Raiden's Realm Article Submission Guidelines
(see bottom of page for info on where to submit your article)

Updated: 5/21/2008

What We Are:

Raiden's Realm is a community tech site dedicated to bringing you a wide range of helpful and informative articles and news on Linux, BSD and a wide range of Open Source Applications available today.  We're not your typical Open Source tech site.  We are a community site filled with people who love Linux, BSD, Open Source, Gaming and so much more.  But as with any community, an element of sharing must take place.  But unlike other sites, we do more than just collect together a selected few people and have them write articles for us.  Instead we look to our community of members for articles, suggestions, reviews, tip guides, and more.  This allows each member the opportunity to give back to the community.

How you can contribute:

If you'd like to contribute, please follow these guidelines below.   We look forward to hearing from you and posting your articles.  If you have any suggestions about a submission you'd like to make, please feel free to ask.  We're flexible.  :)  As for what you can submit, there are several basic areas in which you can submit things for.  Please look at each group and follow the suggested guidelines as best you can.  If you can't follow them verbatim, please get as close as you can..

News:

We're always interesting in receiving new and interesting news about a variety of subjects including the latest in technology, media, Linux, BSD, FOSS, DRM, hardware and software, games and a wide variety of other topics focusing on Open Source and Linux/BSD.  If you have something that would be of interest, please feel free to share it with us.  News articles should be brief and include a summary of the news item and links to more information if applicable. 

We're also accepting full page news stories as well.  Please be sure that when submitting a full page news article that you follow the article and editorial guidlines.  Thanks.

Linux, BSD or Open Source Application Reviews:

When submitting your article by email, it should reference the name of the Linux distribution or program being written about, a link to the homepage or project page, and your review or article.  Reviews should be no more than 20 pages.  When including pictures, please either link them in the article if using HTML, or include references in the article for where they are to be placed.  This makes it easier on our editorial staff when formatting the articles to the page.  If you would like to pre-format your images, thumbnails and text, our editorial column wideth is 595 pixels.   Also, if you include images in your article, don't forget to send those along too.   They may be sent individidually, or in a zip or rar file.  Please, no cross posted articles.  We allowed it for a while, but then it became a problem, so only original articles by you that have not already been posted somewhere else are allowed.   If you want to repost your article somewhere else after it's posted here, that's fine.  But make sure we get to post it first to alay any possible problems or confusion that crossposting might cause.

Tutorials and Help Guides:

For the Tutorials and Help Guides section we allow a lot of latitude in what you can produce since the variety of problems vary across platforms, programs and situations.   Guides can be of any length and can either go in great depth about a given subject such as buying Linux compatible computer parts, fixing a hardware issue or anything else tech related, or they can be very simplistic and short.  They can also be summarized help guides or tutorials that gives a short overview of how to solve a given problem or that teaches someone how to do something they otherwise wouldn't be able to do.  You may also post quick reference guides and tip sheets.  Current examples include our Testing Your Mail Server Manually and IP Subnet Reference Table articles.  If sources are referenced in your article, please include all appropriate annotations, links and citations where applicable.  Failure to do so, or evidence of plagerism will result in your article being rejected.

Hardware and Device Reviews:

Hardware and Device reviews work just like regular articles and reviews.  The biggest difference is that you're working with a piece of hardware rather than a piece of software.  A good recommendation is to include benchmarks where applicable, details on how this device can benefit the end user, it's features, the OEM or manufacturer, and more.  Also, all hardware and device reviews on our site must be Linux or BSD related.  If it doesn't either use Linux or BSD as its IOS, or desktop operating system, or doesn't directly interact with Linux or BSD, then it's not something we'll look at, because all of our hardware reviews must be Linux or BSD focused.  For an example of some articles like this, look at our latest nine hardware reviews here in the hardware section.   Ignore the other articles before them.  They came before this new rule went into effect.

Now, here's an example of what's linux focused or interactive hardware, and what's not.   A video card, or an MP3 player would both qualify.  This is because the video card directly interacts with Linux, and the mp3 player is powered by it.  But ram and cpu would not be *typically*, because they simply process data and don't directly interact.  There are exceptions however, such as performance of a particular ram chip or CPU in Linux vs say Windows or MacOS.  That kind of article would be completely acceptible.  In other words, if you can somehow connect the device with Linux or BSD, then it's a totally acceptible article to us and we'd be glad to have it.  :)

General Editorials:

General Editorials covers a wide variety of subjects including computer and peripheral modifications, overview articles in things such as Email, Usenet, Networking and more.   Editorials can also be written on current concepts, technology, protocols, or other items in the tech industry that people should know about.  Some examples include our Computer Security Paradox, Linux Supporter and Linux Skills articles.

Submission Requirements:

All articles should be submitted in either Word2000, OpenOffice Document, ODF, html or text file format or as part of the body of your email.  Articles are subject to editor review before posting and re-editing may be requested.  Plagiarism is strictly forbidden and will result in articles being immediately rejected if it is found that you are plagiarizing someone else.  If the article is yours and was already posted on another site, it will be rejected.  Due to issues we've had with cross posted articles, we now only accept unique articles that have not already been posted somewhere else.  If you would like to post your article somewhere else after it's posted on the realm, feel free to, but please wait at least 7 days before doing so.  Thanks for your understanding in this.  Articles that are found to not be in the best interests of the community will also be rejected.  So no articles about warez, hacking or any other illegal or unethical practices please.

When submitting your article, please include the following information in your email about yourself:

• Name
• Email address others can contact you at.  (This can be something other than your normal email address if you're worried about spam.)

You may also submit information regarding any of these optional elements about yourself to be included in your site profile if you'd like.  They are as follows:

• Image of yourself or your favorite avatar if you prefer not to use a real picture of yourself.
• Internet Nickname
• Birthday
• Occupation
• Languages Spoken
• Hobbies
• Current Goals
• Future Goals
• Items of Interest
• Tech Skills
• A little blurb about yourself.

When submitting pictures with an article, please submit in either JPG, GIF or PNG format only.  You may submit your article to us via email to writing@raiden.net and all submissions should include the words "Article Submission by (you name)" and the title of your article.  In most cases we'll respond to you within 3-5 days with our thoughts, any suggestions we may have or any requests for further information.   If you do not hear from us with at least an acknowledgement that we received your article, please contact us again as your article may have gotten eaten by our spam filter.

We look forward to hearing from you and receiving your articles.  If we publish your article, full credit will be given to you for everything you've contributed.   More information on article can be found in this forum thread. If you have further questions, please feel free to email us and ask. We're always willing to help answer any of your questions.

- Steve Lake
Owner, Raiden's Realm
www.raiden.net

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