So You Want to be a Blogger?

F5 corporate and community blogs live on the DevCentral site and provide a great way to get the message out about what our products do, how they can be used and great information about the industry. DevCentral blogs are hosted in multiple languages and span a variety of topic areas. Some pieces are more personal thought or insight focused and others are much more technical and F5 specific. What you decided to write is up to you and should show your voice and personality...it is a blog after all. While many topics are blog worthy make sure to adhere to the following basic guidelines and principles:

• Make sure your information is publicly released before publishing your blog post.

• If your blog is focused on an F5 customer or partner technology do your best to stay positive – sometimes it is better to just not say anything at all.

• If readers make comments on your blog make sure to respond – this helps the conversation flow a bit better☺.

• If you are taking the time to begin blogging make sure you have the time to keep it fresh. We recommend blog posts every other week if possible. If you aren’t planning on blogging 2-3 / month going forward, maybe a guest blog post on someone else’s blog is warranted

As a member of the DevCentral community you are encouraged to provide many types of content that can be featured on your blog or as standalone contributions. Those other areas are: videos, interviews, events, forums, TechTips and wiki contributions.

How to get a blog account

Getting a blog account is quite easy just fill out this form on DevCentral located here:

https://devcentral.f5.com/s/blogs/blogrequest.aspx

As part of this form you will notice that you will need to accept the F5 Blog policy, update parts of your DevCentral profile and also find out more about the requirements and standards for blogging on DevCentral.

Once you have filled out the request a member of the DevCentral team will get back to you within 2 business days. If at any time your blog is inactive for 6 months or more we may deactivate your blog so please make sure to contribute regularly (we suggest at least monthly). Blogging is much like a conversation with a group of people – if you go silent for a long while people will forget they were having a conversation and may not come back. Moral of the story is that quality and quantity are equally vital elements of blogging. If you do not intend to blog regularly you may think about some of the other contribution options to get your word out. If you are concerned about frequency feel free to talk to a member of the devcentral team about alternative publishing options.

Once your blog account is set up it is time to do a bit of setup on your client.