Maintaining distroblog area on linux.com

This page documents how to update the distroblog area on the Linux.com site, and criteria for posts to include on that feed.

Background

The distroblog feed is itself supplied from a single RSS feed. Right now that RSS feed comes from http://fedoraldc.wordpress.com/ but in the future we will feed the distroblog from Fedora Insight.

Criteria

What type of post makes a good candidate for this feed? It should be something well written and generally positive in tone, that:

1. promotes a Fedora pre-release or final release,
2. promotes a specific feature or contribution that Fedora makes to free software,
3. discusses the philosophy of the Fedora Project and encourages people to participate in Fedora, or
4. provides useful news that has a significant impact on a broad range of users.

A combination of these factors makes a post even more significant. A post that discusses progress on a specific team is just as good as a post concerning the Fedora Project in general, provided that the information is explained well and encourages participation and contribution.

Procedure

Access rights

1. Get a WordPress.com account. It is free and of course the software running WordPress.com is free as well. This is a temporary measure and will not be required once we use Fedora Insight for this purpose.
2. Notify a current maintainer so that your new WordPress account can be added to the list of maintainers for the FedoraLDC WordPress blog. You will need to provide the email address used for your WordPress account.
3. Apply for membership to the fedoraldc group in FAS.
4. Ensure that you have uploaded a SSH public key. You can provide this key, typically saved on your computer as ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub, by editing your FAS account details. More information on making this key is found on this page.
   

   Short delay possible
   It can take up to an hour for your key to be activated for use on fedorapeople.org, so you may want to perform this step while waiting for your group membership to be approved.

Updating the feed

1. Login to your fedorapeople.org via SSH, then change directory as shown below:

   ssh fedorapeople.org
   cd ~pfrields/ldc-submitposts

2. Run the submission program:

   python submitposts.py

   You can approve specific posts based on their title.
3. Check the licensing on the original blog entry, to ensure it's OK for you to republish it. If you find a problem here, you may want to notify the author and ask about whether the post can be relicensed compatibly.
4. Posts are transmitted to the feeding blog as drafts. Edit the draft to include a note in the third person about the author. For example, if Katie Jones published the original blog entry, start the draft with the statement "Katie Jones writes:", and hyperlink the text to Katie's original blog posting. This way a trackback will be generated to Katie's blog, and she'll know it's been republished.
5. Change the status for the post to published. It is now part of the outgoing RSS feed, and will be included shortly on the distroblogs site.

Contact points
Feed entries are approved by the Linux Foundation's manager for the site. If you find any problem with feeds reaching the site within a day, notify bproffitt at linuxfoundation org, and feel free to cc the marketing list, or the fedoraldc FAS group.