Know what you must do to become an author at Theory of Programming Become an Author at Theory of Programming Vamsi Sangam
Contents What should I do?... 2 Structure of a Post... 3 Ideas List for Topics... 5 Requirements of a Post... 6 Content s Basic Requirements... 6 Content s SEO Requirements... 7 Source Code Requirements... 8 Submitting your work... 9 What you get in the end... 10 Content Protection... 12
What should I do? You can become an author at Theory of Programming and start writing your articles to help the world learn about programming. To become an author, you are supposed to do a few simple and straight forward things. Nothing hard for a determined person! To become an author, you must write 3 posts on topics of your choice. The prime restriction on the choice of topic is that topics already discussed on the website should be avoided. Now, there are many things to consider while writing posts! This guide will show you what kind of posts are expected so that you can have a fair chance of becoming an author! In the end, your work must be submitted for evaluation. All details are in the following pages.
Structure of a Post This is the format of the post. You shall follow this format while submitting posts for evaluation. Each component is expected to follow some requirements which are mentioned later. Post Title - Post URL - Post Body Picture Keyword Meta Description - Now, the thing is that, you are writing a post which is supposed to be webpage. When it comes to webpage, there are few things you must mention, such as a URL,
keywords, and Meta description. Because your post will be a webpage, you need to be bothered about the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) part of it too. That is why we use good URLs, keywords and Meta description. By URL, I mean the second half of it. URLs in Theory of Programming are in the format theoryofprogramming.com/year/month/day/post-url Now, all I want you to be bothered about is that post-url part. Some examples of what you are supposed to write as URL are Breadth First Search Algorithm breadth-first-search-algorithm Merge Sort Algorithm merge-sort-algorithm Your post will obviously be rendered as HTML stuff. But you needn t write HTML for evaluation. Just keep the basic HTML elements related to text in mind. Such as headings (<h2>, <h3>), bold, italic. Using headings of different sizes in your text is sufficient enough to state that you intend to use the various heading tags. It is a good practice to use headings of different sizes. Your post body must have pictures in between them.
Ideas List for Topics These are the some of the guidelines to choose a good topic Topics which come under Data Structures or Algorithms. Please avoid topics related to Java programming language for now. Linked Lists Stacks Queues Binary Search Trees Binomial and Fibonacci Heap Hashing Suffix Array Suffix Tree AVL Dynamic Programming Pattern Matching based Algorithms Backtracking, Branch-and-Bound Algorithms These are a few. Feel free to come up with any other topic not mentioned here.
Requirements of a Post Content s Basic Requirements Explain the concepts very patiently. At least one diagram (image) is a must. Please mention if you have a genuine reason to have no images for your post. The content is what affects the sensible number of images to have in a post. Posts on Data Structures are expected to have more diagrams than those which talk about Algorithms. Source code is must. Source code must be properly indented and well commented. You may mention the author s details at the beginning of the source code. When submitting the post to admin for evaluation. Please leave Ideone or PasteBin or such online tools links rather than posting the actual source code in the document. The final word count of the post must exceed 1300. This word count is based on WordPress s word counting. It picks up words from the source code too. This limit may vary depending on the topic and images. Content must be unique. Must void dumping text from Wikipedia or such sites. Use simple language and don t be too formal. Topics can be interview oriented (not entirely). Break your content into paragraphs of good size (6-8 lines) for better readability. Draw.io is a good place to draw simple sketches quickly. Plot.ly is a good place to draw great looking graphs quickly.
Content s SEO Requirements Your content must be Search Engine friendly. Now I m not asking you to learn all about Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Just make sure that your content follows some rules listed below so that it is Search Engine optimized Post title should preferably be between 40-65 characters. Form a keyword phrase for your post. Eg. The keyword phrase for the post on Breadth First Search Algorithm is Breadth First Search Algorithm. The keyword should preferably appear in the post URL. The keyword must appear in you post s content multiple times. The more, the better. The Post title must contain the keyword phrase. Meta data is simply data about data. Give a meta description about your post. It is simple text of no more than 156 characters that describe your post s goal in brief. The meta descriptions are used by the Search Engines. Your meta description must include the keyword phrase. Use various headings (<h2> <h3> <h4> tags) according to the sub topic s importance. But try not to use each more than 5 times. Try to use bold, italic and underlined text where ever you find it sensible. Don t use large images. Typically, images are around 100KB. But few images such as images which depict step-by-step explanation of an algorithm take around 350KB. Try not to exceed this limit of 350KB. Break your images if they exceed. Do not use any outbound links if not necessary. The post URL must not have underscores, use hyphens instead.
