👋 Welcome to ethereum.org!

Ethereum.org is a primary online resource for the Ethereum community. It is improved and changed over time through the contributions of community members who submit content, give feedback, or volunteer their time to managing its evolution.

If you’re interested in helping to improve ethereum.org, start here. This contribution guide will help you get started.

Ethereum.org’s design and content is guided by three core principles:

🌏 1. Ethereum.org is a portal to resources created by the community

• It will never be “encyclopedia ethereum” - we can’t add every link, or cover every topic
• Rather, its purpose is to direct people to community-built resources
• Ethereum.org will always have minimal native-content

🛠 2. Ethereum.org is a work in progress, because Ethereum is a work in progress

• The site has been re-launched explicitly in an unfinished state
• We expect it to change over time, including both content and design
• To accommodate long-term changes, the site has a simple modular structure that will let us add or remove subpages

🦄 3. Ethereum.org is not a typical product website

• Ethereum.org is a representation of our decentralized community, and a starting point for those who want to join it
• Ethereum.org should not be a traditional product website like every other blockchain. There is no sales pitch.

How can I contribute?

Keeping in mind the above core principles, there are many ways you can get involved in improving the website!

• Check out the issues page and see if there are any you can help with!
• Submit links to add to specific sections that are incomplete, by submitting a pull-request
• Identify out-of-date information on ethereum.org (or linked to from ethereum.org) and submit a pull-request
• Submit new designs for the front-page HERO image - find the specs here and contact us at [email protected]
• Suggest ideas for new subpages, new content, or other ways to improve ethereum.org by opening an issue.

Notes on individual sub-pages:

If you want to suggest changes to particular sub-pages, keep in mind the purpose of each page:

🛠 Developers

• The purpose of this page is to collect core technical resources helpful to someone building on Ethereum
• Information should be kept as up to date as possible, as new tools appear, standards are adopted, or material is deprecated
• This page will never be completely comprehensive: the goal is to list the most popular or widely used resources or tools.

Developer tool submissions will be assessed by the following criteria:

• Is it meaningfully differentiated from tools already listed?
  • New categories or types of tools
  • New features compared to existing similar tools
  • Targeted at a distinct use-case not covered by existing similar tools
• Is the tool well documented?
  • Does documentation exist?
  • Is it sufficient to use the tool?
  • Has it been recently updated?
• Is the tool widely used?
  • We will consider metrics such as Github stars, download statistics, and whether it is used by known companies or projects.
• Is the tool of sufficient quality?
  • Are there recurring bugs?
  • Is the tool reliable?

📚 Learn

• The purpose of this page is to collect educational material about Ethereum on a variety of topics
• Some information will be technical in nature, but it will also include non-technical information, or articles that may serve as inspiration to community members

📱 Use

• This page is for the person who wants to get started using Ethereum, but doesn’t know how.
• This page will stay limited to 3 sections: Dapps, Ether, and Wallets.
• Useful contributions include: submitting suggestions for dapps to rotate onto this page, submitting suggestions for better links about Ether or Wallets.
• We will rotate the list of dapps on this page frequently!

Dapp submissions will be assessed on the following criteria:

• Is the dapp a "user" application? This page is targeted at the average user, which means it wouldn't be appropriate to list a dev tool or app targeted at sophisticated technical users.
• Does the application have a good user on-boarding process, such that a user can follow the link, and find all the instructions they need to get started?
• Does the application "round out" the list by adding a new kind of application not already present?
• Is there evidence that the application is popular and well established?

👋 Beginners

• The purpose of this page is to offer a coherent answer to the most basic questions about Ethereum: what is it, and why does it exist?
• Because this page is very simple and does not contain much content, changes to the text will be limited.
• Useful contributions include: suggesting better “beginner” content to link at the bottom of the page, or suggesting images that could be added to the page to break up the text.

🤔 How are decisions about the site made?

Decisions about individual PRs, design evolution, and major upgrades to the website are made by a team of people from across the Ethereum ecosystem. This team includes project managers, developers, designers, marketing and communications, and subject matter experts. Community input informs every decision: raising questions in issues, submitting PRs, or contacting the team at [email protected] is helpful!

This team currently includes:

• Anuj Gupta (Ethereum Foundation)
• Amanda Gutterman (ConsenSys)
• Hudson Jameson (Ethereum Foundation Devops)
• Taeyeon Kim (Ethereum Foundation)
• Jamie Pitts (Ethereum Foundation Devops)
• Sam Richards (Ethereum Foundation)
• Joseph Schweitzer (Ethereum Foundation)
• Josh Stark (L4, ETHGlobal, Ethereum Foundation)
• Charles St. Louis (MakerDAO & Ethereum Cat Herders)
• Evan Van Ness (ConsenSys & Ethereum Foundation)
• Alan Woo (Independent designer & developer)

Development

Unix/Mac

# In the root folder:
yarn global add vuepress
yarn
vuepress dev docs

Windows

• Download node.js & npm
• Download Yarn
• Download Git Bash
• Download the master branch
• Navigate to the /ethereum-org-website folder
• Right click and select Git Bash Here

Run the following commands:

npm install -g yarn
npm install -g vuepress
yarn
vuepress dev docs

Build

# In the root folder:
vuepress build docs

The build should be exported to /docs/.vuepress/dist which can be deployed to a static host. We are hosting the site on Netlify, which handles this for us.

Deployment Lifecycle

How updates are made to ethereum.org

Submit

• Create a new issue
  • If you plan to submit a PR to resolve the issue, assign it to yourself
  • If you begin work on the issue, label it as wip
• In your PR commit message, reference the issue it resolves
  • e.g. Add height to sidebar for scroll [Fixes #185]
  • Read Closing issues using keywords for more information
• Submit PRs to the dev branch
• Netlify deploys all PRs to a publicly accessible preview URL:
• Confirm the Netlify preview deploy looks & functions as expected

Review

• The website team reviews every PR
• See how decisions are made on content changes
• Acceptable PRs will be approved & merged into the dev branch

Deploy

• master is continually synced to Netlify and will automatically deploy new commits to etheruem.org
• The website team will periodically merge dev into master (typically multiple times per week)

Structure

Site content is in /docs folder. Everything else in /docs/.vuepress