Creating an appealing ContentDB page

Title and short description

Make sure that your package's title is unique, short, and descriptive.

Expand on the title with the short description. You have a limited number of characters, use them wisely!

# Bad, we know this is a mod for Minetest. Doesn't give much information other than "food"
description = The food mod for Minetest
# Much better, says what is actually in this mod!
description = Adds soup, cakes, bakes and juices

Thumbnail

A good thumbnail goes a long way to making a package more appealing. It's one of the few things a user sees before clicking on your package. Make sure it's possible to tell what a thumbnail is when it's small.

For a preview of what your package will look like inside Minetest, see Edit Package > Screenshots.

Screenshots

Upload a good selection of screenshots that show what is possible with your packages. You may wish to focus on a different key feature in each of your screenshots.

A lot of users won't bother reading text, and will just look at screenshots.

Long description

The target audience of your package page is end users. The long description should explain what your package is about, why the user should choose it, and how to use it if they download it.

NodeCore is a good example of what to do. For inspiration, you might want to look at how games on Steam write their descriptions.

Your long description might contain:

  • What does the package contain/have? ie: list of high-level features.
  • What makes it special? Why should users choose this over another package?
  • How can you use it?

The following are redundant and should probably not be included:

  • A heading with the title of the package
  • The short description
  • Links to a Git repository, the forum topic, the package's ContentDB page (ContentDB has fields for this)
  • License (unless you need to give more information than ContentDB's license fields)
  • API reference (unless your mod is a library only)
  • Development instructions for your package (this should be in the repo's README)
  • Screenshots that are already uploaded (unless you want to embed a recipe image in a specific place)
    • Note: you should avoid images in the long description as they won't be visible inside Minetest, when support for showing the long description is added.

Localize / Translate your package

According to Google Play, 64% of Minetest Android users don't have English as their main language. Adding translation support to your package increases accessibility. Using content translation, you can also translate your ContentDB page. See Edit Package > Translation for more information.

Translation - Minetest Modding Book Translating content meta - lua_api.md