Subject: What's New

From: Simon Riggs <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2008 11:06:36 +0100

We need a way to link to the release notes for the latest production
release, so people can easily see What's New.

1. Currently its very hard to locate a description of what the new
features in the latest release are. You have to know how the docs are
structured to find it easily. If you click on the Home Page's "Notes"
link for 8.3.1 you go to the minor release notes for 8.3.1 and there is
no obvious link to the notes for 8.3.0 which is where all the main
features are described. We don't even say that's how it works, so
there's no way of knowing you aren't viewing *all* the info. So if you
don't know, and most people don't, 8.3 looks like a minor upgrade from
8.2 only, so why bother.

2. There's no permanent URL for What's New in the latest release, so
people that put links to us externally need to continually update their
links. Google's What's New link points to 8.2 release notes. I could
contact them and say "Hey Google, you're wrong" but ISTM the best way is
for us to provide a permanent URL that we can then link to from Google
and our own home page. Then we only need to ask them to do this once.

-- 
  Simon Riggs
  2ndQuadrant  http://www.2ndQuadrant.com

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From: Magnus Hagander <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 18 Apr 2008 11:38:44 +0200

Simon Riggs wrote:
> link for 8.3.1 you go to the minor release notes for 8.3.1 and there
> is no obvious link to the notes for 8.3.0 which is where all the main

Good point. But we need some way to include the release notes for the
minor version as well. Do you have any suggestion for how to do it?
Adding two different set of notes to the website there will just make
things even more confusing, I think. Perhaps what we need is a section
in the 8.3.1 release notes that says "this is a minor update. If you
want to see the release notes between 8.2 and 8.3, please click here"
with a link to them?

> people that put links to us externally need to continually update
> their links. Google's What's New link points to 8.2 release notes. I
> could contact them and say "Hey Google, you're wrong" but ISTM the
> best way is for us to provide a permanent URL that we can then link
> to from Google and our own home page. Then we only need to ask them
> to do this once.

This we can do, once we can decide what it should point to per your
first point. 

But can we actually somehow control what google chooses to link to? I
mean, if they detect our redirect and just link directly to the page it
points to, we're right back at the same point. Or if they index them as
separate pages, we'd want to make sure we get the right one.

On the same tack, I've been trying to figure out if there is  away to
make google prefer the latest version of our docs whe nyou search for
something. Now you often get hits in 7.4.. Like a way to prioritize it.
Anybody know if there is a way to do that?

//Magnus

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From: "Harald Armin Massa" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 18 Apr 2008 11:45:53 +0200

Magnus,

>  Anybody know if there is a way to do that?

I often get bitten by that, too. Maybe sitemap.xml files may be of use?

Within http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=40318
you can read:

The relative importance of pages on your site. For example, your home
page might have a relative importance of 1.0, category pages have an
importance of 0.8, and individual blog entries or product pages have
an importance of 0.5. This priority only indicates the importance of a
particular URL relative to other URLs on your site, and doesn't impact
the ranking of your pages in search results.

All the 7.x, 8.y (y<3) Documetation could be valued at importance 0.4,
the actual one with 0.9, and "whats new" and the "search documentation
page" at 1.0 ?

Harald

-- 
GHUM Harald Massa
persuadere et programmare
Harald Armin Massa
Spielberger Straße 49
70435 Stuttgart
0173/9409607
fx 01212-5-13695179
-
EuroPython 2008 will take place in Vilnius, Lithuania - Stay tuned!

---

From: Simon Riggs <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 18 Apr 2008 10:55:05 +0100

On Fri, 2008-04-18 at 11:38 +0200, Magnus Hagander wrote:
> things even more confusing, I think. 

> Perhaps what we need is a section

Good idea.

Wording: "This is a minor release. For a full list of features added in
this major release, please click here".

Note that this would be a link between *any* minor release and its
corresponding major release. i.e. 8.3.1, 8.3.2 etc would all point to
8.3

> Anybody know if there is a way to do that?

I think: talk to Google. But no point until we have our house in order.

---

From: Magnus Hagander <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 18 Apr 2008 12:01:56 +0200

Harald Armin Massa wrote:
> Magnus,
> 
> >  On the same tack, I've been trying to figure out if there is  away
> > to make google prefer the latest version of our docs whe nyou
> > search for something. Now you often get hits in 7.4.. Like a way to
> > prioritize it. Anybody know if there is a way to do that?
> 

Yeah, I just found that one myself. Will look into that.

//Magnus

---

From: Magnus Hagander <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 18 Apr 2008 14:35:57 +0200

Simon Riggs wrote:
> > > We need a way to link to the release notes for the latest
> > > production release, so people can easily see What's New.
> > > 
> > > features in the latest release are. You have to know how the docs
> > > are structured to find it easily. If you click on the Home Page's
> > > "Notes" link for 8.3.1 you go to the minor release notes for
> > > 8.3.1 and there is no obvious link to the notes for 8.3.0 which
> > > is where all the main features are described. We don't even say
> > > that's how it works, so there's no way of knowing you aren't
> > > viewing *all* the info. So if you don't know, and most people
> > > don't, 8.3 looks like a minor upgrade from 8.2 only, so why
> > > bother.
> > 
> > Good point. But we need some way to include the release notes for
> > the minor version as well. Do you have any suggestion for how to do
> > it? Adding two different set of notes to the website there will
> > just make things even more confusing, I think. 
> 
> > want to see the release notes between 8.2 and 8.3, please click
> > here" with a link to them?
> 
> Good idea.
> 
> Wording: "This is a minor release. For a full list of features added
> in this major release, please click here".
> 

I tried that first, but I think I got it better if I just worked it
into the paragraph that was already there. For an example, see:
http://builder.hagander.net/pgdoc/release-8-3-1.html

I can easily change it back to your wording if you think that's better,
but you did mean that as a separate paragraph, correct?

If people like this method, I'll go through the release.sgml file and
make the change for other versions as well. It's a simple cut/paste...
Patch is as simple as:
    <para>
     This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.3.0.
+    For information about new features in the 8.3 release, see
+    <xref linkend="release-8-3">.
    </para>

(obviously it needs to be backpatched to the stable branch to make any
difference for the links on the website)

So. Objections? Better wordings? 

//Magnus

---

From: Alvaro Herrera <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 18 Apr 2008 09:04:41 -0400

> +    <xref linkend="release-8-3">.

I'd go with

> +    For information about new features in the 8.3 major release, see

-- 
Alvaro Herrera                                http://www.CommandPrompt.com/
PostgreSQL Replication, Consulting, Custom Development, 24x7 support

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From: Stefan Kaltenbrunner <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 21 Apr 2008 10:37:14 +0200

> difference for the links on the website)

this seems like a good idea and something that I personally wanted in 
the past.

Stefan

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From: Magnus Hagander <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 21 Apr 2008 11:47:09 +0200

Alvaro Herrera wrote:
> Magnus Hagander wrote:
> 
> > If people like this method, I'll go through the release.sgml file
> > and make the change for other versions as well. It's a simple
> > cut/paste... Patch is as simple as:
> >     <para>

I've made this adjustment and committed.

//Magnus