Before you start ensure you have
- Created a GitHub account
- Signed the Particular Contributor License Agreement.
There are two approaches to contributing.
For simple changes the GitHub web UI should suffice.
- Find the page you want to edit on http://docs.particular.net/.
- Click the
Improve this doc. This will automatically fork the project so you can edit the file. - Make the changes you require. Ensure you verify your changes in the
Previewtab. - Add a description of your changes.
- Click
Propose File Changes.
For more complex changes you should fork and then submit a pull request. This is useful if you are proposing multiple file changes
- Fork on GitHub.
- Clone your fork locally.
- Work on your feature.
- Push the up to GitHub.
- Send a Pull Request on GitHub.
For more information see Collaborating on GitHub especially using GitHub pull requests.
Each document has a header. It is enclosed by --- and is defined in a YAML document.
The GitHub UI will correctly render YAML.
For example:
---
title: Auditing With NServiceBus
summary: 'Provides built-in message auditing for every endpoint.'
tags:
- Auditing
- Forwarding Messages
---
Required. Used for the web page title tag <head><title>, displayed in the page content, and displayed in search results.
Required. Used for the meta description tag (<meta name="description") and displaying on the search results.
Optional. Used to flag the article as being part of a group of articles.
Tags are rendered in the articles content with the full list of tags being rendered at http://docs.particular.net/tags. Untagged articles will be rendered here http://docs.particular.net/tags/untagged
Tags are interpreted in two ways.
- For inclusion of URLs:
- Tag are lower case
- Spaces are replaced with dashes (
-)
- For display purposes:
- Tags are lower case
- Dashes (
-) are replaced with dashes spaces
URL redirects are not currently implemented but will be included as part of the header.
The menu is a YAML text document stored at Content/menu.yaml.
The directory structure where a .md exists is used to derive the URL for that document.
So a file existing at Content\NServiceBus\Logging\NLog.md will have a resultant URL of http://docs.particular.net/NServiceBus/Logging/Nlog.
One exception to this rule is when a page is named Index.md. In this case the Index.md is omitted in the resultant URL and only the directory structure is used.
So a file existing at Content\NServiceBus\Logging\Index.md will have a resultant URL of http://docs.particular.net/NServiceBus/Logging.
Links to other documentation pages should be relative and contain the .md extension.
The .md allows links to work inside the GitHub web UI. The .md will be trimmed when they are finally rendered.
Given the case of editing a page located at \Content\NServiceBus\Page1.md:
To link to the file \Content\NServiceBus\Page2.md, use [Page 2 Text](Page2.md).
To link to the file \Content\ServiceControl\Page3.md, use [Page 3 Text](../ServiceControl/Page3.md).
Any text of the following form
Note: Some sample note text.
Will be rendered as
The text has to immediately follow NOTE:.
If multi-line markdown is required inside a note then use the following
<p class="alert alert-info">
NOTE:
* Point One
* Point Two
</p>
The site is rendered using GitHub Flavored Markdown
For editing markdown on your desktop (after cloning locally with Git) try MarkdownPad.
Ensure you enable GitHub Flavored Markdown (Offline) by going to
Tools > Options > Markdown > Markdown Processor > GitHub Flavored Markdown (Offline)
Or click in the bottom left no the M icon to "hot-switch"
Don't render YAML Front-Matter by going to
Tools > Options > Markdown > Markdown Settings
And checking Ignore YAML Front-matter
There is a some code located here https://github.com/Particular/docs.particular.net/tree/master/Snippets. All .cs, .xml and .config files in that directory are parsed for code snippets
Any code wrapped in a convention based comment will be picked up. The comment needs to start with startcode which is followed by the key.
// startcode ConfigureWith
var configure = Configure.With();
// endcode
Any code wrapped in a named C# region will pe picked up. The name of the region is used as the key.
#region ConfigureWith
var configure = Configure.With();
#endregion
The keyed snippets can then be used in any documentation .md file by adding the text <!-- import KEY -->.
For example
To configure the bus call
<!-- import ConfigureWith -->
The resulting markdown will be will be
To configure the bus call
```
var configure = Configure.With();
```
One addition to standard markdown is the auto creation of anchors for headings.
So if you have a heading like this:
## My Heading
it will be converted to this:
<h2>
<a name="my-heading"/>
My Heading
</h2>
Which means elsewhere in the page you can link to it with this:
[Goto My Heading](#My-Heading)
- Ticks are done with
✔✔ - Crosses are done with
✖✖
- Spell out numbers smaller than ten (not 2,3, etc.).
- Do not use "please".
- Use these:
- "click" (not "click on" or "press")
- "open" (not "open up")
- V3, V3.1 (not version 3, v.3, v3)
- Present tense (not future tense)
- you, NServiceBus (not "we")
- to (not "in order to")
- Next steps (not "Where to go from here?" or "Where to now?")
- cannot, you would, is not (not contractions such as can't, you'd, isn't)
- double click, right click (not double-click, right-click)
- you (not developers or users)
- backend (not back end)
- Use these proper nouns:
- Particular Software not Particular
- Visual Studio not visual studio
- NuGet not Nuget
- RavenDB not Raven DB
- Fluent not fluent
- PowerShell not powershell
- MVC 3 not Mvc3
- ASP.NET not Asp.Net
- Log4Net not log4net
- Intellisense not intellisense
- ServiceInsight not serviceInsight
- Windows Azure Service Bus not windows azure servicebus
- First Level Retries not First-Level-Retries