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Write for DOnations - Frequently Asked Questions

Write for DOnations - Frequently Asked Questions

The Write for DOnations program brings together two initiatives: building reference content to help developers, and supporting tech-focused charities and nonprofits.

Authors who contribute to our growing collection of tutorials on open-source software deployment, configuration, and development will also have the opportunity to give back to a growing list of tech-focused nonprofits. Our goals are to enable authors to give back to the DigitalOcean and open-source communities, and to strengthen these communities by supporting the work of charities, nonprofits, and activists.

FAQ

What does the Write for DOnations process look like?

It all starts with a proposal. When you apply to write with us, you’ll submit a a proposal with the following details:

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  3. An outline of your proposed article, including the introduction, prerequisites, and the steps of your proposed article with a paragraph for each section that explains what the section will cover.
  4. A writing sample that demonstrates your writing ability, technical expertise, and ability to explain complex topics to readers who are unfamiliar with your topic.

Once we receive your proposal, we’ll review your proposal as a team. If we’re interested in your proposal, we’ll either accept it as is or work with you to refine it further.

Once we agree on the topic and outline, we’ll send you a contract to sign which lets us publish your work. That’s also when we’ll ask for your contact and payment details.

Then you’ll begin writing in Markdown, turning your outline into a full article. When your article is done, we ask that you thoroughly test it by reading through it and following it as a reader would. We will provide testing credit for this. You won’t have to incur any cost to test your tutorials.

When your draft is complete and tested, you’ll submit it to us, and the draft will be entered into our editorial queue. All submitted drafts enter the queue in the order we receive them. We sometimes have higher than normal volumes of tutorials, so it may take a little time before an editor can work on your draft.

When an editor is available, they’ll contact you to let you know they’ve started working on your tutorial, and will then verify that your tutorial is technically correct by following it as written. Our editors all have technical backgrounds and will look for technical best practices as they test your article.

If everything works as written, your editor will then do a thorough review of the structure, tone, and style of your article. When they’re done, they will provide editorial feedback on your article and send you feedback.

When you receive the feedback, you’ll address it and send it back.

Your editor will then review it again, sending it back to you if there are further revisions necessary. Once there are no more revisions to make, another editor on the team reviews the tutorial for formatting and other issues.

Once your article is ready for publication, we’ll publish the tutorial, send you the link, and process your payment. Your editor will then encourage you to submit another tutorial idea.

How do you evaluate proposals?

Our team reviews each proposal we receive. We look for clear explanations, strong writing ability, and solid teaching skills. Our tutorials are aimed at all audiences, and we strongly prefer writing samples that follow our tutorial style. Unfortunately, because of the high volume of samples we receive, we cannot accept every author who applies and we cannot provide individual feedback on each sample we review.

I have a tutorial that’s already published. Can I publish it through the Write for DOnations program?

Content on DigitalOcean must be original, first-run content that’s not published anywhere else. We pay authors for content and then we relicense it under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. However, you can submit your existing tutorial as your writing sample when you apply to write with us.

What is the payout structure for Write for DOnations?

The typical payout for community authors in the Write for DOnations program is $300 for typical tutorial content. We then make an additional payout in the form of a contribution from DigitalOcean to the author’s choice of tech-focused nonprofits from our list of funds.

How do I receive payment for my article?

We will send payment for your article when we publish your final draft.

You can choose to receive your payout via PayPal or in DigitalOcean credit. You must have a PayPal account that can receive funds.

DigitalOcean will make donations using Bright Funds on your behalf, but you’ll tell us which fund or charity that will receive the donation.

I cannot receive payments via PayPal. Do you support other payment methods?

Unfortunately we can only make payments via PayPal at this time, and only directly to PayPal addresses that can receive money as well as send it.

If you cannot receive payment via PayPal, we also offer the same amount in DigitalOcean credits.

Which charities and nonprofits will my writing support?

In response to the current spread of COVID-19, we have put together the following fund focused on fighting the global pandemic and providing relief to those affected:

We’ve curated four tech-related funds, which are collections of nonprofits with similar missions:

We are continuously exploring additional charities and funds which may be a good match.

Can I choose the charity or nonprofit that will receive the charity payout?

You can choose to donate to one of the funds we support, which splits the donation equally among the nonprofits in the fund. You can alternatively choose to donate the full amount to one specific nonprofit from within those funds.

At this time, it is not possible for authors to select a charity or nonprofit that is not on our list, but we hope to expand the program in the future to include this capability.

Will my donation be tax-deductible?

Because DigitalOcean will be processing the donation through Bright Funds, it won’t be possible for you to claim it as a charitable deduction on your tax return.

