Request a new blog

Community blog articles provide support and help for users and highlight the expertise of Community members. Blog articles are an effective way to help answer questions, give tips, and provide detailed guidance.

There are two types of blogs on our Community:

• Hosted blogs: these blogs are authored and published directly on our Community platform.
• Syndicated (or external) blogs: these blogs are hosted and published initially on another platform, and then syndicated to our Community.

All blogs, hosted or syndicated, must conform to the blog content guidelines in this article and our Community Code of Conduct at all times. Please review both sets of guidelines completely before submitting your request for a new blog.

Content guidelines

• Content must be written for end users, IT professionals, or developers of a product that is the focus of the Community.
• Content may be either non-technical or technical content about a product that is the focus of the Community.
• The blog is not to be used for marketing one’s business or services or promoting competing products.
• Licensing, branding, and pricing information is not allowed, and could result in your post and/or blog being disabled.
• The tone of the content must be professional, business-oriented, as opposed to issues of personal or non-business nature.
• Blog content should be presented in English and use good sentence structure with good spelling.
• The author confirms that all content published is not plagiarized or syndicated from another source. If using AI/ChatGPT to provide answers to forum questions, each answer must be checked for accuracy, and to confirm that it answers the question asked.

Request a new blog

You can request a new blog via the Community support form.

Note: please allow 5 business days for your request to be reviewed.

Gather the following information in advance to complete the form:

• Blog title: Be as specific and descriptive as possible, avoiding general titles such as "News & Highlights".
• Blog description: Give readers a brief idea of the topic and direction of articles in less than 250 characters- this text will appear on the blog page.
• Product area where you want your blog to appear: Select a product or an area of focus within the Community in which you would like your blog to belong. Viewers will still be able to find your blog in this area via filters or search.
• Sample blog articles: (For hosted blogs only) We ask that you include 3 writing samples that demonstrate your ability to write about the topic.
• Sample blog URL: (Optional for hosted blogs) Provide a URL to your current blog that contains the sample articles.
• Syndicated blog URL: (For syndicated blogs only) For syndicated blogs we need the RSS 2.0 feed URL which may (but not necessarily) look something like this: www.blog.com/topic/feed/

How to author a new hosted blog article.

Only a user designated as the blog author for the specific post can edit an existing published post.

Steps:

1. When logged in, go to any blog landing page.
2. Select the Create blog post button on the right side, above the search field.
3. The Blog dropdown will display the blogs where you are an author. Select the blog you want to create a post in.
4. Enter the title of the blog article.
5. The Synopsis field allows authors to define text to appear for a post on the blog landing page. If none is specified, the first few lines of the blog post will be shown.
6. Type or paste the content of your blog article in the Blog post area.
   • Note: If you are pasting your content from another web editor or Microsoft Word, it is recommended to use the Paste as plain text option (or Paste from Word option for Microsoft Word) and style the post using the editor in the Community to avoid problems with style or display.
   • You may add images to the body of the post using the Insert image button in the editor.
7. Published date allows you to select a date that you want the blog post to be published. If the date is today or earlier, the blog will be published immediately.
8. Select Allow commenting on this blog post if you want to allow other Community users to post comments to your blog article. This is not selected by default.
9. Select Publish blog ? if the post should be published or leave it unselected to save the post as a draft.
10. Select Next.
11. (Recommended) Upload a thumbnail image for your blog post. Select Choose File and upload a suitable image. Images should be a PNG or JPG file, with dimensions of 1,024 x 565 pixels for proper display. If you receive an error, try a smaller image.
    • If you selected Publish blog ? on the previous page, select either Save and publish or Save and preview to finish.
    • If you did not select Publish blog ? on the previous page, select Save and preview to finish.