding HTML). Any entries under this length will not be consumed.

   Please do not submit blogs other than your own. If you have suggestions on blogs you would like seen here, please contact us. We can reach out to the author and ask for their permission.

3. I use blogspot, how do I modify my RSS feed?

   Because the default feed for blogspot is Atom 1.0, make sure you add "?alt=rss" to the end of your feed URL.

   The result will look like this: http://blogname.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss

4. I use a wordpress.com blog, how do I manipulate my RSS feed?

   Your RSS feed URL is: http://blogname.wordpress.com/feed/

   Once you are logged in to your wordpress account, go to your settings page.
   My Dashboard > Settings > Reading:
   http://sitename.wordpress.com/wp-admin/options-reading.php

   Make sure "Full text" is selected as shown below:

   

   And make sure that the number of "Syndication feeds show the most recent" number of posts will include your desired post.

   Then go to Categories section: My Dashboard > Posts > Categories:
   http://blogname.wordpress.com/wp-admin/categories.php

   and add "CodeProject" to the Category Name field and hit "Add Category." Now you can edit previous posts you would like added to CodeProject, and change their category to the "CodeProject".

5. I use wordpress on my own registered domain, how do I manipulate my RSS feed?

   One of our wonderful users, hjgode, created a Wordpress Plugin that you simply have to add to your site by following his instructions.

6. How does your RSS feed aggregation work?

   Every day, we will check your RSS feed and your specially marked entries will be published as articles. Just submit your blog's RSS feed, blog as normal, and we'll take care of the rest!

7. Why isn't my blog entry on CodeProject yet? The status says "Pending".

   Each new blog entry goes through an approval process from the CodeProject community. Our members who have been here longest and contributed most have the power to approve technical blog entries. As with articles, technical blog entries require a certain amount of detail so that users can learn the most from them. If your technical blog entry is unapproved and you want it approved faster, contact us at submit[at]codeproject.com.

8. Why is there content moderation at the CodeProject?

   Certain user-submitted content on the site is subject to moderation. The purpose of moderation is to stop the publication of obviously inappropriate material, plagiarised content or content that is not of sufficient quality to be published at that point.

   Moderation is available to members who have contributed enough to the community that the system considers them a good judge of what is and isn't acceptable. If you suddenly find moderation buttons available to you, then thank you - you've done a lot for the community and we would now like to give you the opportunity to do even more.

   If you have an author reputation of Silver or higher, you will have access to the moderation queue. It looks like this:

   

   From there you can hover over the checkbox to get the following dropdown:

   

   The way the moderation works is you have to receive five "Approve" items to be published, or five "Report / Needs help" items to reach a different article status. If five members Approve your blog entry, it will become live and available for all to see. If five members either "Report" or mark your blog entry as "Needs help", your article status will become "Closed" and you will receive an email notification indicating who closed the blog entry, why, and what to do:

   If you wish to revise and reopen your blog entry based on the feedback from these members, then simply go to [link to blog entry provided] and click the "Update my article" link. This will enable you to edit and update your blog entry and will re-open your blog entry for other members to enjoy.

   If an author has genuinely tried to provide a decent material, even if they may need some encouraging to improve it, then the item should be approved by moderators.

9. Why was my technical blog entry deleted?

   Technical blog entries must have similar content and format as articles. Technical blog entries that deviate too far from this will be removed. If you ever have any questions or concerns about this, feel free to contact us.

10. How do I update my technical blog entry?

    Sometimes blog authors want to make changes to their entries on CodeProject. To do this, you can click on the "Modify" link just under the title of the article.

    

11. Can I submit multiple blog feeds?

    Absolutely! But we ask that you only submit feeds that you have ownership of. If you have suggestions on blogs you would like seen here, please contact us. We can reach out to the author and ask for their permission.

12. Are formats other than RSS supported?

    Not at the moment but if there is demand for this, we will consider adding support.

13. How often does content get pulled down from my blog?

    Typically every 12 to 24 hours.

14. Will I have as great an audience with blog articles as with regular articles?

    Yes. Everywhere you currently see regular "hand-written" articles, Technical Blog articles will also be visible. Pages that list articles will have an option to filter out Technical Blog articles however. Though the default is to list all article types.

