Re: Potential mention on the website

[David Blevins <da...@gmail.com>]

> On Mar 31, 2022, at 12:13 PM, Christopher Schultz <ch...@christopherschultz.net> wrote:
> 
> Mark,
> 
> On 3/29/22 19:40, Mark Thomas wrote:
>> I worry that putting much more than a simple link on the which version page could cause confusion. Something like:
>> "For users wanting a Java EE / Jakarta EE container that supports additional specifications like XXX see <a href="...">Apache TomEE</a>."
> 
> +1
> 
>> My preference is for a new menu item - probably under misc - called "Related Apache Projects" (a shorter, snappier title preferred) where we can link to the various ASF projects related to Tomcat and have a paragraph or two on each project.
> 
> I like this. What else might qualify? If it's really only TomEE (and flavors thereof), we could name that section "Enterprise .. something".
> 
>> Off the top of my head, there is Ant (initially created to build Tomcat), Commons Pool, DBCP, Modeler, Daemon (all spun off from Tomcat), httpd, TomEE and probably a bunch I have forgotten about.
> 
> Digester, another Tomcat graduate.
> 
> Other than TomEE (and httpd), those are all dependencies / upstream from Tomcat, which IMO puts TomEE in a slightly different bucket. I would say that httpd isn't really "related" to Tomcat other than (a) they are both ASF projects and (b) they are both web servers. But there's also ATS, ATC and probably one or two other web servers under ASF umbrella I haven't heard of yet.

On httpd, I know a very large number of Tomcat/TomEE users I see in the wild use httpd in front for load balancing.

I think a related projects page could be pretty great if we:

 - Mentioned why it is potentially interesting to Tomcat users and provided a pointer or two.  I.e. treat it as documentation, not just a list of links.  The section would still have to be brief -- no taking up a whole or even half a page.

 - Gave people a reason to look at it by linking to in other sections of the website beyond the left nav.  It would be context dependent.  For example, if we're talking about load balancing, we mention httpd and link to https://tomcat.apache.org/related.html#httpd.  The whichversion.html could have the one sentence that mentions TomEE as a way to get more Jakarta EE impls on Tomcat out-of-the-box and link to https://tomcat.apache.org/related.html#tomee

Could be a nice balance.  We could still mention things like TomEE where needed, but they'd be going to a page with a great big "related projects" title and a clear statement these are external projects, which would allow us to give a bit more information on why it's useful for Tomcat people without potentially confusing people in thinking it's a Tomcat thing.

Thoughts?


-David

Re: Potential mention on the website

[Christopher Schultz <ch...@christopherschultz.net>]

David,

On 3/31/22 22:25, David Blevins wrote:
>> On Mar 31, 2022, at 12:13 PM, Christopher Schultz
>> <ch...@christopherschultz.net> wrote:
>> 
>> Mark,
>> 
>> On 3/29/22 19:40, Mark Thomas wrote:
>>> I worry that putting much more than a simple link on the which
>>> version page could cause confusion. Something like: "For users
>>> wanting a Java EE / Jakarta EE container that supports additional
>>> specifications like XXX see <a href="...">Apache TomEE</a>."
>> 
>> +1
>> 
>>> My preference is for a new menu item - probably under misc -
>>> called "Related Apache Projects" (a shorter, snappier title
>>> preferred) where we can link to the various ASF projects related
>>> to Tomcat and have a paragraph or two on each project.
>> 
>> I like this. What else might qualify? If it's really only TomEE
>> (and flavors thereof), we could name that section "Enterprise ..
>> something".
>> 
>>> Off the top of my head, there is Ant (initially created to build
>>> Tomcat), Commons Pool, DBCP, Modeler, Daemon (all spun off from
>>> Tomcat), httpd, TomEE and probably a bunch I have forgotten
>>> about.
>> 
>> Digester, another Tomcat graduate.
>> 
>> Other than TomEE (and httpd), those are all dependencies / upstream
>> from Tomcat, which IMO puts TomEE in a slightly different bucket. I
>> would say that httpd isn't really "related" to Tomcat other than
>> (a) they are both ASF projects and (b) they are both web servers.
>> But there's also ATS, ATC and probably one or two other web servers
>> under ASF umbrella I haven't heard of yet.
> 
> On httpd, I know a very large number of Tomcat/TomEE users I see in
> the wild use httpd in front for load balancing.

Sure, but plenty of people use nginx, squid, haproxy, etc. and at some 
point, listing them all is silly. It's fine if we want to have a 
preference for ASF projects.

> I think a related projects page could be pretty great if we:
> 
> - Mentioned why it is potentially interesting to Tomcat users and
> provided a pointer or two.  I.e. treat it as documentation, not just
> a list of links.  The section would still have to be brief -- no
> taking up a whole or even half a page.

We already have a "Load Balancing" section of the user guide. It's, 
ahem, brief, but it exists:

https://tomcat.apache.org/tomcat-9.0-doc/balancer-howto.html

> - Gave people a reason to look at it by linking to in other sections
> of the website beyond the left nav.  It would be context dependent.
> For example, if we're talking about load balancing, we mention httpd
> and link to https://tomcat.apache.org/related.html#httpd.  The
> whichversion.html could have the one sentence that mentions TomEE as
> a way to get more Jakarta EE impls on Tomcat out-of-the-box and link
> to https://tomcat.apache.org/related.html#tomee
> 
> Could be a nice balance.  We could still mention things like TomEE
> where needed, but they'd be going to a page with a great big "related
> projects" title and a clear statement these are external projects,
> which would allow us to give a bit more information on why it's
> useful for Tomcat people without potentially confusing people in
> thinking it's a Tomcat thing.
> 
> Thoughts?

I think it makes sense to put a section under "Which Version" which says 
something obvious like "Looking for Enterprise Features?" and then list 
some of the biggies like JMS, EJB, JPA, other TLAs... with a link to TomEE.

I'm okay adding a "Related Projects" page into the menu as well.

David, want to take a stab at a doc patch? The web site still uses the 
old svn repository. http://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/tomcat/site/

The main menu is defined in xdocs/stylesheet/project.xml.

-chris

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