Write for us
TXP’s quality content is made possible with smart contributions from people like you. Writing for us will not only make you feel good about being a part of a great resource, but you’ll garner a lot of attention from doing so.
Our readership is international, and growing all the time. People who use Textpattern CMS are just some of them—employers, potential clients, other publishers looking for writers, and even conference organizers also read TXP. A contribution here could be your stepping-stone to bigger things. You never know.
Article topics
We’re always looking for great articles. We’ll consider any ideas you might have, but we recommend one of the following topic areas as a start.
Notable Textpattern users: There are a lot more people using Textpattern than what’s obvious in the support forum. Maybe you’re aware of someone who fits the bill and would like to profile or interview them. A talented designer? A writer? A curator? A publisher? An artist? A humanitarian? When you write about somebody else, everybody wins.
Work productivity: Independents should review their game plans on a regular basis. An important part of that process is keeping up to speed with how other other soloists do things. Do you know a tool (or suite of them) that facilitates a routine task, or a time/task-management tactic that helps under heavy workloads? Maybe you have a particular zen habit or office feng shui that keeps you in the right mind and mood. Or perhaps you know some winning techniques for client management, lead generation, or even balancing work and family. Whatever the case, and the possibilities are many, if it’s helping you succeed, maybe it will help others too.
Advanced Textpattern architecture (tutorials): Textpattern, and its rich tag library, often inspires a drive for code purity among veteran users. Tag masters weave amazing solutions to complex architecture challenges using core tags alone—no plugins or modifications (as few as possible, anyway). If you’re such a master and can detail your magic with clarity, end-to-end, we want those articles.
Content as a design and development consideration: It’s typical in open source communities to see conversation dominated by design and development topics. Much less attention is given to what is fundamentally more important—content and its related structure. We love contributions touching upon the handling of content in some way because if it wasn’t for content, there would be no such thing as content management systems, and probably not even the internet.
Your opinions, proposals, and insights: We’re in the open source web publishing systems market, and all that’s related to it. There’s a lot to have an opinion on, with or without context to Textpattern CMS. Is the market flooded with too many CMS options? Are AMP stack systems a dying breed? What should be the baseline core capabilities of any competitive open source system? What’s the right way to grow a community in today’s competition and technological climate? Who’s doing it right, and who’s not? And on and on and on… To be sure, this is not an invitation to slam or promote; it’s an opportunity to speak frankly (and smartly) about something other people may have feelings about too.
How to submit
First, make sure you understand the magazine’s copyright policy concerning contributed articles. We wouldn’t want any fallout.
Second, draft a short topic pitch of 300 words or less. Use your text editor of choice and give yourself some time to work on it so it’s ready when you are to copy and paste into the submission form. The point of the pitch is so we get a sense of what you want to write about without you having to write a whole bunch of stuff first.
When ready, use the ARTICLE IDEA SUBMISSION FORM.
Note: Only article ideas submitted via the form will be considered.
Editors will review submissions and one will get back to you with a decision at the earliest convenience. Until then, please wait patiently. If we think idea works, then we’ll have you start the draft and we’ll help guide it with editorial review. The target publish date will depend on how filled the editorial calendar is, and how quickly your article is written and edited to satisfaction.
What you get if we accept your article
If we publish your article, you’ll be given a user account and provided with your own profile in the People section of TXP. You can then update your profile at any time, and be in a good position to contribute more articles in the future. If you submit, and we eventually publish, a second article, you’ll get a free tee-shirt from the Textpattern Swag Machine.
We know that writing and editing good content isn’t easy. People who do it well should get some thing for their efforts, however humble the token. Cash for contributions is not yet possible. However, over time we hope to be able to give contributing authors some pocket cash for any articles we publish. This depends entirely on TXP being able to establish a “payout pot” from advertising efforts. When or if we’re able to do that in the future, this page will be revised to indicate it.
Thanks in advance for your interest in being a part of TXP and making it great.
