On 3/14/20 9:20 AM, Jeremy Stanley wrote:
On 2020-03-14 14:05:32 +0000 (+0000), Sean Mooney wrote:
On Sat, 2020-03-14 at 09:36 -0400, Donny Davis wrote: [...]
It would be really great if when you click the current release is X button at the top of the page it would reload the same doc and just replace the release instead of directing you back to the home page of the doc release. [...] yes althought that is not a SEO thing i think we need to change how that baner is create but i basically always ignore it because it does not do what i want so removing it entirly or more helpflly making it link to the latest verion of the current doc would both be greate improvemnts.
The solution to the technical problem is straightforward (even a simple HTML form element would to the trick), the bigger challenge is logistical: Content moves around between releases, it's not just renamed but often gets split or combined too, and lots of times folks don't think to include redirects from old filenames when they make major edits like that. All too often when I'm looking something up in the published HTML copies of our documentation I'll land on the wrong version, edit the URL to a later release, and get a 404 for that file. Someone (really multiple someones) will need to do a thorough audit to work out what redirects we missed between previous releases as well as coming up with ways to better remind folks to add redirects and maybe leave other breadcrumb trails when making future changes.
I just ran into this and I think there's a middle ground that would still help a lot. Right now if you click on the banner to go to the latest release it redirects you back to the main docs.openstack.org page. Could it at least redirect you to the root of the project you were already looking at? I realize that might break on project renames, but that seems like a massively smaller problem to solve than trying to keep track of internal structural changes in each project's docs.