Retrieve Sign In

• edit articles
• add to the code library
• design and write a tutorial
• comment on any Webmonkey article

Webmonkey is an online resource for web developers. Here, you'll find tutorials, tips and advice for designing and building websites and programming web applications. We have articles for beginners, professionals, students, grandparents, bloggers and programmers of all skill levels.

We've been around since 1996, when the site was launched by the staff of Wired Digital, the online home of Wired magazine, Wired News and the search engine Hotbot. After being run by different entities for a number of years, Webmonkey rejoined the Wired.com family in April 2008.

Webmonkey.com has been completely redesigned. We've taken many of the features of the old Webmonkey -- the daily Monkey Bites blog, the reference library and the bulk of the tutorials -- and given them a new home. When you browse the new website, you'll notice that the vast majority of the content is now hosted on a wiki.

A wiki is a type of website that lets its users edit the content stored on its pages. All of the tutorials, tips, reference materials and code examples on Webmonkey are hosted on a wiki.

With very few exceptions, each article on Webmonkey is open for editing. This allows readers to update and improve the instructions and advice inside each article. Web development moves quickly, technologies change and standards evolve. You can help us keep up.

Go to the section of the page you want to edit and click on the Edit button at the top of that section (look next to the section's headline). You can also edit multiple sections on a single page at once. Just click on the Edit tab near the top of the page you want to update.

You will need to be a registered user of Webmonkey or Wired to edit articles. If you're not already registered, you'll be asked to sign up for an account the first time you try to edit an article. Once you're logged in, you can edit articles, upload images and participate in discussions.

Webmonkey is hosted using the open-source MediaWiki software platform, the same software used by Wikipedia and countless other wikis on the web. MediaWiki uses its own markup language that's similar to HTML, but also simpler. When you're editing an article, you'll see some formatting tools directly embedded in the pages to help you add links and format fonts.

If you need further help, MediaWiki markup is well documented, so there are resources on the web you can turn to.

MediaWiki
Wiki Markup
Wiki Markup Editing Help
HTML to Wiki Converter

Each article has a Discussion page, which is a separate area for comments, questions and debates. To ask a question about a tutorial, a reference term or a piece of code, just click on the Discussion tab at the top of the page. This will bring up the Discussion page where you can add your thoughts to the mix. You will need to be a registered user to contribute to the Discussion pages.

The Discussion pages are where the decisions about the final product get hashed out. It's OK to ask for help and be curious, but please keep things constructive. Insulting comments and spam will not be tolerated.

Click on the big "Create an article" button that appears at the top of every page. Be sure to read our Editorial Guidelines before submitting a tip or tutorial.

Of course. When you click the "Create an article" button, you'll be asked what kind of article you want to create: a tutorial, a reference page or a code snippet.

When we redesigned Webmonkey, we moved the majority of the old articles over to the new site. In each case, we redirected the old URLs to point to the new locations. We also updated many of the key articles in our library to make sure that they remain useful and relevant.

In the process of moving over all of that content, we found a number of articles that weren't really relevant anymore. We decided there wasn't much immediate need for tutorials on topics like GoLive CyberStudio or SMIL 1.0, so we left those behind.

It's important to note that those old Webmonkey tutorials, even the antiques in the attic, aren't gone for good. Over the years, we've published hundreds of tutorials, essays, rants and reviews -- all of which will make their way to the new site eventually. We just decided to save the biggest fish first. If you're looking for a specific article, let us know about it and recommend we move it to the top of the list.

While the code examples on Webmonkey should be used on your website with discretion and at your own risk, we do take several steps to help ensure you can cut and paste our code without worry.

All the code examples submitted by Wired staff are checked by the Webmonkey team before they're published. In the case of community submissions, we check the code as soon as it's submitted. If we see anything that looks like it might cause a problem, we work with the author to fix it right away.

It is a requirement of our Editorial Guidelines that authors monitor the Recent Changes RSS feed for their submissions. This feed is a standard feature of MediaWiki that publishes an alert every time a change is made to an article. The staff also monitors these feeds and checks any updates made by the community.

If you'd like to see all the changes made to a specific piece of code or a set of instructions on Webmonkey, you can view the edit history of any page on the site. Just click on the "History" tab at the top of the page to see the code as it was originally submitted, as well as any changes made to it since.

Webmonkey does not allow anyone to edit content anonymously. You have to be a registered user to make changes, and we'll discipline any users making malicious or improper changes to code and content.

Finally, all code and content on Webmonkey is published under a Creative Commons Share-Alike Attribution license, unless otherwise explicitly stated by the author or by the code.

New articles are deleted if they don't adhere to Webmonkey's guidelines. Any articles containing copyrighted content lifted from another website or publication, and articles that are obviously spam or self-promoting in nature, are usually deleted right away. Short articles with no meaningful content, test articles or duplicate articles are also deleted right away.

Sometimes, we may need to move an article or merge the content in one article into another if the topics are similar enough. In those cases, readers looking for the old page will be redirected to the proper location automatically.

If your article was deleted or moved, you can still continue to contribute. If your submissions are continually failing to adhere to Webmonkey's guidelines, we'll let you know.

The short answer is you can't. Only Webmonkey staff can change the names of articles. If you want to change the name of something you submitted, let us know and we'll work with you to decide what its new name should be.

It's your source for web development news, software reviews, tips and tricks for programmers, plus any other informational tidbits that matter to people who like to build websites. Monkey_bites is updated multiple times a day. You can leave a comment on any blog post. We also have an RSS feed -- go ahead and subscribe.