Damilola Oladele

|| Technical Writing | Content Strategy | Community ||

I write developer documentation, API references, and technical marketing content for growing teams.

[Damilola Oladele @activus_d]

I received the inaugural @blackpythondevs Distinguished Service Award in recognition of my dedication, leadership, and meaningful impact on the community.

Read more: https://t.co/rFI1bLfTsZ

[Damilola Oladele @activus_d]

I added semantic search to my Jekyll blog as a way to get hands-on experience with AI integrations. The challenge: make it free to run without making search worse. Here's how I did it:

https://t.co/kbZjNgsfdW

[Damilola Oladele @activus_d]

While API references are important, they are just one component of a complete API documentation experience. Like other forms of product documentation, effective API documentation requires thinking beyond a list of endpoints and fields.

Read more: https://t.co/gCQqzTRYKS

[Damilola Oladele @activus_d]

After 22 months as Documentation Lead for Black Python Devs, I’m stepping into a broader leadership role while continuing to lead documentation efforts.

I’m the new 𝗦𝘂𝗯-𝗥𝗲𝗴𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹 𝗘𝘅𝗲𝗰𝘂𝘁𝗼𝗿 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗪𝗲𝘀𝘁 𝗔𝗳𝗿𝗶𝗰𝗮.

Read more: https://t.co/Yg0TTjzRkV

[Damilola Oladele @activus_d]

Documentation maintainers are the unsung heroes of open source. They make projects accessible, guide new contributors, and keep knowledge alive—yet their work often goes unnoticed.

To begin changing that, I’m launching a new series titled 𝗢𝗽𝗲𝗻-𝗦𝗼𝘂𝗿𝗰𝗲 𝗗𝗼𝗰𝘂𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗦𝘁𝗼𝗿𝗶𝗲𝘀, where documentation maintainers share their experiences, challenges, and insights about open-source documentation.

Want a preview of what's coming? → https://t.co/40ic3vjA8x

Help me find your favourite open-source documentation maintainer! Drop names in the comments, and let’s celebrate the people behind the docs.

[Damilola Oladele @activus_d]

Short-term contracts are common in technical writing, but they come with a reputation problem. Even when you do excellent work, a series of brief engagements can raise questions during hiring. Open-source work offers a practical way to offset that bias and build a stronger professional profile:

https://t.co/8hLDcLFb89

[Damilola Oladele @activus_d]

You can check out the blog here:
https://t.co/yMIZvvvs3M

[Damilola Oladele @activus_d]

A week after migrating my blog to Netlify, the results are in.

Out of 51 pages, 31 have now been indexed by Google. That’s a big jump from.

Nothing about the content changed. The difference came from hosting on my own domain, a cleaner sitemap, and better crawl accessibility.

This confirms what I suspected earlier: the problem wasn’t with my content, but rather with the hosting setup.

[Ayooluwaposi Olomo @posi_olomo]

I AM IN TEARS! THE 1ST OPEN-SOURCE NIGERIAN LANGUAGE TEXT CLASSIFIER ON @pypi.

Please try it out! I’ll spend the next week improving it and merging contributions.

Catch any errors? Let me know so I can fix them.

https://t.co/hx0Fg9DV79

[Damilola Oladele @activus_d]

@bigdevlarry For real😆🤣

[Damilola Oladele @activus_d]

Cool, but I’m worried about how secure this would be since email is one of the easiest things to get compromised.

[Bayomi @SemudaraAbayomi]

This Nigerian built a way to send money via emails 🤯🤯🤯

[Damilola Oladele @activus_d]

It's SDC season baby!

[Damilola Oladele @activus_d]

Most technical writers build documentation around assumptions. They assume users need detailed API references, or will read every section in order. But assumptions often fail, and user behavior tells a different story. User research is the clearest way to uncover that behavior.

In this post, I explain what user research is and how to conduct it for documentation:
https://t.co/LZy4OyIyxz

[Damilola Oladele @activus_d]

@ShawnBasquiat …and it’s your duty to make sure they know and trust you.

[Damilola Oladele @activus_d]

@ibukksss For real. It’s even more fascinating how they manage to do that every year.

[Damilola Oladele @activus_d]

@posi_olomo That’s interesting. What’s the RAM on your laptop, and what antivirus do you use? In my experience, some antivirus software can make a laptop very slow. I usually recommend sticking with Microsoft Defender, but keeping it updated.

[Damilola Oladele @activus_d]

hmmm...it's giving servitude

[Ibukun Amosu 🇳🇬🇬🇭 @amosuibk]

Intern, Full Stack Developer (Fully Remote)

Pay: N50k stipend

Send application to [email protected]

[Damilola Oladele @activus_d]

I recently migrated my blog from GitHub Pages to Netlify, and here’s why.

My posts weren’t getting indexed by Google. Out of 51 URLs, only three were appearing in search results.

At first, I tried manually indexing the site through Google Search Console, but crawling was painfully slow. Then I added a sitemap, hoping that would fix it. It didn’t.

The real issue was that my site was hosted on a github. io domain. Since I technically don’t own the domain, Google had trouble fetching and verifying the sitemap.

I tried manually submitting each URL, but GitHub Pages runs on shared servers with limited IPs. That led to Google hitting a crawl quota and pausing indexing altogether.

Eventually, I bought my own domain, https://t.co/IRowHRXo79, and migrated the site to Netlify.

Since the move, my site loads faster, Google accepted the sitemap, and I have some control over my setup.

I also implemented redirects so every request to the old address now points to https://t.co/IRowHRXo79

Lesson learned: if you’re serious about SEO and site visibility, don’t be afraid to spend a few bucks to get your own domain and host your blog on a platform that gives you flexibility and ownership.

Next is to learn how to improve the site for AI.