While the v4 has already been installed more than 1,200 times since the alpha launch, the current Gladys website (gladysassistant.com) is still the one created for v3. I have gradually hidden the information related to v3, but it’s not easy, this site was not designed for v4 ^^ The site design is still an old Bootstrap 3 theme, not easy to update.
I would like to rethink the site to help newcomers understand Gladys 4 and give them the desire to embark on the adventure!
The goal of this topic is to discuss what we want on the site and how we are going to implement it.
Functional Specifications
In my opinion, an open-source product’s website should answer the following questions:
What does the software do? Can I do XXX?
What does Gladys integrate with? Which devices exactly? Do I have a « fibaro XX » device, is it managed by Gladys?
How to install Gladys? On a Raspberry Pi? On a Synology? On a freebox delta?
I have a question, where do I ask?
With this in mind, I have started designing a site for Gladys 4:
This is a functional design, the design itself (font, etc.) is not done here at all.
You will notice several things:
The documentation is back on the main site. I think that documentation is the heart of an open-source project, and I find it a shame to put it on a separate domain, as if it were not important: it is the most important!
We often talked about an « Integrations » tab that lists all the devices managed by Gladys. I have thought a lot about it, and I am starting to see how we are going to integrate it. Similarly, it has its place on the main Gladys site. @AlexTrovato this will interest you
Each managed device has its own page, and it is possible to comment on the « device » page to ask questions. To be seen if we can integrate Discourse on this page so that the messages are on the forum
Technical Specifications
We are an open-source project, the site must be open-source as it is currently. Everyone can edit the site
The site is multilingual (EN/FR)
Blog articles are stored in markdown in files
Integrations are stored in markdown in files (one file per integration & per language)
The site is generated and static
Regarding the static site generator, we currently use Jekyll, a static site generator written in Ruby. It works well, but it is quite slow to generate + the fact that it is written in Ruby is not practical: I don’t know anything about Ruby and we are quickly stuck as soon as we want to do something custom
I would like to switch to a JavaScript generator, like Gatsby or NextJS. I have the impression that NextJS is simpler than Gatsby, but I have not yet chosen between the two
Jokes aside, I agree with you on the documentation and integrations. For the rest, I don’t have much of an opinion.
Generally, when I land on a site with this type of welcome (Slider / Features, etc.), the first thing I look for is the documentation, often to answer this question:arrow_up:
And when the documentation doesn’t have a search bar, I leave (yes, laziness )
I don’t know if you’ve seen it, but nextjs have made a guide for the user, I find it nice
I’ve been using it for several years On the website + the forum. In fact, there is already a compatibility page that I made for Gladys v3 (https://gladysassistant.com/fr/compatibilities/), but I’ve hidden it for now since it’s not up to date
@lidian that’s kind! For now, we’re more in the design phase than in implementation, I’ll post a message when I start on the website
Meanwhile, don’t hesitate to help us with Gladys itself, it’s Preact (lighter React) + Node.js, and we have plenty of todos waiting! (Issues · GladysAssistant/Gladys · GitHub), all help is welcome
It allows you to create sites with hyper-clean documentation, search, dark mode, all built from Markdown files, and custom pages are in React.
However, their v2 is not yet compatible with internationalization…
I’m really torn between starting a new site with Next.js, but I risk reinventing what Docusaurus does natively, or waiting for Docusaurus to release its v2 so I can migrate our site.
Indeed, you can start with just a French website for example, put it on another domain (like a subdomain of gladysassistant.com), while waiting for them to release internationalization. But what worries me is that they might be slow and release it in a year… I think they have been working on v2 since 2018
Aha While waiting for internationalization in Docusaurus, I wonder what’s stopping us from creating 2 folders (one « fr » and one « en »), and having 2 different Docusaurus projects. We can try to maximize the sharing of files (React components for the homepage for example), but otherwise the .md files will all be different.
I saw it, but well « hopefully sometime in the next couple of months » isn’t necessarily reassuring
Well, with what we already have, I’m sure we can already build a site in English/French by simply separating the two sites and doing a double generation.
Doc FR done