Authors Wanted

If you can write clearly on any technical aspect of the web, we'd like to hear from you. Please read all of the following before submitting a proposal. We are looking for:

Short Articles

Introduction to a topic, with links to further resources (500 - 2000 words).

Surveys

Overview of a field with many pointers to resources.

Features

In-depth how-to tutorials, possibly in several parts (2000 - 2500 words).

We are vendor-neutral and W3C/standards biased - we prefer articles dealing with platform and browser-independent technologies, but will certainly make reasonable exceptions - e.g. a review of Netscape's latest release won't have much to say about Microsoft's..

Our focus is "the illustrated webmaster's encyclopedia" which means for example that we tend to prefer 'comprehensive' to 'in-depth' - if there are other web sites or pages adequately covering some relevant aspect then link to it rather than re-invent. Links can be made directly from within the article and summarised/extended with a "Resources.html" file.

There is a house style and everything goes through my ht preprocessor to slap on the ad banners, navbars, etc.

A quick tour of the site will reveal the main options (and bring you up to speed on what we already have). If you want something that appears to be outside that range, we'll see what we can do. But the main procedure is to write the simplest possible valid HTML (W3C4.0) and let us do the rest.

Please send us a proposal. We strongly prefer that you don't use an HTML editor - they generate horrible code which makes it more difficult for us to use. We prefer to work with straight text or simple HTML written by hand, rather than HTML editor output which tends to cause us problems. Also we might want to divide your article into a small number of separate pages, so it helps if you can either divide it yourself or indicate good logical breaks. The easiest way for us to pick it up is by http, i.e. as a page or pages from your server. We will perform the necessary HTML coding to fit your article into our house style. Your article should be very concise; do not explain detail that can be found elsewhere on this site or the web - link to it. We will almost certainly ask for changes in your article. Do not construe this as personal criticism. We reserve the right to not publish articles that do not in our opinion mesh well with The WDVL's style and philosophy. Our editorial discretion is final. Articles will be paid for after publication. Please send us the URL(s) of any samples of your work when applying. Please do not apply if you have less than one year's solid web development experience. Contact us with your proposal. We are looking forward to working with you!

Topics *|* Guidelines