CMS integrations
DEV.to
GrowGanic cross-posts each finished article to DEV.to with a canonical link back to your own site.
A cross-post destination. Your article is copied here with a canonical link back to your primary site, so the ranking credit stays where it belongs. About 1 minutes.
#What connecting does
DEV.to is a cross-post destination, not a home. Your article lives on your primary site and a copy goes to DEV, carrying a canonical link back to your own URL so Google credits the original rather than the copy.
You can connect DEV alongside a primary destination, and every article that publishes will reach both. If DEV is the only destination you connect, it becomes the de-facto home and canonicals to itself.
Setup is one API key and about a minute.
#Before you start
- A DEV.to account. Nothing else: there is no plan requirement and no publication to create first.
#Connect
Set it up
- Open your DEV extensions page, or click your profile photo (top-right), then Settings, then Extensions.
- Under DEV Community API Keys, type a description (e.g. GrowGanic) and click Generate API Key. Copy the value.
- Tags are auto-derived from your article's target keyword. DEV.to allows up to 4 tags, lowercase, alphanumeric only (the API rejects hyphens on new tag creation).
- Cross-posted articles canonical-link back to your primary site automatically so your source site keeps the SEO ranking.
What you paste
| Field | Required | Where to find it |
|---|---|---|
| DEV API key | Yes | dev.to Settings, then Extensions, then DEV Community API Keys. Type a description and click Generate API Key. |
#Permissions we ask for
Every permission below is used by a call GrowGanic actually makes. We ask for nothing we do not use.
| Permission | Used for | Why |
|---|---|---|
| DEV Community API key | Confirming the account and creating, updating and deleting articles | DEV issues one key rather than per-scope tokens. It acts as your account against the Forem API and can be revoked from the same settings page at any time. |
GrowGanic reads your own account to confirm the key works, and writes articles. It does not read your feed, your follows, your notifications or anyone else's posts.
#What we write
| Field | What goes in it |
|---|---|
| title | The article title. |
| body_markdown | The article body as Markdown, which is DEV's native format. |
| description | The excerpt, capped at 220 characters. |
| main_image | The hero image. |
| tags | Up to four tags derived from your target keyword. |
| canonical_url | Your primary site's URL for this article. This is what keeps the ranking credit on your own domain. |
| published | True. DEV is a cross-post, so it follows the primary. |
Fields your setup does not have are skipped rather than guessed at, and the article publishes with the ones it does have.
The hero image
The hero is sent as a URL and DEV rehosts it through its own image CDN, which is how Forem handles every cover image.
The copy DEV makes keeps our image's content marker, so a retry after a lost response can tell the article already carries the right picture rather than sending it again.
#Publishing behaviour
Tags are lowercased, stripped to letters and digits, capped at twenty characters each and limited to four. Forem rejects hyphens when creating a new tag, which is why they are removed rather than passed through.
Editing an article in GrowGanic updates the same DEV article. It never creates a second one.
Draft mode is not offered for DEV, because it is not your own site. A cross-post that sits unpublished on someone else's platform is not doing the job you connected it for.
If this destination is ever unreachable, the article is not held. It publishes to your GrowGanic blog and moves here on its own once the connection is healthy again. GrowGanic never holds a finished article back waiting for you.
#Disconnect
Disconnecting stops cross-posting to DEV. Articles already there stay published and stay yours, canonical links intact.
You can also revoke the API key from dev.to Settings, Extensions. GrowGanic finds out on the next call, switches the connection off and emails you. The key you pasted is kept, so that once the problem is fixed clicking Test puts the connection back with nothing re-entered. Disconnect if you want it gone from our database.
Open Integrations in GrowGanic, find this destination and click Disconnect. The stored credential is deleted from our database in the same step, not marked inactive. Articles already published stay exactly where they are, and they are yours.
#Troubleshooting
| What you see | Why | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| Invalid DEV.to API key. | The key was refused, usually a partial paste or a revoked key. | Generate a fresh one at dev.to/settings/extensions and paste the whole value. |
| DEV.to rejected the API key during publish. | The key was revoked after the connection was made. | Generate a new key and reconnect from the Integrations page. |
| My article has fewer tags on DEV than in GrowGanic. | DEV allows four tags and rejects hyphens on tags it has to create. | Nothing to fix. The four that survive are the ones closest to your target keyword. |
Still stuck? Email [email protected] and tell us the sentence you are seeing. Or read the other destinations.