Thread: Documentation Improvement suggestions
Two small suggestions that might make it easier for newcomers to take advantage of the wonderful database:
1. Googling Postgres docs produces links for all different versions. This is because incoming links are to different versions. Besides being confusing, it pushes the pages lower in Google, and makes it harder to find them.
Could the website offer a link to the 'current' version, whichever it is. Eg instead of just :
Have:
which would keep all incoming links pointed to the current page.
2. The 'SQL' in 'PostgresSQL' is hard to say and type. Everyone drops it (even this list!). Why not change the official name? Again, it would make googling and naming things easier.
On Mon, 20 Jul 2009 09:34:00 -0400 Robert James <srobertjames@gmail.com> wrote: > Two small suggestions that might make it easier for newcomers to > take advantage of the wonderful database: > 1. Googling Postgres docs produces links for all different > versions. This is because incoming links are to different > versions. Besides being confusing, it pushes the pages lower in > Google, and makes it harder to find them. > Could the website offer a link to the 'current' version, whichever > it is. Eg instead of just : > http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.1/static/creating-cluster.html > Have: > http://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/static/creating-cluster.html > which would keep all incoming links pointed to the current page. Did you actually tried the link you proposed? There is a page behind it... ant it actually links to 8.4 docs. People still need old docs so you can't just make docs for previous versions unavailable... and once they are available, they will be indexed. Unfortunately current version doesn't mean most used. Actually what I'd enjoy is a link to the "interactive" version and maybe aggregating all the comments of previous versions in the new version (indicating from which versions they come from). -- Ivan Sergio Borgonovo http://www.webthatworks.it
Robert James escribió: > Two small suggestions that might make it easier for newcomers to take > advantage of the wonderful database: > 1. Googling Postgres docs produces links for all different versions. This > is because incoming links are to different versions. Besides being > confusing, it pushes the pages lower in Google, and makes it harder to find > them. > Could the website offer a link to the 'current' version, whichever it is. > Eg instead of just : > http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.1/static/creating-cluster.html > Have: > http://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/static/creating-cluster.html > which would keep all incoming links pointed to the current page. Maybe we should offer a robots.txt file that told crawlers to only index the "current" version of the docs, not the version-specific ones. > 2. The 'SQL' in 'PostgresSQL' is hard to say and type. Everyone drops it > (even this list!). Why not change the official name? Again, it would make > googling and naming things easier. This is a taboo topic which has created the largest holy wars I've seen in this project. Please don't raise it. If you're interested, search the archives. -- Alvaro Herrera http://www.CommandPrompt.com/ PostgreSQL Replication, Consulting, Custom Development, 24x7 support
On Mon, Jul 20, 2009 at 5:14 PM, Alvaro Herrera<alvherre@commandprompt.com> wrote: > Robert James escribió: >> Two small suggestions that might make it easier for newcomers to take >> advantage of the wonderful database: >> 1. Googling Postgres docs produces links for all different versions. This >> is because incoming links are to different versions. Besides being >> confusing, it pushes the pages lower in Google, and makes it harder to find >> them. >> Could the website offer a link to the 'current' version, whichever it is. >> Eg instead of just : >> http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.1/static/creating-cluster.html >> Have: >> http://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/static/creating-cluster.html >> which would keep all incoming links pointed to the current page. > > Maybe we should offer a robots.txt file that told crawlers to only index > the "current" version of the docs, not the version-specific ones. > I don't see this is a good idea, if you want to google only for a specific version you can use ''site'' expression to filter your results site:http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.4/ foo >> 2. The 'SQL' in 'PostgresSQL' is hard to say and type. Everyone drops it >> (even this list!). Why not change the official name? Again, it would make >> googling and naming things easier. > > This is a taboo topic which has created the largest holy wars I've seen > in this project. Please don't raise it. If you're interested, search > the archives. > > -- > Alvaro Herrera http://www.CommandPrompt.com/ > PostgreSQL Replication, Consulting, Custom Development, 24x7 support > > -- > Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@postgresql.org) > To make changes to your subscription: > http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general >
On Mon, Jul 20, 2009 at 11:14:27AM -0400, Alvaro Herrera wrote: > Robert James escribió: > > Could the website offer a link to the 'current' version, whichever it is. > > Eg instead of just : > > http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.1/static/creating-cluster.html > > Have: > > http://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/static/creating-cluster.html > > which would keep all incoming links pointed to the current page. > > Maybe we should offer a robots.txt file that told crawlers to only index > the "current" version of the docs, not the version-specific ones. I know it's not easy, but a nice option to me would be if the 8.1 docs page linked to the equivalent page in the other versions. That would avoid the need to manually edit the URL after a google search. Oh, and +10 for the "Up" link at the top of the page also. Have a nice day, -- Martijn van Oosterhout <kleptog@svana.org> http://svana.org/kleptog/ > Please line up in a tree and maintain the heap invariant while > boarding. Thank you for flying nlogn airlines.
Attachment
On Mon, Jul 20, 2009 at 11:37 AM, Martijn van Oosterhout <kleptog@svana.org> wrote:
I know it's not easy, but a nice option to me would be if the 8.1 docs
page linked to the equivalent page in the other versions. That would
avoid the need to manually edit the URL after a google search.
Oh, and +10 for the "Up" link at the top of the page also.
+1 (!)
This would solve all of the docs problems I mentioned - include a line at the top stating "This is the documentation for version 8.1. Hyperlink:See documentation of current version (8.4)".
And, yes, an "Up" at the top would be super helpful - reduce about 50% of searches.