The Apache Tuscany Project Website (http://apache.tuscany.org) content is authored collaboratively by the Tuscany community. The content authoring and publish takes place in the following steps:-
- This authoring of content happens on the Tuscany Space of the Confluence based Apache Wiki - http://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/TUSCANY.
- Content thus created is exported as html, based on change activity, to the Confluence based export site - http://cwiki.apache.org/TUSCANY.
- Finally the confluence based html content is synced at regular intervals over to the project's public site http://incubator.apache.org/tuscany.
There is more information at the end of this page on how content is synchronized from the Wiki to the public site.
The wiki content forms the backbone for the public website content, its structure is documented here to help keep it maintainable.
Wiki Content Authoring
The Apache Tuscany project consists of three subprojects - SCA, SDO and DAS each of which is implemented in C++ and Java. These subprojects and their implementations have different documentation and download pages. There is a lot of information that gets shared on the website related to all these projects and it is essential to have a clear structure to help ease the administration, modification and maintenance of the website. Here is a proposal for how the information on cwiki can be organized with this goal in mind.
Content Structure
Tuscany cwiki is divided into two logical spaces.
- Tuscany General space: this is where you will find general Tuscany information, for example community, blogs, documentation and downloads for Tuscany. The root of the pages under this category is 'General Info'. The pages under 'General Info' contains information like : Home, SCA Overview, SDO Overview, DAS Overview. All pages categorized under 'Genral Info' the use the same navigation menu.
- Tuscany Subproject space: There is a 'logical' space for each subproject under Tuscany. For example, SCA Java, SDO Java, SCA Native, etc. When under a subproject, you'll only find information about the subproject. Each subproject uses its own menu (which is similar for all subprojects) to navigate through pages for that subproject. This means navigation remains constant when traversing through pages of a subproject.
- Tuscany Menus : Another category of pages are the various 'Menus' that are used. These have been isolated as another sub-tree of content to help in independent organization of Menu options. Under this subtree titled 'Menus' is organized all the sets of Menu options that appear on the Navigation pane on the left.
Wiki tree structure
Tuscany
- Home
- SCA Overview (general)
- SCA Java (subproject)
You will find a similar structure as SCA Java under all other subprojects (SCA Native, SDO Java, DAS Java, ...)- SCA Java Subproject Documentation Menu - All publishable documentations are under this
- SCA Java Releases - All release download pages for the subproject are under this
- SCA Java Work-in-progress - This is place holder for work in progress. It is recommended that all in progress discussions such as new release discussion, documentation in progress, etc. be put under here. When a document is ready, it can be moved to the appropriate location in the tree.
- SCA Native (subproject)
- SCA Java (subproject)
- SDO Overview (general)
- SDO Java (subproject)
- SDO Native (subproject)
- DAS Overview (general)
- DAS Java (subproject)
- DAS Native (subproject)
- General Info (general) - holds information applicable to all projects. For example, Events, documentat/download, community, etc.
- Menus - You will find all menus under here
- General - You will find general menu here
- Subproject Menus - You will find subproject specific menus here
- SCA Overview (general)
Therefore, content on the wiki page can logically go into
1) General
2) Subproject
3) Work in progress subtree of the subprjoect
Can we remove the following section? It is covered with the above 3 lines
Want to add content to the website?
- Before adding any content to the wiki take a look at the content tree structure at http://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/pages/listpages-dirview.action?key=TUSCANY and identify a node in the tree where the content could best fit. To start with you could identify if the content falls under general or under a specific subproject or under a specific implementation of a subproject. Then under this you could further categorize if the content is to do with 'Technical Documentation' or 'Release' and so on.
- Having decided on a position for the content page in the content tree strucuture ensure that the 'Parent Page' is properly set to the identified position (page).
- If any part of a content is likely to be reused under different contexts and hence in different pages, then abstract such reusable content into a separate page and include it in the various contexts (using the include macro) instead of duplicating the content across contexts.
- Since all pages should have a relevant Navigation Menu when composing a page divide the page into two columns (under a section) with the Menus going into the first column and the page content going into the second column. Use the following as a template for all pages.
No Format {section:border=false} {column:width=15%} {include: <enter the name an existing Menu page from the 'Menus' category of pages>} {column} {column:width=85%} <<enter page content here>> {column} {section}
- If there are going to be a set of pages that are likely to be created with the same specific set of menus then a easy way of creating them as per the above template is to go and first create a template page at http://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/pages/templates/listpagetemplates.action?key=TUSCANY using the above snippet with approprieate Menu pages substituted. Subsequently when create a page go to http://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/pages/templates/listpagetemplates.action?key=TUSCANYand exercise the "Create page from template" option against the template just created. This will result in a new page with the appropriate sections and menus and the content can be right away filled in.
- If a new set of Menu options are to be created, then create a menu page for this under the 'Menus' category. You can also choose to create a set of menu options reusing the existing Menu pages and 'including' them as required.
How to deploy to convert Cofluence Native to Apache Tuscany website
We use an autoexport plugin that automatically converts Confluence's native, and dynamically generated content into a static HTML version that gets exported to the Tuscany website which is located at apache.tuscany.org.
Note | ||
---|---|---|
| ||
Problems with the auto export plugin mean not all changes to Wiki pages will get automatically synced to the public website, to resolve this it may be necessary to force a manual refresh. One common situation where this occurs is where a page that is nested within another page with an include is updated but the page using the the include is not updated. Only Confluence administrators can force a manual refresh, how to do this is documented here and some more about the issue in this thread. Note that even with a forced refresh it still takes a short while for the live website server to pick up the changes. If you need a refresh done some current Tuscany Confluence administrators to ask are: Mike Edwards, Ant Elder, Venkata Krishnan, Luciano Resende, or Simon Nash. |
Resources
- Website SVN : https://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/incubator/tuscany/site/site-publish/
- Exported website : Apache minutaur machine at -> /www/confluence-exports
- Tuscany website : Apache minotaur machine at -> /www/apache.tuscany.org
Wiki versus Website
Wiki Layout
Naming convention
...