Source Code Requirements There are a few rules to follow about the source code Code must be properly indented. Code must be properly commented. Try not to write very long lines. Break long lines into multiple lines if necessary. Use the following naming conventions o Pascal Case Convention for classes, structures and methods. GetSize() Heapify() BuildHeap() class AdjacencyList {} struct Node {} o Camel Case convention for variables. int arraysize; double finalresult; o Names of constants or final variables or macros to be in all upper case. Multiple words are to be separated by an underscore. final double INTEREST_RATE = 10.5; #define MAX_VALUE 10 Your code must be tested for large input. While submitting the post, you can either submit the input files directly or give a link to the file. Input files of 1 3 MB is good. They can be bigger.
Submitting your work If you want to become an author at Theory of Programming, the first thing you must do is to let me know that you are interested! Drop me an email at vamsisangam@live.com or drop me a message on Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/vamsi.sangam Now, writing a post takes time. No kidding! Writing 3 posts roughly takes around 10 days, if you devote pretty good amount of your day in writing the content. So be patient..! I m here to help..! You can contact me all throughout your period of writing. You must submit a minimum of 6 files. 3 PDFs which will be the posts. 1 PDF giving some basic information about yourself. Input files if any. Image files (at least 1 per post) Submit them to the following email addresses admin@theoryofprogramming.com vamsisangam@live.com You don t have to submit a separate file about yourself if I already know you in person..! P.S. It s okay if you don t understand all those SEO stuff. We ll work together on that later! Focus on code and content.
What you get in the end If your work gets accepted (I really hope it does!), you become a user of the Theory of Programming s WordPress Admin panel. From then on, you can login to your account to write posts freely. Your posts will be published under your name, that is, you as the author. Your name will be listed on a separate page named Team, along with the other authors. On that page, you will have your name, pic and a short description (let s say 150 words) displayed. The content of the description is totally up to you. It would look something like this Beneath that short description of yourself, a Know more link will be given which redirects to another page which talks exclusively about you! That will be your true About Me page! This page can have any amount (obviously more that you put in the Team page!) of content about you, your friends and family. It can even have multiple images about them. I guess you all know how that looks! You can check out mine http://theoryofprogramming.com/vamsi-sangam/
Cool, isn t it?! So, your webpage would be something like http://theoryofprogramming.com/bill-gates/ And, in addition to this, you can also create other pages about yourself such as I have a pages about my favorite quotes and books read. Your pages will look like http://theoryofprogramming.com/bill-gates-quotes/ http://theoryofprogramming.com/bill-gates-books-read/ So, in a nutshell, you are on the internet! Believe me, About Me pages like these are very valuable and they will make your resume dazzle..! You also get a Theory of Programming email account! Something like yourname@theoryofprogramming.com! This account will have unlimited storage quota. Once you get an account, you can access Theory of Programming s Webmail at http://theoryofprogramming.com:2095/ Why would you need that..? At the end of your About Me page, you can keep a Contact Form, for people to contact you privately by an email! You will receive those emails to the email account you will be given! Something similar in my About Me page. Honestly, I was able to help many people and make some good friends due to that! If you continue to actively write posts for Theory of Programming, apart from the Team page, where you will be showcased, there will also be a Top 5 Contributors section in the header navigation bar, where a direct link to your About Me page will be given.
Content Protection I really wish you were a part of the Theory of Programming s Team! But in case, your work isn t accepted, and you have no interest in joining anymore, your content will remain hidden. That is, I won t use your content and get it published under mine or anyone else s name. Let s say your work got accepted. But you worked on a topic same as that of another person who also got accepted recently. Then, both persons will be asked to club their content in the best possible way they feel. The joint post will be posted under the name of that person whose contribution was relatively more, but it will be mentioned in the post that it was authored by two people, where the identity of the other person will be mentioned.