Guest Writing / Contribute

We love guest authors on AppCode! It’s always a win-win-win-win! Good for our readers. Good for you the writer. Good for our community. And bonus: good for our website.

We want you to keep a few things in mind

  1. Write the article you wish you found when you Googled for it.
  2. Deliver a sensation of lived experience and professional acumen.

Would you be happy to land on this article? Are you speaking to me, developer-to-developer, from experience?

Possible Topics

We prefer if you are motivated because you have something you very much want to share. And, that you have deep knowledge on this topic. You are excited about it. You’re ready to tell people about it.

If that’s all true, then exactly what you write about can be within a wide range of topics as long as it’s about the web.

We prefer pitches that are referential and instructional rather than editorial. More “How to reverse and restart CSS animations” with lots of demos, videos, and code samples and fewer “Design tools make us lazy” with only personal opinions.

  • Think utility: How-tos. Let me teach you something. I just learned this cool trick, now let me teach you.
  • Think small: Your story does not have to be lengthy but it does need to be written in an approachable tone and be handy, helpful, practical, and/or pragmatic. We’d much prefer a short and to-the-point article over a sprawling novel.
  • How to use web components
  • What are web components
  • Where can you go to learn about web components
  • The advantages of using a web component framework vs no framework
  • Reversing CSS animations and starting over
  • Reducing browser rendering times
  • Creating shapes out of CSS
  • Creating parallax scrolling effects
  • Complex CSS animations
  • CSS animation frameworks
  • HTML pseudo elements
  • Using the Shadow dom
  • Animations using CSS without JavaScript
  • What are CSS WebKit Properties
  • Much much more, you get the idea!
  • Explaining Atomic CSS in depth

Audience

The audience of AppCode is front-end web designers and developers of all skill levels. We welcome guest posts at any skill level. We can help set the expectations for the reader early in the article itself.

  1. Beginner-level articles have the highest bar. Topical 101 articles are easy to find and have a tendency to be not-so-great. We’d rather not add to that, but instead, if we do a beginner article, make it better than anything else on the internet.
  2. Intermediate-level articles are the bread and butter of AppCode. It assumes some basic knowledge of code editors, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
  3. Advanced-level articles are great, so long as they are approachable by someone at the intermediate level trying to level up. These articles achieve a high level of clarity, step-by-step instructions, lots of reference material, working/annotated demos, minimal jargon, and lots of plain language… that kind of thing.

The Vibe (Voice & Tone)

Friendly. Authoritative. Welcoming. We’re all in this together. Flexible (non-dogmatic in expression of ideas). Minimal jargon and lots of plain language. Reverent, thankful, and grateful for the reader’s time and attention. Make the article interesting and useful.

Payment and Trade

We pay! We will compensate you for a published article.

Examples

Authors have their own dedicated page on the site.

Workflow

We use Dropbox Paper as a collaborative writing environment. We find it comfortable to write in and easy to share using Markdown-ish markup that works nicely into our editing/publishing flow. That said, if you have a strong preference for how you write, we can figure out a way to work with just about whatever. Bonus points if your concept is so good we change our workflow to yours.

Ultimately, articles are published in WordPress-y HTML. Typically, we handle the final formatting into the HTML format for you. So don’t worry about that part.

Always good: a healthy amount of images, code examples, and demos. Video when appropriate. Our readers love posts with lots of demonstrative visuals.

Generally, the concept-to-editing workflow goes a little something like:

  1. You pitch the concept through our form.
  2. We approve your idea and send you an email.
  3. You write an outline or something outline-like.
  4. We approve your outline.
  5. You write the article.
  6. We edit your article for technical stuff, tone, grammar and spelling.
  7. We publish.
  8. We send you money.

Like any process, it’s malleable and we make adjustments to fit each story.

Item #2, the pitch, should be something like this:

  • Potential headline, concept
  • Who is this for?
  • What would someone be searching for on the internet and be glad they found this?
  • A paragraph or two (or an outline) introducing the idea and plan. Or a URL to a Dropbox paper that contains your rough outline.

Remember, the things we want the most are strong reference material. You’re a developer, you know exactly what you want when you land on an article. Create that. Good code examples, live demos, and images illustrating concepts.

How To Pitch Your Idea

We now ask everyone to perform these questions and send it back on the job platform you saw this job. Thank you in advance for taking the time. We look forward to reading each of your ideas.

  • Potential headline, concept
  • Who is this for?
  • What would someone be searching for on the internet and be glad they found this?
  • A paragraph or two (or an outline) introducing the idea and plan. Or a URL to a Dropbox paper that contains your rough outline.

Write this and add it to your proposal to be considered for an award for the job.

Pitch form

You’ll need to write the article to the best of your ability upfront. It doesn’t have to be perfect. There will be an editing process that happens after that, but we need to get a sense of your writing style, concept, and professional acumen right up front, so we can decide if we should proceed with it.

Note: If you don’t have the time to write an article that may not be published on AppCode, we totally understand, but we can’t commit to publishing anything without seeing a complete draft. If you’d like to send in a shorter pitch instead, to get a signal on if the idea is worth pursuing, that’s fine, but no publishing decision will be made until a complete draft is in.

We ask everyone to fill out this form to guest post on AppCode, whether you have written for us before or are a new writer. We will never share your private information without your expressed permission. Thank you in advance for taking the time.

Your Complete Article

We require that you take a stab at writing the article upfront. There will be an editing process as well, so it doesn’t have to be perfect, but please give it a good attempt so we can get a very clear idea of your article idea.