Textpattern docs site has moved to a new server

gaekwad · 2024-02-13 18:13:16

The Textpattern User Documentation (sometimes known as ‘docs site’) has moved to a new server.

I need your help with a few things, if you can spare some time, please:

check around docs.textpattern.com in your preferred browser
note any errors or weirdness, missing elements, that kind of thing
reply here if anything is amiss

Thank you.

Over winter, our DigitalOcean hosting credit has been renewed and I split our sites across multiple servers instead of a single, monolithic server that powered everything.

The last site to move was the docs site, and I think it’s working as expected. It’s powered by Jekyll, with the requisite side-helping of frustrating antagonism, and if the move has worked OK, I can power off the old server and stop the $$ meter running on that.

The old server was spec’d out to run all our sites, and has the resources to do that. In recent times, it’s been running the docs site and nothing else, so it’s been somewhat inefficient, not to mention costly for what it’s been doing.

So, if the docs are working, and I think we’re OK on that score – time will tell – I can power off the old server, save us some $$ and move to the next task.

jakob · 2024-02-13 20:23:35

Thank you Pete for your work behind the scenes. Do I remember rightly, that this opens up the possibility to get docs search working again on Safari. Or was that a more involved process? I’ve forgotten.

It’s not desperate as I have a little search shortcut that turns txpdocs <term> into https://www.google.com/search?q=###&as_sitesearch=docs.textpattern.com. That gets you there via google’s search results but search within the site would be great, especially as I have the docs as a pinned tab in safari.

phiw13 · 2024-02-14 01:36:14

All seem to work as it should, so far. TY.

The search functionality is still broken in Safari but iirc that required some code retooling, so not a regression. ( I have a little shortcut build-in with xSearch that automatically uses DDG will typing my search term in the Safari location bar).

uli · 2024-02-14 02:01:57

Save this here as a bookmark’s URL value and you can avoid any search engine and use it from whatever website you’re working on:

javascript:q=prompt('TXP%20tag?%20','');%20location.href='https://docs.textpattern.com/tags/'+q;

Pat64 · 2024-02-14 04:00:24

Hi Pete.

I noticed a lot of CSP warnings into my Firefox console:

“script-src”;
All base64 encoded images aren’t displayed.

dos · 2024-02-14 07:45:09

Images in the footer are missing (social media and logos).

By the way: The lovely sunflower on the startpage is missing too?

Dragondz · 2024-02-14 07:56:11

Hi Pete,

I clicked some pages on the doc site all seems to work, no error page displayed.

Thanks for your hard work.

jakob · 2024-02-14 09:25:55

Nice to see all your little workaround hacks. I have a similar one for tags too. In Safari, I use keyword search – many roads lead to Rome :-) Raycast and other launcher helpers have similar functions.

I see the social media images but not the sunflower (guess Pete is working in the background). The console shows an error in animate.js.

gaekwad · 2024-02-14 13:18:06

Dragondz wrote #336637:

I clicked some pages on the doc site all seems to work, no error page displayed.

Thanks Rabah!

gaekwad · 2024-02-14 13:18:52

jakob wrote #336638:

I see the social media images but not the sunflower (guess Pete is working in the background). The console shows an error in animate.js.

Social buttons should be fixed. The sunflower…do you mean the one on textpattern.com or is there another?

gaekwad · 2024-02-14 13:19:53

dos wrote #336636:

Images in the footer are missing (social media and logos).

Fixed – thank you for the report!

By the way: The lovely sunflower on the startpage is missing too?

Do you mean the textpattern.com start page sunflower, or has it bred to another site?

gaekwad · 2024-02-14 13:20:30

Pat64 wrote #336635:

I noticed a lot of CSP warnings into my Firefox console:

“script-src”;

I think I know what this is for – could you please reply with an example URL and I’ll investigate. Thanks!

gaekwad · 2024-02-14 13:43:49

jakob wrote #336629:

Do I remember rightly, that this opens up the possibility to get docs search working again on Safari. Or was that a more involved process?

phiw13 wrote #336631:

The search functionality is still broken in Safari but iirc that required some code retooling, so not a regression.

Gather round, it’s story time.

The docs site used to run on MediaWiki back in the dark ages, and it was migrated to GitHub pages (hence the textpattern.github.io repo name). Since then, it has moved to our own self-hosted Jekyll instance, and more recently it’s moved to a new(er) server also running Jekyll.

On paper, Jekyll looks an absolute breeze to run: take some raw files, add a build recipe, and it spits out a heap of static HTML files. It’s great for blogs, and I’m sure it’s a really good solution for interactive site building where a person is involved.

Now, flip that on its head…I don’t want to be manually rebuilding our docs site on every commit…I want to set the server up to be as automated as possible, and the docs site comes down, gets built, and is deployed as smoothly as possible. This is what happens now, and it’s always a mess when I rebuild a server and deploy Jekyll:

Install Ruby (global)
Install Ruby Gems (to the non-root user that’s doing some of the heavy lifting)
Modify the .bashrc so interactive shell stuff works for testing
Set up & schedule the Bash script to grab the docs repo every 15 minutes
Set up & schedule the Bash script to build the site with Jekyll
Spend an hour wondering why it’s not building
Spend an hour fixing missing / outdated Ruby Gems
Spend an hour wondering why it’s still not building
Remember that the .bashrc directives need to go into the Bash build script
Cross fingers for another hour while it sort of splutters into life
Remember why Ruby + Jekyll is zero fun.

Bam, that’s half a day gone. I don’t get on with Ruby admin’ing at all, and it’s only Jekyll that needs it…so there’s a trade off with not having PHP installed, so lower resource usage, but Ruby sort of infests all manner of stuff.

And I’m the person who compiles stuff from source, keeps a tight ship server-wise, and takes pride in a fleet of server cattle. Ruby and Jekyll feels like a bodge in the grand scheme. It may well be me being curmudgeonly over something that always makes me want to hurt inanimate objects and have a dozen or more browser tabs open to fix yet another Ruby error.

What I’d like to do is move away from Jekyll, if it’s viable. I’ve opened github.com/textpattern/textpattern.github.io/issues/212 for discussion with a view to:

selecting a hosted docs service like GitBook or Read The Docs
using their search, since it just works
doing some housekeeping on the repo to get it ready for the migration

To get Jekyll search working in Safari is possible, I’m sure…I lost most of yesterday to getting a new server set up with what appears to be mostly working Jekyll, and I need a bit of a break before I go splunking in the internals to get whatever bloody Ruby Gem is needed for search to work. Leave it with me.

(Thanks for coming to my latest TedX talk.)

wet · 2024-02-14 13:53:05

Pete, may I offer you a virtual pat on the back and a warm hug? I feel your pain. From the bottom of my heart – even though I only had to make a small Jekyll site once in my life.

Be strong. This too shall pass.

gaekwad · 2024-02-14 14:15:37

wet wrote #336648:

From the bottom of my heart – even though I only had to make a small Jekyll site once in my life.

The small sites are the worst since – if you’re like me, anyway – you’re dealing a constant, nagging “there has to be a better way to do this” in the background, whereas with the bigger sites you’re at least consigned to the fact that you have to do it with Jekyll since that’s how it’s always been.

And thank you. I appreciate that more than you know. I can’t tell you how frustrating it is not being able to be definitive on something, when all else in the chain is clear as a bell.

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#1 2024-02-13 18:13:16