Follow steps 1-3 if you haven't signed up yet. If you've signed up, please start from Step #4.

Step 1

Visit hackernoon.com/signup
Enter your email and password or choose sign up with google
Choose your desired Handle.
Make sure everything be lower case and contain no space.
Now, this is the fun part - you can choose the tags you are interested in. This will customize your Daily Tech Brief and down the line, your very own homepage 😉.
You can also choose to skip this step, no hard feelings!

Step 2

Next, choose what kind of user you are!

Choose "I read and write."
You will then be directed to this page to fill out your profile including bio, picture, social links, and call to action.
That's it, now you have a writer account! Note that your CTA link won't work until you publish your first story!

Step 3

What you see next is your HackerNoon Contributor Dashboard.

Step 4 - Important Decision: In With the New or Nah?

Let's walk you through the general steps by creating and submitting a sample draft. Please keep reading to find instructions on specific editors.

Click on 'New Draft'

This is what you see next. You can either choose Editor 3.0 (with Markdown Support!), or Editor 2.0.
The Page that opens is called the HackerNoon Writer Dashboard.
Click on 'Title' and give your story a Headline.
Hit Enter.
You are now in the 'Body' of your HackerNoon Story Draft.
Write out your story.
Click 'Save' if you wish to finish the story later.

Once done, click on 'Story Settings' and 'Submit Story for Review' to submit your draft for review by the HackerNoon Editors.

While this covers the basics of submitting a story to HackerNoon, you might want to make the story more reader-friendly by adding images, code-snippets, and format it in a manner to enhance readability. Below are instructions for how you format your HackerNoon Draft before submitting it to the HackerNoon Editors for review.

Step 5- Editor 2.0 (old)

Please skip this step if you're interested in the new editor.

How to Add Images and Code Snippets to Your HackerNoon Draft

Add an Image

The first button on the expanded '+' icon is the Import an Image button
Click on it to choose the source of your image.
You can add an image via any of the following sources - Local Machine, URL, Facebook, Instagram, Google Drive, and Dropbox.
If the source is correct, you will see a preview of the image.
Click 'Upload' to add the image in your HackerNoon Story Draft.

That's it. Your image is now uploaded.

Steps to Add a Code Snippet to Your HackerNoon Draft

The second button on the expanded '+' icon is the Import a code snippet button
Click on it to add your code snippet
A code-editor window pops up where you can write/paste your code snippet
In the 'Language' field, fill in the programming language of the code snippet
Click 'Insert' to add the code in your HackerNoon Story Draft

That's it. Your code-snippet is now uploaded!

The GIF below depicts how to add code snippets to your HackerNoon Draft.

The third icon in the expanded '+' icon adds a horizontal separator below the line where it was added and looks like this:

How to Format Your HackerNoon Draft Before Submitting for Review

Select a segment of the text and a format bar will show up to help make the segmented text easier to read. It looks like this:

The first icon makes the selected text formatted Bold. You can also format bold a selected text snippet by pressing Ctrl+B (or command+B on Macs)
The second icon makes the selected text formatted italicized. You can also format bold a selected text snippet by pressing Ctrl+I (or command+I on Macs)
The third icon makes the selected text formatted as:

a highlighted code

The fourth icon makes the entire paragraph containing the selected text formatted as a quote.

The fifth icon makes the entire paragraph containing the selected text formatted as an unordered list.

The sixth icon makes the entire paragraph containing the selected text formatted as an ordered list.

The seventh icon enables you to add a hyperlink to the selected text.

Step 6 - Applicable to Both Editors

Optimizing Your Story for Distribution Within the HackerNoon Ecosystem

Clicking on 'Story Settings'. At the top right open up your story menu. It looks like this:

Feature Image

Learn about the value of images here.

Clicking on the 'CLICK TO UPLOAD FEATURED IMAGE' lets you add a featured image to your story. This is the default image that is associated with your story during distribution within and outside the HackerNoon Ecosystem.
Clicking on the 'UNSPLASH' lets you pick a free featured image from the Unsplash library.

Meta Description

Learn more about the Value of Meta Description here.

The section labeled 'Make Your Story Stand Out' allows you to enter Meta Description that would help Search Engine recognize the content to highlight. When you share the URL of your story on different social media channels, Meta Description is often what appears under the feature image and title.

Canonical Link

Learn more about best republishing practices here.

The section labeled 'First Seen At' allows you to embed a canonical link to the location where this story was originally published. In case it is an original story, you can leave it blank.

Canonical links pass the link juice to the page that hosted the original content. This is helpful for extremely successful writers who already have a huge following on the internet, such as a Neil Patel or a Vitalik Buterin. For the rest of us, not including a canonical link helps leverage HackerNoon's high Domain Authority to show your story higher on Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs).

TL;DR

If you haven't been living under a rock, you would know that TL;DR means Too long, didn't read. But there you go!

Shhhh - don't tell anyone. But if you read until here, you've found yourself an Easter Egg! We will release a mobile app (soonish) wherein readers can simply swipe left and right (think - Tinderized app) to read the TL;DR of each story!

You can either write your own, or click AI-generated TL;DR to let our bot do it for you! :)

Once all of the above fields are filled, click 'Submit Story for Review' to notify HackerNoon Editors of your story submission. If you've missed out on any of the above steps, an Editor will reach out to you via email or Community DM to add the missing information. So be on the lookout for that if your story is not published within 7-10 days of submission or so.

Notes

Leave us a note, because hey, we're all in this together.

7. What is Markdown? Editor 3.0 (new)

Markdown is a way to create formatted content using plain text. For a technical and detailed explanation of how it works please click here. For a basic overview, please continue reading.