Sponsors of DEVOPSdigest are vendors and therefore blog on the DEVOPSdigest Vendor Forum. This separate set of blogging guidelines is provided for DEVOPSdigest sponsors because they gain special benefits when blogging on the Vendor Forum.

If you work for or represent a product vendor that does not sponsor DEVOPSdigest, click here for the standard Vendor Forum guidelines.

If you work for or represent a company or organization that is not vendor — such as analysts, consultants, integrators, authors and users — click here for the BIZDEVOPS Blog guidelines.

The DEVOPSdigest Vendor Forum was established to give vendors of DevOps-related technologies an opportunity to share their views with the IT community in an objective venue. All commentary in Vendor Forum blogs is intended to be objective, vendor-neutral and non-promotional content to educate and enlighten our readers. Since sponsors of DEVOPSdigest help keep the website online, you are not subject to all the Vendor Forum Rules. The primary content — meaning the body copy or main text of the blog — must still be objective, vendor-neutral and non-promotional. But DEVOPSdigest provides sponsors with several blogging benefits to help increase your exposure on the site, and drive traffic to your site.

Sponsor Rules for Blogging on the Vendor Forum

Please observe the following rules when blogging on the Vendor Forum:

■ DEVOPSdigest sponsors are allowed multiple blogging accounts on the Vendor Forum. (Non-sponsors are only eligible to open one blogging account per company.) Platinum and Gold Sponsors are eligible for an unlimited number of blogging accounts, and Silver Sponsors are eligible for up to 8 blogging accounts. This sponsor benefit is especially helpful for companies with multiple thought leaders in the industry who would like to claim authorship for their own blogs.

■ If a sponsorship ends, the multiple blogging accounts are closed, except for one. The company can choose whether they want to keep one of the existing blogging accounts or open a new blogging account for a new byline instead. Then that person will be the company's designated blogger on DEVOPSdigest. The company is still welcome to blog on DEVOPSdigest's Vendor Forum any time, but all blogs would be attributed to the one designated byline.

■ If a blogger leaves the sponsor company, moves to a new company in the APM industry or a related market, and continues to blog, all blogs posted by that blogger – past and present – will reference the new company. References to the previous company will be removed from the previous blogs.

■ Do not promote your own company, products, partners or any other vendors or brands in the body copy or text of any blogs on the Vendor Forum. Topics should be general industry interest. Copy and graphics should be non-promotional and vendor-neutral.

■ References to your company in the blog copy is permitted when you are discussing a survey or report conducted or commissioned by your company. A reference to your company's or partner's product is never permitted in the blog copy.

■ If your blog is about a study or survey conducted or commissioned by your company, focus on the results of the survey/study, not why and how the survey/study was conducted.

■ Although the body copy of the blog must be non-promotional, sponsors of DEVOPSdigest can include multiple links at the end of the blog, in the "Related Links" section. These URLs can link to other pages on your website, white papers, webinars, articles, blogs, product pages, etc. (Non-sponsors can only include a link to their company home page at the end of the blog.)

■ DEVOPSdigest removes old outdated links, but only updates outdated links for current sponsors of the site.

■ You can reference your customer in a blog, but do not mention your company or products by name in relation to that customer.

■ A reference to open source projects is permitted, as long as the reference is to the open source project or technology itself, and not the company that founded or owns the project.

■ Do not make negative references to a company, brand or product in any blogs on the Vendor Forum. The purpose of this rule is to prohibit vendors from posting negative blogs about their competitors. However, when the blog is about solving performance issues relating to a specific environment or infrastructure brand – such as a specific virtualization environment or cloud provider – exceptions can be made to this rule on a case-by-case basis.

■ Sponsors are allowed to place hyperlinks in the body copy of a blog linking to relevant web pages, including web pages promoting their own products. This should be done in a subtle way, and not overpower the blog text. Text with too many hyperlinks can appear overly promotional, and reduce the credibility of your blog in the reader's eyes. Keep in mind that DEVOPSdigest readers come to the site to read objective commentary.

■ Try to keep blogs between 500-1000 words. This is more of a guideline than a rule. You can include more content if you wish, but DEVOPSdigest recommends posting shorter blogs more often. If you have written a 1000+ word blog, consider breaking it into two or more blogs. You could call them Part One and Part Two, if you want. If a blog is lengthy, DEVOPSdigest may choose to post it in multiple parts.

■ All blogs will be reviewed by DEVOPSdigest prior to publication. DEVOPSdigest reserves the right to edit any content submitted, and the publication of any blog is at the sole discretion of DEVOPSdigest. Vendor Forum blog posts are edited by DEVOPSdigest for spelling, basic grammar and punctuation. Vendor Forum blogs are also edited to ensure they meet DEVOPSdigest guidelines.

■ Blogs do not have to follow AP style. They can be casual in style. However, DEVOPSdigest expects blogs to be written to meet basic grammar standards.

■ DEVOPSdigest sponsors have priority posting. This means that sponsor blogs go to the front of the queue, usually posting within a day or two. The only factors that could delay posting of a sponsor blog would be other sponsor blogs already in the queue, or content that must be posted due to timeliness.

■ If a blogger posts their own blog, and wants to include a graphic with the blog, the graphic must be added by the editor.

■ All Vendor Forum blogs must be original content that has not been published somewhere else. DEVOPSdigest periodically may request to re-post a blog, if the content is particularly valuable to our readers.

■ You can re-post your blogs from the Vendor Forum on your own blogs or websites, as long as you mention that the blog was originally posted on DEVOPSdigest, and include a link to DEVOPSdigest. However, we recommend linking to the blog on DEVOPSdigest.com rather than posting the full blog on your site, to highlight the fact that the content was published by an independent third party. Publication of your blog on a respected industry site such as DEVOPSdigest provides strong thought leadership credibility for the author and company.

■ Please note that these guidelines are updated periodically to ensure continued alignment with DEVOPSdigest's mission.

Topics for the Vendor Forum

DEVOPSdigest accepts Vendor Forum blogs on topics relating to DevOps, including:

■ DevOps

■ Development Processes

■ Development Technology

■ DevSecOps

■ BizDevOps

■ Development Automation

■ Cloud-Native Development

■ Containers and Kubernetes

■ Agile Development

■ Continuous Development

■ API (Application Program Interface)

■ Low Code/No Code

■ Development Monitoring and Analytics

■ Application Performance and Quality Testing

If you are unsure whether your topic fits DEVOPSdigest, run your idea by Pete Goldin.