Move from confluence as CMS to jekyll

[Martijn Dashorst <ma...@gmail.com>]

I'm searching for a way to make our website more manageable, and I've
heard that svnpubsub will allow us to quickly update our website
(faster than currently). The snag is that the files need to be in a
svn repo.

As I hate xml for editing documents, I was looking for a decent
replacement. Having worked with markdown (or textile), these plain
text formats are really nice to work in and deliver quick results.
Next I was looking for a CMS that would generate static HTML as
required for a migration to svnpubsub. The ruby tool 'jekyll' seems to
work great: we can have a couple of templates, blog items, and it is
all quickly generated, so anyone with ruby (or possibly jruby)
installed can update the website.

I've created a temporary github project to experiment with jekyll and
a new Wicket site design. The site design is a matter of another vote
thread. In this discussion/vote I want to ensure that the way forward
is jekyll.

If you are wondering if jekyll is something for us, try it with the
github project and convert a couple of pages and release notes from
our wicket website. I've converted two examples, and created the
quickstart page.

When you look at the site, it is a bit of a hodgepodge since the front
page and getting started pages are not Markdown based, but rather HTML
based. This was done because I needed more flexibility in the rendered
markup rather than have speed in editing content (such as is the case
with the examples).

The main plus points I see with Jekyll are:
 * flexible
 * generates static markup
 * easy to grok
 * easy to extend
 * easy to use as a CMS

I haven't found stuff I didn't like (yet).

For example, to update the website to a new release, all we need to do
is modify the _config.yml and let jekyll regenerate all pages. We
could even add that to the release script :)

Creating release notes should be easier too (I find markdown syntax to
be really easy to grok)

So what do you think, is jekyll the way forward (I'll put up the
design in a separate discussion)?

Martijn

PS. This is not about replacing the WIKI with something else... Just
the Wicket website generator.
PPS. No we won't be able to use Wicket as a front end for the Wicket
website. Websites need to be static HTML in order to meet infra@
requirements of scalability and availability.
PPPS. Yes theoretically we could write a static website generator
using Wicket, however we need a new CMS quickly rather than
eventually, so I'd rather use existing software than something
imaginary.

Re: Move from confluence as CMS to jekyll

[Martijn Dashorst <ma...@gmail.com>]

I've modified the main branch from the github project to use the old
Wicket style, in order to make moving to jekyll as a CMS more clear.

Benefits of jekyll:

 * new version of wicket is:
    - modifying _config.yml to add the version to the list of available versions
    - modifying _config.yml to set the current version
    - add an announcement to the _posts directory
    - regenerate the site
    - commit

* adding a new post to _posts automatically updates the front page
*and* the atom.xml

Since jekyll is a programming environment and a cms, we can do a lot
that is hard to do in confluence. For example modifying a template
file triggers a regeneration of all affected files, not just the
template file (which was a problem with confluence)

We can use html, textile or markdown (my favorite) as template language.

Now that I have transferred most of our docs from the WICKETxSITE
space to the jekyll CMS I think it is a perfect match for our CMS
needs.

Consider me +1 to switching.