I am a first-time author. Can I make updates to a DigitalOcean tutorial?

At this time, we ask all first-time authors to first write an original tutorial in order to gain a better understanding of our style and technical requirements.

I’m under 18 years old. Can I publish a tutorial?

Due to legal reasons, we can only work with authors 18 and older.

Can I translate a DigitalOcean tutorial?

At this time, we are not accepting translations for publication. You may publish a translation of your own on your own web site, using the guidelines described in the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

I published a tutorial with DigitalOcean. Can I repost the published tutorial on my own blog?

Tutorials on the DigitalOcean Community site are published under a Creative Commons license – specifically, an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 license. This means that you can republish your content as long as you give credit (we prefer a canonical link), share it under the same license, and it is not for commercial purposes.

I have questions and/or thoughts about the Write for DOnations program. Where can I share them?

There are two ways to share thoughts or questions about the program. The first is to write to us directly at writefordonations@digitalocean.com. Though we may not be able to reply to each email, we will read all of them and use your feedback to guide our future work. If you have a question that you think may help others, please feel free to leave it in the comments section below.

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You can type !ref in this text area to quickly search our full set of tutorials, documentation & marketplace offerings and insert the link!

How to start? I’m new here!!

Hi,

Do you accept writers from outside the US? What kind of additional paperwork would be needed in addition to me reporting any income to my country’s taxation authority?

Kind regards

I’ve started writing the tutorial below on getting email to work on a droplet on account of the existing documentation and technical support being beyond awful. I don’t want payment, just a way to get this online to help others:

<h1>Setting up an email server with Postfix on Centos 7</h1>

I've written these notes following hours of frustration getting email working on my Digital Ocean droplet using Centos 7 and Postfix. 
Most of the documentation I could find via Google was obsolete, and I had to discover much of this stuff through trial and error.

I'm far from an expert, and this howto is written for other novices. I do expect readers to know enough to get into a shell on their droplet via ssh. Most of the commands assume you are at the prompt of your droplet, but you'll also need to use <code>ping</code> and <code>telnet</code> from outside your server to test things. I also assume readers have a favourite text editor, so am only going to say which files need to be edited where.

I'm going to use <em>mydomainname.com</em> as a placeholder for whatever your domain name is, and <em>1.2.3.4</em> as a placeholder
for whatever IP number Digital Ocean allocated your droplet.

<h2>Use port 587, not 25</h2>

As an email server beginner, I don't know the history of why there are three mail ports associcated with different services,
and ended up wasting several hours trying to figure out the "open sesame" for port 25 since obsolete documentation 
gave me the misimpression it was still needed.

At time of writing, the most up-to-date information for port 587 and submission is 
<a href="https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6409">RFC 6409</a> while for port 465 and smtps it's
<a href="https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc8314">RFC 8314</a>.

A command we'll need to check our progress with is <a href="https://linux.die.net/man/1/nmap">nmap</a>, which Centos 7 
doesn't include by default, so you'll probably need to <code>sudo yum install nmap</code> before running this command 
and then seeing something like:

<pre><code>
nmap -p 25,465,587 localhost

Starting Nmap 6.40 ( http://nmap.org ) at 2020-12-13 09:50 SAST
Nmap scan report for localhost (127.0.0.1)
Host is up (0.000063s latency).
Other addresses for localhost (not scanned): 127.0.0.1
rDNS record for 127.0.0.1: centos-s-2vcpu-4gb-ams3-01
PORT    STATE  SERVICE
25/tcp  closed smtp
465/tcp closed smtps
587/tcp closed submission

Nmap done: 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 0.25 seconds
</code></pre>

When nmap says a port is closed, it unfortunately provides little clue as to whether the problem is:

<ol>
<li>Whatever server is supposed to be listening to it &mdash; Postfix here &mdash; isn't 
    running or hasn't been configured correctly.</li>
<li>Though the port is open on localhost with an associated server listening, a firewall is blocking access to it 
    from outside computers. Note I've called nmap with localhost at this stage since making open ports publically available 
    to the Internet takes several steps I'll do below.</li>
<li>The port is blocked by either the hosting company or default Linux configuration.
    (Spoiler alert, even if Digital Ocean has opened port 25 for your droplet, Centos 7 along with other "newish" 
    Linux distributions discourage using it by not making it available by default).</li>
</ol>

At this stage we know Postfix isn't listening because we haven't installed it yet, and also that calling
<code>nmap -p 25,465,587 1.2.3.4</code> won't show anything open since the required changes to the DNS record and
firewall haven't been done yet.

Lets quickly install postfix and fire it up, wich on Centos 7 involves the commands
<code>yum install postfix</code>, followed by <code>systemctl start postfix.service</code>
and also <code>systemctl enable postfix.service</code> for future reboots.