15. Do you support <content:encoded>?

    Yes. If we find this element in your feed, it will be taken as the article's content. Which means the <description> element will then be used only for the article description. If there is no <content:encoded> element, we use <description> as article description and content.

16. What is 'LastPolled' and how does it differ from 'LastUpdated'?

    The 'Last Polled' column indicates when your RSS feed was last polled for new content. A date/time here indicates that your feed URL is valid and was successfully read. Conversely, if you see 'Never', this means either your URL was not reachable or does not contain a valid RSS feed.

    The 'Last Updated' column indicates when new content last aggregated as CodeProject articles. If you see 'Never', this means no CodeProject articles have ever been created from your RSS feed.

17. How do I change my technical blog entry's location?

    By default, all blog entries automatically generate a series of tags and tags decide where a blog entry lives on CodeProject. So first, you will want to go and edit your article by hitting the Update icon:

    

    Then, you will want to edit the tags within your article. You may also use the Auto fill Tags.

    

    Currently, we have series of taxonomy topics: Artificial Intelligence, Internet of Things, DevOps, Containers, High Performance Computing, etc., many of which have a corresponding taxonomy parent tag, like artificial-intelligence, IoT, DevOps, containers, etc. Then, within these we have taxonomy children. So, for example, artificial-intelligence has the following taxonomy children: big-data, data-science, deep-learning, machine-learning, etc.

    When an article is created and give tags, where it sits in the taxonomy will depend on the tags chosen. There are several considerations that go into this decision and it is decided based on a hierarchy. What matters first and foremost is the taxonomy tag, the second thing that matters is the sort order, and then lastly then the length of the trail of the tags.

    Taxonomy Tag

    If you put in a tag that is a taxonomy tag, or associates with a taxonomy parent (like artificial-intelligence, IoT, DevOps, containers, etc.), this will be favoured greatly, and the article will likely be sorted into the corresponding Topic. For example, Articles / Artificial Intelligence

    Sort Order

    

    This is the order of how our taxonomy tags are listed. So, for example, you can go on the articles dropdown at the top of the page, hover over articles, then Browse Topics, this is the order in which taxonomy tags are valued. So if you have a taxonomy tag of artificial-intelligence, and another taxonomy tag, IoT, because Artificial Intelligence is higher in the sort order than Internet of Things, the article will be sorted into Articles / Artificial Intelligence

    Length of Trail

    One thing we want to do is consider is the length of a tag trail. The longer the tag trail, the better. So, for example, if you put a C#4 tag, and this is a child of C#, which is a member of the Programming Languages topic, this is a longer trail than say, an algorithm tag, which simply has JUST the General Programming layer above it. So a C#4 tag would be of a higher value.

    Bear in mind that this is an evolving this system. There are other factors that go into article placement considerations like Topic parents, where if a tag can’t be traced back through a taxonomy parent, it will walk through a topic parent.

    Let’s look at an example. Here is:

    Building a Database Application in Blazor - Part 1 - Project Structure and Framework.

    It has the following tags:
    C#, ASP.NET, HTML, Markdown, .NET-Core, Blazor

    C# is a language tag, and is in the Programming Languages topic, while ASP.NET, HTML, and Blazor are Web Development tags. Because Web Development is higher in the Topic Hierarchy than Programming Languages, it gets preference and the article is placed into Articles / Web Development / Blazor. If you look at the list of tags within the Web Development Topic, you see:

    • Blazor
    • CSS3
    • flask
    • HTML5
    • Kestrel
    • LESS
    • nginx
    • Node.js
    • React
    • SCSS
    • Spring
    • Vue.js
    • ASP.NET
    • CSS
    • Apache
    • HTML
    • IIS
    • XHTML

    Note that Blazor is at the top of this list. This is why the article is placed in Blazor, rather than Articles / Web Development / ASP.NET. .NET-Core and Markdown are not child tags that are associated with any particular topic, so in terms of placing the article, they are discounted.

    For a full list of Topics and corresponding child tags, please look at our Site Map. If you have any questions, problems, or Topic suggestions, please feel free to reach out to us on the Bugs and Suggestions forum, or send us an email at submit@codeproject.com.