Martijn

On Wed, May 26, 2010 at 12:53 AM, Gerolf Seitz <ge...@gmail.com> wrote:
> +1 for moving to a jekyll generated website
>
>  Gerolf
>
> On Tue, May 25, 2010 at 11:47 PM, Martijn Dashorst <
> martijn.dashorst@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> The github project I mentioned is:
>>
>> http://github.com/dashorst/wicket-site/
>>
>> Of course this will be folded back into ASF svn should we decide to use
>> Jekyll.
>>
>> I'll let this discussion/vote/decision making process run for about a
>> week and continue to tweak the project.
>>
>> Martijn
>>
>> On Tue, May 25, 2010 at 11:43 PM, Martijn Dashorst
>> <ma...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> > I'm searching for a way to make our website more manageable, and I've
>> > heard that svnpubsub will allow us to quickly update our website
>> > (faster than currently). The snag is that the files need to be in a
>> > svn repo.
>> >
>> > As I hate xml for editing documents, I was looking for a decent
>> > replacement. Having worked with markdown (or textile), these plain
>> > text formats are really nice to work in and deliver quick results.
>> > Next I was looking for a CMS that would generate static HTML as
>> > required for a migration to svnpubsub. The ruby tool 'jekyll' seems to
>> > work great: we can have a couple of templates, blog items, and it is
>> > all quickly generated, so anyone with ruby (or possibly jruby)
>> > installed can update the website.
>> >
>> > I've created a temporary github project to experiment with jekyll and
>> > a new Wicket site design. The site design is a matter of another vote
>> > thread. In this discussion/vote I want to ensure that the way forward
>> > is jekyll.
>> >
>> > If you are wondering if jekyll is something for us, try it with the
>> > github project and convert a couple of pages and release notes from
>> > our wicket website. I've converted two examples, and created the
>> > quickstart page.
>> >
>> > When you look at the site, it is a bit of a hodgepodge since the front
>> > page and getting started pages are not Markdown based, but rather HTML
>> > based. This was done because I needed more flexibility in the rendered
>> > markup rather than have speed in editing content (such as is the case
>> > with the examples).
>> >
>> > The main plus points I see with Jekyll are:
>> >  * flexible
>> >  * generates static markup
>> >  * easy to grok
>> >  * easy to extend
>> >  * easy to use as a CMS
>> >
>> > I haven't found stuff I didn't like (yet).
>> >
>> > For example, to update the website to a new release, all we need to do
>> > is modify the _config.yml and let jekyll regenerate all pages. We
>> > could even add that to the release script :)
>> >
>> > Creating release notes should be easier too (I find markdown syntax to
>> > be really easy to grok)
>> >
>> > So what do you think, is jekyll the way forward (I'll put up the
>> > design in a separate discussion)?
>> >
>> > Martijn
>> >
>> > PS. This is not about replacing the WIKI with something else... Just
>> > the Wicket website generator.
>> > PPS. No we won't be able to use Wicket as a front end for the Wicket
>> > website. Websites need to be static HTML in order to meet infra@
>> > requirements of scalability and availability.
>> > PPPS. Yes theoretically we could write a static website generator
>> > using Wicket, however we need a new CMS quickly rather than
>> > eventually, so I'd rather use existing software than something
>> > imaginary.
>> >
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Become a Wicket expert, learn from the best: http://wicketinaction.com
>> Apache Wicket 1.4 increases type safety for web applications
>> Get it now: http://www.apache.org/dyn/closer.cgi/wicket/1.4.8
>>
>



-- 
Become a Wicket expert, learn from the best: http://wicketinaction.com
Apache Wicket 1.4 increases type safety for web applications
Get it now: http://www.apache.org/dyn/closer.cgi/wicket/1.4.8

Re: Move from confluence as CMS to jekyll

[Gerolf Seitz <ge...@gmail.com>]

+1 for moving to a jekyll generated website

  Gerolf

On Tue, May 25, 2010 at 11:47 PM, Martijn Dashorst <
martijn.dashorst@gmail.com> wrote:

> The github project I mentioned is:
>
> http://github.com/dashorst/wicket-site/
>
> Of course this will be folded back into ASF svn should we decide to use
> Jekyll.
>
> I'll let this discussion/vote/decision making process run for about a
> week and continue to tweak the project.
>
> Martijn
>
> On Tue, May 25, 2010 at 11:43 PM, Martijn Dashorst
> <ma...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > I'm searching for a way to make our website more manageable, and I've
> > heard that svnpubsub will allow us to quickly update our website
> > (faster than currently). The snag is that the files need to be in a
> > svn repo.
> >
> > As I hate xml for editing documents, I was looking for a decent
> > replacement. Having worked with markdown (or textile), these plain
> > text formats are really nice to work in and deliver quick results.
> > Next I was looking for a CMS that would generate static HTML as
> > required for a migration to svnpubsub. The ruby tool 'jekyll' seems to
> > work great: we can have a couple of templates, blog items, and it is
> > all quickly generated, so anyone with ruby (or possibly jruby)
> > installed can update the website.
> >
> > I've created a temporary github project to experiment with jekyll and
> > a new Wicket site design. The site design is a matter of another vote
> > thread. In this discussion/vote I want to ensure that the way forward
> > is jekyll.
> >
> > If you are wondering if jekyll is something for us, try it with the
> > github project and convert a couple of pages and release notes from
> > our wicket website. I've converted two examples, and created the
> > quickstart page.
> >
> > When you look at the site, it is a bit of a hodgepodge since the front
> > page and getting started pages are not Markdown based, but rather HTML
> > based. This was done because I needed more flexibility in the rendered
> > markup rather than have speed in editing content (such as is the case
> > with the examples).
> >
> > The main plus points I see with Jekyll are:
> >  * flexible
> >  * generates static markup
> >  * easy to grok
> >  * easy to extend
> >  * easy to use as a CMS
> >
> > I haven't found stuff I didn't like (yet).
> >
> > For example, to update the website to a new release, all we need to do
> > is modify the _config.yml and let jekyll regenerate all pages. We
> > could even add that to the release script :)
> >
> > Creating release notes should be easier too (I find markdown syntax to
> > be really easy to grok)
> >
> > So what do you think, is jekyll the way forward (I'll put up the
> > design in a separate discussion)?
> >
> > Martijn
> >
> > PS. This is not about replacing the WIKI with something else... Just
> > the Wicket website generator.
> > PPS. No we won't be able to use Wicket as a front end for the Wicket
> > website. Websites need to be static HTML in order to meet infra@
> > requirements of scalability and availability.
> > PPPS. Yes theoretically we could write a static website generator
> > using Wicket, however we need a new CMS quickly rather than
> > eventually, so I'd rather use existing software than something
> > imaginary.
> >
>
>
>
> --
> Become a Wicket expert, learn from the best: http://wicketinaction.com
> Apache Wicket 1.4 increases type safety for web applications
> Get it now: http://www.apache.org/dyn/closer.cgi/wicket/1.4.8
>

