Philip Durbin ๐ (Oct 25 2024 at 16:02): Philip Durbin ๐ (Oct 25 2024 at 16:02):Should we move dataverse.org from OpenScholar to GitHub? We recently did this for the GDCC website, moving it to https://github.com/gdcc/www.gdcc.io
Philip Durbin ๐ (Oct 25 2024 at 16:03):Benefits include:
Philip Durbin ๐ (Oct 25 2024 at 16:06):I have a specific technical question, however. @Ceilyn Boyd and I both agree that some some of static site would be best. The GDCC website is static and uses Sphinx (same as guides.dataverse.org) but we're interested in hearing about other static site generators. Do you know of any good ones? Here are our requirements so far:
Philip Durbin ๐ (Oct 25 2024 at 16:07):The static site generators I've used the most are:
Philip Durbin ๐ (Oct 25 2024 at 16:07):Please feel free to weigh in on the idea of moving itself as well as which static site generator to use. Thanks! :heart:
Oliver Bertuch (Oct 27 2024 at 10:42):Don't forget the Asciidoc universe. One of the more well known tools for it are https://docs.asciidoctor.org and https://antora.org/. You can even use Asciidoc in Javadocs. https://github.com/asciidoctor/asciidoclet It might be worth thinking about Asciidoc also in relation to skill building for #docs At least it's something you can also use from a Maven build, not just standalone. (Also note that Jekyll and Hugo have plugins to support Asciidoc)
Philip Durbin ๐ (Oct 27 2024 at 12:09):Right. Asciidoc. Hmm. I think @Ceilyn Boyd and I were thinking Markdown but I didn't put it above under "requirements so far". :thinking: Thanks for the suggestion.
Philip Durbin ๐ (Nov 06 2024 at 20:59):I started playing with a Sphinx based site at https://sphinx.dataverse.org
The code is at https://github.com/IQSS/sphinx.dataverse.org and I used https://github.com/gdcc/www.gdcc.io as a starting point.
Philip Durbin ๐ (Nov 06 2024 at 20:59):I dunno, I'm already having trouble controlling header links: https://github.com/IQSS/sphinx.dataverse.org/issues/1 
Philip Durbin ๐ (Nov 06 2024 at 21:00):We definitely don't have to use Sphinx if there's something better.
Philip Durbin ๐ (Nov 07 2024 at 12:24):@Vaida Plankytฤ @Dieuwertje Bloemen @Philipp Conzett @Amรฉlie Fiocca @Dimitri Szabo rather than cross-posting in #docs I'll just mention you here. :grinning:
I'm curious what you think of https://sphinx.dataverse.org so far. And about the whole idea of moving dataverse.org to GitHub.
Philip Durbin ๐ (Nov 08 2024 at 04:35):Wow, this works pretty well: https://urltomarkdown.com
Philipp Conzett (Nov 08 2024 at 05:40):@Philip Durbin ๐ The new site looks very cool and tidy! A thing that bothers me with GitHub-based websites is that it seems it's not possible to have URLs to be open in a new tab or window.
Philip Durbin ๐ (Nov 08 2024 at 07:00):@Philipp Conzett hmm, it should be possible. Which page?
Philip Durbin ๐ (Nov 08 2024 at 07:01):Also, to all, I just pushed a lot more content to https://sphinx.dataverse.org and reorganized a bit. Feedback is welcome!
Philipp Conzett (Nov 08 2024 at 07:19):Oh? Last I checked, I couldn't find a way to define an open_blank URL with Markdown.
Philip Durbin ๐ (Nov 08 2024 at 12:10):@Philipp Conzett I think I found a solution. I enabled myst_links_external_new_tab from https://github.com/executablebooks/MyST-Parser/pull/857.
Please go to https://sphinx.dataverse.org/about and click "An Introduction to the Dataverse Network as an Infrastructure for Data Sharing". It should open in a new tab. There's no visual indication that a tab will be opened though. I hope that's ok.
Philip Durbin ๐ (Nov 08 2024 at 15:01):@Ceilyn Boyd and I just talked through a new doc I'm calling dataverse.org on GitHub information architecture. Comments are welcome!