Before diving into the horrors of Postfix configuration, lets test the default installation by running 
<code>nmap -p 25,465,587 localhost</code> which should show that our Postfix server without any 
configuration is now listening to port 587. 

Contrary to what nmap says, only smtp, not submission, runs "out-the-box". This is because the 
unedited <code>/etc/postfix/master.cf</code>  configuration file only has the line for smtp uncommented, 
with the section for submission and its many options commented out.

The reason why Postfix running an smtp service doesn't open port 25 as it would have historically is revealed in 
Centos 7's default <code>/etc/services</code> file. I'll quote the relevant parts below:

<pre><code>
# service-name  port/protocol  [aliases ...]   [# comment]
...
urd             465/tcp         smtps   # URL Rendesvous Directory for SSM / SMTP over SSL (TLS)
...
smtp            587/tcp          mail
...
submission      587/tcp         msa             # mail message submission
...
</code></pre>

Centos 7's <code>/etc/services</code> file has no entry for 25/tcp, instead associating port 587 with both smtp and submission. 
A keyword STARTTLS is used for the email server (Postfix) to know which of these two protocols is being used.

Another handy utility not installed by default in Centos 7 is <a href="https://linux.die.net/man/8/netstat">netstat</a>.
Running <code>netstat -tulpen</code> prints a table showing what ports are open with which servers
attached. Postfix confusingly appears on this list as <code>master</code>.

Before returning to configuring Postfix, we need to broaden our horizon from localhost to the world with these steps:

<h2>Updating DNS records</h2>

Assuming you've already got an A record set to mydomainname.com, CNAME www.mydomainname.com, NS records ns1.digitalocean.com ..., 
after logging into Digital Ocean's control panel you'll need to make the following modifications:

<ol>
  <li>Add a second A record to mydomain.com's DNS record, say mail.mydomainname.com, or smtp.mydomainname.com, or whatever.</li>
  <li>Create an MX record saying mail.mydomainname.com is the mail server for mydomainname.com. (If, like me, you have several
  domain names, Postfix can be set up to send and receive emails for all of them. Add this stage, you can add an MX record
  pointing to mail.<em>mydomainname</em>.com for each of the other domains you have)</li>
  <li>Rename your droplet to <em>mail.mydomainname.com</em>. This is done by clicking on <em>Droplets</em>, and then on
  the existing droplet name to bring up a cursor allowing you to edit it and save it. The reason you need
  to rename the droplet is it activates reverse DNS for the IP address Digital Ocean allocated to you, which in turn is
  required by many of the service providers of whoever you send email to.</li>
</ol> 

<h2>Opening port 587</h2>

Modifying the instructions at
<a href="https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/iptables-essentials-common-firewall-rules-and-commands#service-mail">
https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/iptables-essentials-common-firewall-rules-and-commands#service-mail</a> for
port 587 instead of 25, run:

<pre><code>
sudo iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 587 -m conntrack --ctstate NEW,ESTABLISHED -j ACCEPT
sudo iptables -A OUTPUT -p tcp --sport 587 -m conntrack --ctstate ESTABLISHED -j ACCEPT
</code></pre>

If your are using Centos's firewalld, you'll also want to run 
<code>sudo firewall-cmd --permanent --add-service=smtp-submission</code> and then
<code>sudo systemctl restart firewalld</code>.

(If you want to use port 465 with smtps instead of or alongside port 587 and submission, do the 
above with the different port number and service name).

Testing with the command
<code>nmap -p 25,465,587 localhost</code> and then
<code>nmap -p 25,465,587 1.2.3.4</code> shows that while Postfix is listening to port 587 on localhost,
changes to the default configuration are needed for it to also listen on the public IP number.

<h2>Configuring Postfix</h2>

Step 1: make backup copies of the two configuration files, 
<code>/etc/postfix/main.cf</code> and <code>/etc/postfix/master.cf</code>.

<em>When in doubt, use the default</em> doesn't quite rhyme, but I find it a handy rule of thumb. Given how fiddly
getting an email server to work is, my strategy was to change as little as possible and 
run <code>systemctl restart postfix.service</code> a lot to try figure out what each change did.

Other handy commands are <code>postfix check</code> which ideally produces no output, and <code>postconf -n</code>
which alphabetically lists which configuration variables have been set to what.

Besides opening <code>/etc/postfix/main.cf</code> with your favourite text editor, its a good idea to have the official
documentation's <a href="http://www.postfix.org/BASIC_CONFIGURATION_README.html">Basic Configuration</a> page open as
reference.

