New Apache 2.0 Documentation Site

rbowen writes "The Apache Server Documentation Team is pleased to announce an overhaul of the Apache 2.0 documentation web site. I addition to new page layout and better navigation, there are a number of new documents, and all of the directive documentation now has helpful examples. Special kudos to Joshua Slive for all of his hard work and leadership."

phpbuilder

[nocomment]

I'd like to see more sites done the way phpbuiler has been done. Especially perl, and apache things like that.

Re:phpbuilder

[rbowen]

Can you be a little more specific about what it is that you'd like to see? We're very interested in user feedback, but this is just a little too vague.

Re:phpbuilder

[nocomment]

absolutley!!!
I like the way it has the top bar at the top with a section to search the documentation or you can search the forum. The forum is like an old school chat room. Someone has trouble they post a question, someone going by notices your plea, and knows the answer so they post back. Maybe adding a Q&A for newbies, like

Q>"How do I add php/mysql/imap support to my older setup?"

A>"type this this and the other and replace httpd blah blah"

you can also just browse the doc file and list of commands alphabetically if you are bored by using the << >> at the bottom of the page.
it's an excellently done site, I think it should be the model for documentation sites. CPAN was good, but it took a little bit to get the hang of where things were and what they were called....phpbuilder i was able to figure out immediatelly, and make sense of php back when i was still learning it (which i guess never stops)
yes it's not so simplistic that experienced users get bored there.

php.net/substr

[sglane81]

I agree somwhat with *no comment*, but I think the best documentation on any site has to go to php.net. The main thing that makes it easy to use is the ability to type your query at the end of the domain and after the slash like php.net/mysql_query and it goes directly to the functions' definition. If apache's site did this like httpd.apache.org/mod_ssl or httpd.apache.org/htacces, I would definitely be pleased. Also the ability for user comments is great. Sometimes the developers (I am guilty of this as well) are not very use friendly and have a hard time expressing themselves therefore leading to bad documentation, not saying apache is guilty of this.

Re:php.net/substr

[nocomment]

I agree 100% here. I am soooo bad at writing documentation about something, because I usually assume that someone already knows _something_ about it, and the end result is no one knows what I said, and they don't have a decent starting point. I'm getting better at this, but this is one reason why the user forum at phpbuilder is so great.

Re:Nice...but...

[rbowen]

If you'd like to contribute your vast expertise in this field towards the effort to improve the xml-to-html conversion process in order to make these pages more in line with your pedantry^Wpassion for correctness, we are always on the lookout for fresh victims^W^Wnew volunteers.

Re:Nice...but...

[slive]

He probably only tried the main page, which
is quick hack and doesn't validate as xhtml
for a couple little reasons.

The vast majority of the xml generated pages
do validate as correct.

Re:Nice...but...

[ThatDamnMurphyGuy]

You are absolutely correct. I should shut my pie-hole and step up to bat.

I've been spending about the last 3 weeks or so entrenched in AxKit goodness, up to my elbows in XML->XSL/XSLT->XHTML mess, so at least it's a little fresh in the brain.

I've read the http://httpd.apache.org/docs-project/docsformat.ht ml page. Who can tell my what the issues are with the front page, as compared to the other sub pages? Is this a generic vs. custom template issue, or a it-just-hasn't-been-done issue?

Re:Nice...but...

[slive]

It's just that the front page is in pure xhtml because it has completely different requirements than the rest of the docs. Rather than hack up a one-time format and transformation I just did a five-minute xhtml hack.

The only way to tell that is to checkout the docs tree and note that there isn't an index.xml correspoding to the index.html.en.

Re:Nice...but...

[ThatDamnMurphyGuy]

- <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd ">
+ <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transition al.dtd">

:-)