Re: Move from confluence as CMS to jekyll

[Martijn Dashorst <ma...@gmail.com>]

The github project I mentioned is:

http://github.com/dashorst/wicket-site/

Of course this will be folded back into ASF svn should we decide to use Jekyll.

I'll let this discussion/vote/decision making process run for about a
week and continue to tweak the project.

Martijn

On Tue, May 25, 2010 at 11:43 PM, Martijn Dashorst
<ma...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm searching for a way to make our website more manageable, and I've
> heard that svnpubsub will allow us to quickly update our website
> (faster than currently). The snag is that the files need to be in a
> svn repo.
>
> As I hate xml for editing documents, I was looking for a decent
> replacement. Having worked with markdown (or textile), these plain
> text formats are really nice to work in and deliver quick results.
> Next I was looking for a CMS that would generate static HTML as
> required for a migration to svnpubsub. The ruby tool 'jekyll' seems to
> work great: we can have a couple of templates, blog items, and it is
> all quickly generated, so anyone with ruby (or possibly jruby)
> installed can update the website.
>
> I've created a temporary github project to experiment with jekyll and
> a new Wicket site design. The site design is a matter of another vote
> thread. In this discussion/vote I want to ensure that the way forward
> is jekyll.
>
> If you are wondering if jekyll is something for us, try it with the
> github project and convert a couple of pages and release notes from
> our wicket website. I've converted two examples, and created the
> quickstart page.
>
> When you look at the site, it is a bit of a hodgepodge since the front
> page and getting started pages are not Markdown based, but rather HTML
> based. This was done because I needed more flexibility in the rendered
> markup rather than have speed in editing content (such as is the case
> with the examples).
>
> The main plus points I see with Jekyll are:
>  * flexible
>  * generates static markup
>  * easy to grok
>  * easy to extend
>  * easy to use as a CMS
>
> I haven't found stuff I didn't like (yet).
>
> For example, to update the website to a new release, all we need to do
> is modify the _config.yml and let jekyll regenerate all pages. We
> could even add that to the release script :)
>
> Creating release notes should be easier too (I find markdown syntax to
> be really easy to grok)
>
> So what do you think, is jekyll the way forward (I'll put up the
> design in a separate discussion)?
>
> Martijn
>
> PS. This is not about replacing the WIKI with something else... Just
> the Wicket website generator.
> PPS. No we won't be able to use Wicket as a front end for the Wicket
> website. Websites need to be static HTML in order to meet infra@
> requirements of scalability and availability.
> PPPS. Yes theoretically we could write a static website generator
> using Wicket, however we need a new CMS quickly rather than
> eventually, so I'd rather use existing software than something
> imaginary.
>



-- 
Become a Wicket expert, learn from the best: http://wicketinaction.com
Apache Wicket 1.4 increases type safety for web applications
Get it now: http://www.apache.org/dyn/closer.cgi/wicket/1.4.8