General advice in the howtos I've seen is to uncomment <code>#myhostname = host.domain.tld</code> and edit it
to <code>myhostname = mail.mydomainname.com</code>. But personally, I left it commented and set my hostname environment
variable to mail.mydomainname.com, which is read from /etc/hostname and can be set on Centos with the command 
<code>hostnamectl set-hostname mail.mydomainname.com</code>. If myhostname is left unset, Postfix defaults to the system's 
hostname value, which in turn becomes the default for various other configuration
variables which needn't concern us since our main worry is virtual names which I'll get to soon.

An important edit to make is to comment out the default <code>inet_interfaces = localhost</code> and uncomment
either <code>inet_interfaces = all</code> or <code>inet_interfaces = $myhostname, localhost</code>
(the two are synonymous as far as I understand, but I prefer the latter since "all" could mean anything).

An important step after every configuration edit is to run <code>systemctl restart postfix</code>.

Now when you enter <code>nmap -p 25,465,587 1.2.3.4</code>, you'll hopefully see
<code>587/tcp open   submission</code>.

This means our mail server is on the Internet, which we can test from outside the server with
<code>ping mail.mydomainname.com</code> and more importantly
<code>telnet mail.mydomainname.com 587</code> should produce something like:

<pre><code>
Trying 1.2.3.4...
Connected to mail.mydomainname.com.
Escape character is '^]'.
220 mail.mydomainname.com ESMTP Postfix
^]
telnet> close
Connection closed.
</code></pre>

<hr>

<h3>SSL/TLS</h3>

Assuming you use <a href="https://letsencrypt.org/">Let's Encrypt</a> get a free SSL/TLS certificate for mail.mydomainname.com
by running <code>sudo certbot certonly --standalone -d mail.mydomainname.com</code>

Something that tripped me up was I discovered I needed to switch off my web server (nginx) to avoid a
"Problem binding to port 80: Could not bind to IPv4 or IPv6." error.

If the above works, the required files will be in the subdirectory <code>/etc/letsencrypt/live/mail.mydomainname.com/</code>

Postfix's official documentation is at <a href="http://www.postfix.org/TLS_README.html">TLS Support</a>. The provided
main.cf file doesn't include an example, so what I added to the end of configuration file looks like this:

<pre><code>
# SSL
smtpd_tls_cert_file=/etc/letsencrypt/live/mail.mydomainname.com/fullchain.pem
smtpd_tls_key_file=/etc/letsencrypt/live/mail.mydomainname.com/privkey.pem
smtpd_use_tls=yes
smtpd_tls_loglevel = 1
smtpd_tls_session_cache_database = btree:${data_directory}/smtpd_scache
smtp_tls_session_cache_database = btree:${data_directory}/smtp_scache
smtpd_tls_security_level=may
smtpd_tls_protocols = !SSLv2, !SSLv3
</code></pre>

The next test is from a command line not on the server, run <code>telnet mail.mydomainname.com 587</code>,
which at this stage results in something like:

<pre><code>
Trying 1.2.3.4...
telnet: Unable to connect to remote host: No route to host
</code></pre>

In /etc/postfix/master.cf, we need to uncomment submission (and may as well comment out smtp)

<pre><code>
#smtp      inet  n       -       n       -       -       smtpd
...
submission inet n       -       n       -       -       smtpd
  -o syslog_name=postfix/submission
  -o smtpd_tls_wrappermode=no                 ??? need to check if this should be added
  -o smtpd_tls_security_level=encrypt
#  -o smtpd_sasl_auth_enable=yes
#  -o smtpd_reject_unlisted_recipient=no
#  -o smtpd_client_restrictions=$mua_client_restrictions
#  -o smtpd_helo_restrictions=$mua_helo_restrictions
#  -o smtpd_sender_restrictions=$mua_sender_restrictions
  -o smtpd_recipient_restrictions=permit_mynetworks,reject
  -o milter_macro_daemon_name=ORIGINATING
</code></pre>

Hello,

I writing this comment in concern to become a part of the DOnation community, And I got to know that, alligator.io has joined the DOnation community, And I am already a contributor in alligator.io, And since it has joined Digital Ocean Community, My Article is also published here with 48.9k views.

Link to the article: https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/angular-drag-drop

So, Do I need to apply separately for becoming the author in DOnation community? Or since my article is already published, I am directly eligible as an author, If this is the case. I have already registered myself on the platform: https://www.digitalocean.com/community/users/sarkazein7

Please let me know the next steps.

Thanks & Regards.

Hello, I am very pleased to have an account at digitalocean, a company that in addition to offering an excellent service, also appreciates the effort in the writing of articles and technical tutorials. For my part, I hope to write soon for you and for the community in general.

regards

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