Welcome to the CenturyLink Cloud knowledge base repository. This is the source of information on all of our products and services available today. Please follow the guidelines below to contribute or make changes.

If you are new to Git and Github, we highly recommend spending 5 minutes reading this great article on Understanding the Github Flow. This repo follows the Github Flow.

##Overview

The repository is organized by category, and each folder represents a category. Within each category folder are markdown (.md) files that represent an individual knowledge base article.

The top of each .md file contains metadata about the knowledge base article itself. It is used to list things such as author, date created, modified, keywords, title, etc. It looks like this:

{{{
  "title": "ARTICLE TITLE",
  "date": "01-15-2015",
  "author": "Author Name",
  "attachments": [],
  "related-products" : [],
  "contentIsHTML": false,
  "sticky": true
}}}

Generally this should be set to false. Only when a document is written entirely in HTML syntax should this be set to true.

If you would like to pin a kb article so that it always appears at the top of it's category, set "sticky":true. By default, it's set to false.

##How to Make Additions or Changes

1. Fork the https://github.com/CenturyLinkCloud/PublicKB repository. This will produce a personal copy of this repo.

2. Then Clone the repo to your desktop.

3. Anything in the master branch is always deployable. Create a new branch from master. Your branch name should be descriptive (e.g., january-release-notes, anti-affinity-policy-faq) so that others have an idea of what the branch is for.

4. Once your branch has been created, make your changes (add, edit, delete) your knowledge base article in your favorite Markdown editor (we like Atom).

Within the top level categories, addtional tags can be assigned to articles based on the name of the articles parent folder name. Keep in mind the need for an addtional level of folders when linking to images or other articles when authoring an article in a sub-category folder.

Links to articles should follow this format:

```
[Link Text](../category/kb-article-name.md)
[Link Text](../category/sub-category/kb-article-name.md)
```

so like this (folder names are case-sensitive):

```
[Packages Best Practices](../Blueprints/packages-best-practices.md)
[Using SAML for Single-Sign-On](../Control Portal/using-saml-for-single-sign-on-to-the-centurylink-platform-control-portal.md )
```

Links to external sites should follow this format:

```
[Managed Microsoft SQL](//www.centurylinkcloud.com/managed-services/ms-sql)
```

When adding an image to an article, place the image file in the images/ directory in the root of this repo. In the article itself, set the image source path like so:

```
/* Top Level Category Article */
../images/[image file]

/* Sub-Category Article */
../../images/[image file]
```

When adding an attachment to an article, place the file in the 'attachments/' directory at the root of this repo. In the article itself, add the file information to the front-matter data at the top of the article like so:

```
"attachments": [
  {
    "file_name": "Attached File",
    "url": "../attachments/Balancing Agility Cost and Control.pdf",
    "type": "application/pdf"
  }
]
```

"file_name" will be the human readable output of the file which will appear on the page

"url" needs to be set exactly like the above example, like so:

```
../attachments/[file name]
```

"type" is simply the MIME type of the file and is used to check which sort of icon to present on the front end.

Tables in articles should follow this format:

**Bold Text**|**Bold Text**|**Bold Text**
-------------|-------------|-------------
TEXT COLUMN A|TEXT COLUMN B|TEXT COLUMN C
TEXT COLUMN A|TEXT COLUMN B|TEXT COLUMN C

4. Commit your change(s) locally to your branch.

5. Push or sync your commit(s) to the remote repository on Github.

6. Create a pull request to merge your changes into the master branch.

• Create a pull request using Github for Windows
• Create a pull request using Github for Mac

7. CenturyLink Cloud Platform Team reviews your pull request. If accepted, it will be added to the Knowledge Base on CenturyLinkCloud.com.