Getting Started

Welcome to DevCentral, an F5 Community! DevCentral is an online community of technical peers dedicated to learning, exchanging ideas, and solving problems - together. From creating a free account, to posting, and everything between, here are some steps to get you started!

Register for your free user account

Click on the user icon:

 

That will take you to the log-in page. Click on “Sign up” 

 

Clicking on “Sign up” will take you to registration page:

 

Once you’ve filled this out, you will be taken to a confirmation page

 

You must click the link in the confirmation email in order to activate your new account. Doing so will bring you back to the site, so you can choose your username and agree to the EULA:

 

Build your profile to get customized articles on your home page

Click on your profile avatar in the top right of the page and go to your Settings:

Personal

  • Change your username at any time, update your email and email preferences

Preferences

  • Preference Options allows you to select your time zone and language
  • Display – want to see things in a linear or threaded way? Change how many topics you see per page? Here’s where to customize.
  • General – decide how you want read posts to be marked, and if you want topics shown by original posting date or most recent
  • Linear Layout
  • Threaded Layout
  • Home Page
  • Privacy
  • Private Messenger
  • Kudos
  • Events

Avatars

  • From the Community, upload your own image
  • From my Albums (every photo you’ve uploaded to DC)

Tagging

  • Tagging Options
  • Tags

Macros

  • These macros are essentially canned replies which you can create, if you find yourself typing the same response a lot. Once you’ve created a macro, you’ll see it as an option when you create a post. You can have up to 9.

Subscriptions & Notifications

  • Manage any subscriptions and bookmarks, notification settings, and email format.

Navigating the site

Forums

This is where to post questions and responses to questions.  There are two different forums: Technical, and Water Cooler.

 

Technical Forum

This is where you’ll post any technical questions or observations, just like you did in the Questions section of the old site.

Water Cooler

This is a new feature where the community can post about anything else (within the community guidelines). Want to talk about a particular Agility session, or general trending non-political news topics? Brag about your sweet home rig, or get advice on building one? This is the place to do that. Posts, kudos, and comments in the Water Cooler do not count towards your rank – but good content is good content. When really good stuff happens around the Water Cooler we may move it for better visibility.

Articles 

This is where you will find and be able to create articles.

 

 

Technical Articles

This is where you will find technical articles written by F5ers, just like you always saw on the old homepage and Articles page.

CrowdSRC

This is where you can find and contribute community-created technical articles and code. It is a new and improved version of the old CodeShare, along with the new feature of users being able to contribute free-form articles under their own usernames.

DevCentral News

This is a new feature where you’ll find announcements, and other non-technical information from the team. Check here for Agility updates, contest announcements, team updates, and swag giveaways.

Groups

 

Groups is a place for special groups to have conversations. The inaugural group is the MVP group, which is an invite-only place for our MVP cohort to converse with each other. We will be opening this feature to other groups slowly as we come to understand whether it serves the community well, For example, there is a potential for usergroups to have their own space in the community. We would love to hear what you think about the Groups feature.

Events

 

This is another new feature we are excited about! This is where you’ll find links to things like Agility, webinars, trivia games, SME office hours, Livestream afterhours, and other events we’re planning for the community.

Suggestions

Our vision for community is not effective without conversation. Suggestions is our venue for building input together. Starting with ideas, hardened with the constructive input of your peers, and driven to a resolution with us; we probably can’t do everything under the sun, but this will really help us hear your voices, coordinate, and prioritize – all the things we need to better serve you here on DevCentral.

 

An example of how important community feedback is for us, is the story of how code syntax highlighting became a feature offered to our users: MVP Kevin Davies advocated strongly for this feature, and we were able to prioritize it and make it happen.

How to Start Conversation in the CrowdSRC Articles section

 

That will take you to a page where you can select whether you'd like to write something Freeform, or use an existing Codeshare Template:

 

From there, the steps will be the same as posting a comment on an article, except you will Submit For Review rather than Post Your Comment. 

How to format and post a comment on an article

Below each article, you’ll see a comment box. You can click to expand the toolbar for more options.

 

After you have expanded the toolbar, in order to add headers, click on “Paragraphs.” To add code snippers, click on “Insert/Edit code sample.” To publish your comment, click “Post Your Comment.”

 

Make sure to check back to see the replies and be able to clarify any questions that arise from your post or comment!

Forum (formerly Questions)

How to post a question

 

That will bring you to this page:

 

How to post a reply

At the bottom of every post and article, you’ll see a Reply button.

 

Once you click “Reply,” you’ll see:

 

From here, you can add files and format your text as you like. In order to insert code or headers, please click the three dots to expand the toolbar.

Giving Kudos

You’ll see a thumbs-up icon at the bottom of most articles, questions, and comments. Click on it to give the author kudos and points.

 

MVP program

Every day, all over the world, smart, passionate people are doing amazing things with their F5 gear and sharing that knowledge with their peers. The DevCentral MVP Program shines a spotlight on the best, brightest and most active members of our community. Learn more about our MVPs here.

RSS Feed

On each comment, you’ll be able to use the small dropdown as shown below. On articles, you can use the small dropdown or the Options button.

Reporting inappropriate content

Click on the down arrow, then click Report inappropriate content:

 

Then, please let us know why you think what you are reporting is inappropriate, and Notify Moderator:

Still need help?

Make sure to check out the Help Page first, and if you still can’t find what you need, send a message to DevCentralFeedback@f5.com and we’ll work to get your issue sorted.

 

 

Updated Jan 25, 2022
Version 4.0

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