Guidelines for Contributors

Overview

Our Mission

Digital Web Magazine aims to be the Web professional's publication of choice. The site's mission is best summed up on our about page:

Digital Web Magazine is a non-profit publication created by a world-wide network of volunteers dedicated to producing quality educational and informative material free-of-charge, to foster the development of the web for the benefit of all.

The Audience

80% of our readership is established professional Web designers, Web developers, information architects, usability engineers and user experience designers. 10% of our readership is freelance and/or amateur Web designers and Web developers. The remaining 10% are users who are interested in pursuing Web design as a career or who have a specific interest in some of the content in our magazine. For more information about our audience including purchasing power see our readership survey results.

Topics of Interest

While our magazine does not follow the traditional theme approach that most monthly printed publications do we try to maintain a specific focus of topics for the articles that we publish. The topic must be specifically related to Web design, Web development or information architecture. Generally speaking the article should probably fit into one of these core topic categories:

• Accessibility (ADA, Section 508, WAI)
• Business (Return on Investment)
• Client-Side Scripting (JavaScript, ECMAscript)
• Community (Collaboration, Conferences, Web Culture)
• Content (Editing, CMSs, Syndication, Writing)
• Developing for Databases (SQL, Oracle, MySQL)
• DHTML/DOM (Stylesheets, Markup and Scripting)
• Flash (ActionScripting, Remoting)
• Form and Function (interface design vs. interaction design)
• Independent Web Publishing (E-Zines, Journals, Weblogs)
• Information Architecture (Meta Data, Taxonomy, Thesaurus)
• Information Design (Contextual Analysis, Iconography, Labeling)
• Interaction Design (Functionality, Task Analysis, Use Cases)
• Interface Design (Grid, Layout, Navigation Structure)
• Legal Issues (Patents, Copyrights, and Trademarks)
• Liquid Web Design and Fluid Thinking (Flexible Layouts, Forgiving Design)
• Management (Business, Client and Project)
• Marketing and Advertising (Banners, Newsletters, Press Releases)
• Markup Languages (HTML, RSS, SVG, WML, XHTML)
• Meta Languages (SGML, XML)
• Motion Design (Animation, SMIL, Video)
• Search Engines (Crawlers, Engines, External, Internal, Meta Tags, Positioning, Search Services)
• Server-Side Programming (ASP, CGI Java, JSP, PHP, SSI)
• Statistics (User Surveys, Log Analysis)
• StyleSheets (CSS, XSL, XSLT)
• User Experience Design (IA, Information Design, Interaction Design, Interface Design, Visual Design)
• User-Centered Design (User Experience Design, Usability, Interaction Design)
• Usability (Computer-Human Interaction, Task Analysis, User Testing)
• Visual Design (Branding, Color Theory, Composition, Typography)
• Web Services (CORBA, COM, SOAP, XML)
• Web Standards (W3C, ISO, WASP, cross-platform, cross-browser)
• Workflow (Core, Development, Planning, Process)

Not all articles will fit within this list of categories. Some articles may venture outside of the traditional scope of our publication. The topics listed above are not intended to define more boundaries for our authors but to help inspire ideas that might never been considered otherwise.