This document covers topics that a professional writer who will be working full-time on MDN needs to know to get started. If you just contribute to MDN on a casual basis, you don't need to worry about this; you can just dive and get started. Or you can peruse these topics at your leisure if you are curious.
What is MDN web docs?
Guidelines
These are things that professional writers typically want to know before starting work in a new environment.
- What belongs on MDN?
- Editorial policies (to be written)
- Writing style guide
- Other guidelines
Basic usage of the MDN wiki
These articles describe basic information you need to get started with creating content on MDN.
- Create an account — For employees of partner organizations, we recommend that you sign up using an email address that reflects your employer.
- How to write an API reference
- Using the MDN editor UI (to be updated)
- How and when to use source mode
- How to tag pages
- Using macros
- Commonly-used macros
- Troubleshooting (to be written)
- Updating macro content
- Macro errors
- Unable to save page
Advanced usage
These articles describe features of the MDN wiki that you might not need right away, but that you are likely to run into eventually.
- Live samples
- Interactive samples (to be written)
- Structures used within documents
- Compatibility tables (outdated; to be updated)
- Attaching images using the attachments box — attaching SVG images requires special privileges; ask a Mozilla MDN staff member for help.
- Sidebars with QuickLinks
- Moving pages
- Translating pages
- MDN-related add-ons