Submitting blog posts and case studies

Anyone can write a blog post and submit it for review. Case studies require extensive review before they're approved.

The Kubernetes Blog

The Kubernetes blog is used by the project to communicate new features, community reports, and any news that might be relevant to the Kubernetes community. This includes end users and developers. Most of the blog's content is about things happening in the core project, but we encourage you to submit about things happening elsewhere in the ecosystem too!

Anyone can write a blog post and submit it for review.

Submit a Post

Blog posts should not be commercial in nature and should consist of original content that applies broadly to the Kubernetes community. Appropriate blog content includes:

• New Kubernetes capabilities
• Kubernetes projects updates
• Updates from Special Interest Groups
• Tutorials and walkthroughs
• Thought leadership around Kubernetes
• Kubernetes Partner OSS integration
• Original content only

Unsuitable content includes:

• Vendor product pitches
• Partner updates without an integration and customer story
• Syndicated posts (language translations ok)

To submit a blog post, follow these steps:

1. Sign the CLA if you have not yet done so.

2. Have a look at the Markdown format for existing blog posts in the website repository.

3. Write out your blog post in a text editor of your choice.

4. On the same link from step 2, click the Create new file button. Paste your content into the editor. Name the file to match the proposed title of the blog post, but don’t put the date in the file name. The blog reviewers will work with you on the final file name and the date the blog will be published.

5. When you save the file, GitHub will walk you through the pull request process.

6. A blog post reviewer will review your submission and work with you on feedback and final details. When the blog post is approved, the blog will be scheduled for publication.

Guidelines and expectations

• Blog posts should not be vendor pitches.

  • Articles must contain content that applies broadly to the Kubernetes community. For example, a submission should focus on upstream Kubernetes as opposed to vendor-specific configurations. Check the Documentation style guide for what is typically allowed on Kubernetes properties.
  • Links should primarily be to the official Kubernetes documentation. When using external references, links should be diverse - For example a submission shouldn't contain only links back to a single company's blog.
  • Sometimes this is a delicate balance. The blog team is there to give guidance on whether a post is appropriate for the Kubernetes blog, so don't hesitate to reach out.

• Blog posts are not published on specific dates.

  • Articles are reviewed by community volunteers. We'll try our best to accommodate specific timing, but we make no guarantees.
  • Many core parts of the Kubernetes projects submit blog posts during release windows, delaying publication times. Consider submitting during a quieter period of the release cycle.
  • If you are looking for greater coordination on post release dates, coordinating with CNCF marketing is a more appropriate choice than submitting a blog post.
  • Sometimes reviews can get backed up. If you feel your review isn't getting the attention it needs, you can reach out to the blog team on the #sig-docs-blog Slack channel to ask in real time.

• Blog posts should be relevant to Kubernetes users.

  • Topics related to participation in or results of Kubernetes SIGs activities are always on topic (see the work in the Contributor Comms Team for support on these posts).
  • The components of Kubernetes are purposely modular, so tools that use existing integration points like CNI and CSI are on topic.
  • Posts about other CNCF projects may or may not be on topic. We recommend asking the blog team before submitting a draft.
    • Many CNCF projects have their own blog. These are often a better choice for posts. There are times of major feature or milestone for a CNCF project that users would be interested in reading on the Kubernetes blog.
  • Blog posts about contributing to the Kubernetes project should be in the Kubernetes Contributors site

• Blog posts should be original content

  • The official blog is not for repurposing existing content from a third party as new content.
  • The license for the blog allows commercial use of the content for commercial purposes, but not the other way around.

• Blog posts should aim to be future proof

  • Given the development velocity of the project, we want evergreen content that won't require updates to stay accurate for the reader.
  • It can be a better choice to add a tutorial or update official documentation than to write a high level overview as a blog post.
    • Consider concentrating the long technical content as a call to action of the blog post, and focus on the problem space or why readers should care.

Technical Considerations for submitting a blog post

Submissions need to be in Markdown format to be used by the Hugo generator for the blog. There are many resources available on how to use this technology stack.

For illustrations, diagrams or charts, the figure shortcode can be used. For other images, we strongly encourage use of alt attributes; if an image doesn't need any alt attrribute, maybe it's not needed in the article at all.

We recognize that this requirement makes the process more difficult for less-familiar folks to submit, and we're constantly looking at solutions to lower this bar. If you have ideas on how to lower the barrier, please volunteer to help out.

The SIG Docs blog subproject manages the review process for blog posts. For more information, see Submit a post.

To submit a blog post follow these directions:

• Open a pull request with a new blog post. New blog posts go under the content/en/blog/_posts directory.

• Ensure that your blog post follows the correct naming conventions and the following frontmatter (metadata) information:

  • The Markdown file name must follow the format YYYY-MM-DD-Your-Title-Here.md. For example, 2020-02-07-Deploying-External-OpenStack-Cloud-Provider-With-Kubeadm.md.

  • Do not include dots in the filename. A name like 2020-01-01-whats-new-in-1.19.md causes failures during a build.

  • The front matter must include the following:

    ---
    layout: blog
    title: "Your Title Here"
    date: YYYY-MM-DD
    slug: text-for-URL-link-here-no-spaces
    author: >
      Author-1 (Affiliation),
      Author-2 (Affiliation),
      Author-3 (Affiliation)  
    ---
    

  • The first or initial commit message should be a short summary of the work being done and should stand alone as a description of the blog post. Please note that subsequent edits to your blog will be squashed into this main commit, so it should be as useful as possible.

    • Examples of a good commit message:
      • Add blog post on the foo kubernetes feature
      • blog: foobar announcement
    • Examples of bad commit message:
      • Add blog post
      • .
      • initial commit
      • draft post

  • The blog team will then review your PR and give you comments on things you might need to fix. After that the bot will merge your PR and your blog post will be published.

  • If the content of the blog post contains only content that is not expected to require updates to stay accurate for the reader, it can be marked as evergreen and exempted from the automatic warning about outdated content added to blog posts older than one year.

    • To mark a blog post as evergreen, add this to the front matter:

      evergreen: true
      

    • Examples of content that should not be marked evergreen:

      • Tutorials that only apply to specific releases or versions and not all future versions
      • References to pre-GA APIs or features

Mirroring from the Kubernetes Contributor Blog

To mirror a blog post from the Kubernetes contributor blog, follow these guidelines:

• Keep the blog content the same. If there are changes, they should be made to the original article first, and then to the mirrored article.
• The mirrored blog should have a canonicalUrl, that is, essentially the url of the original blog after it has been published.
• Same as Kubernetes contributor blogs, Kubernetes blog posts also mention authors in the YAML header as per the new guidelines. This should be ensured.
• Publication dates stay the same as the original blog.

All of the other guidelines and expectations detailed above apply as well.

Submit a case study

Case studies highlight how organizations are using Kubernetes to solve real-world problems. The Kubernetes marketing team and members of the CNCF collaborate with you on all case studies.

Have a look at the source for the existing case studies.

Refer to the case study guidelines and submit your request as outlined in the guidelines.