Philipp Conzett (Nov 08 2024 at 15:47):Ah, great! Thanks, @Philip Durbin ๐ Could you enable this feature on gdcc.io?
Philip Durbin ๐ (Nov 08 2024 at 15:48):Yep! Can you please create an issue? I have to update the version of myst.
Philip Durbin ๐ (Nov 08 2024 at 16:06):Ok, I just pushed another update to https://sphinx.dataverse.org
Following that doc, we're trying out top level sections called "Project" and "Learn". Feedback welcome.
Vaida Plankytฤ ๐จ (Nov 08 2024 at 16:07):oh! this is a great idea. having the website be directly editable in a communal way would make it so much easier to iteratively improve it. though since sphinx (and any documentation-focused framework) are so text-heavy, it'd be helpful to think on how we could break up the text so it's easier to navigate.
Philip Durbin ๐ (Nov 08 2024 at 16:08):Yes! Absolutely. I'd love to break up the text a bit.
Philip Durbin ๐ (Nov 08 2024 at 16:08):Ceilyn and I have some ideas for the homepage. There's a tab called "homepage" in that doc above.
Philip Durbin ๐ (Nov 08 2024 at 16:09):Lately, I've been trying to focus on the hierarchy. Where pages live. This is kind of a mess in the old site. :sweat_smile:
Vaida Plankytฤ ๐จ (Nov 08 2024 at 16:10):would love to make some time during the docs meet to help review some of this! ah yes, 1-2 big call-to-action buttons would be really good!
Vaida Plankytฤ ๐จ (Nov 08 2024 at 16:11):being able to quickly iterate on what's added to the header is so good! thanks for pushing ahead with all this :sunglasses:
Philip Durbin ๐ (Nov 08 2024 at 16:11):Yeah, that big "download" button is for you. :grinning:
Philip Durbin ๐ (Nov 08 2024 at 16:12):The header is a bit tricky. I complained about this at https://github.com/IQSS/sphinx.dataverse.org/issues/1
I'd like to figure out how to exclude a top-level page or directory from the header.
Vaida Plankytฤ ๐จ (Nov 08 2024 at 16:19):aw! what would be a static page generator without quirks...
Ceilyn Boyd (Nov 08 2024 at 16:37):Looks great, thanks Phil!
Philip Durbin ๐ (Nov 08 2024 at 16:46):At some point we should ask @Julian Gautier what he thinks about moving https://dataverse.org/cts-guide to https://guides.dataverse.org :sweat_smile:
Philip Durbin ๐ (Nov 08 2024 at 16:53):Come to think of it, "Quickstarts" should probably go under "Learn". :thinking:
Ceilyn Boyd (Nov 08 2024 at 17:03):I actually like Quick Starts where it is. But maybe consider adding a Download button to the top of that page, too?
Julian Gautier (Nov 08 2024 at 19:02):Philip Durbin ๐ said:
At some point we should ask Julian Gautier what he thinks about moving https://dataverse.org/cts-guide to https://guides.dataverse.org :sweat_smile:
Yeah let me know when you wanna talk about it
Philip Durbin ๐ (Nov 08 2024 at 19:04):Well, the main thing I'm thinking is that if we're ok with moving it, it might be nice to move it before 6.5 is released so that we can link to it. (Redirect to it.)
Julian Gautier (Nov 08 2024 at 19:14):Ah actually I misunderstood your question lol. You're asking about moving the CTS guide from Dataverse.org to the Dataverse Guides. Why do you want to move it to the guides?
Philip Durbin ๐ (Nov 08 2024 at 19:15):Meh, I dunno. It's a guide. Seems like a better fit.
Philip Durbin ๐ (Nov 08 2024 at 19:15):Actually, if you have a couple minutes I could walk you through that doc above.
Philip Durbin ๐ (Nov 08 2024 at 19:17):I'm also wondering about the Best Practices docs. Some of this content never gets touched. Maybe it's perfect already. :halo:
Julian Gautier (Nov 08 2024 at 19:17):Yeah do you want to talk at 3:30 today?
Philip Durbin ๐ (Nov 08 2024 at 19:17):Sure, sounds good.
Philip Durbin ๐ (Nov 08 2024 at 19:18):At a high level, I'm trying to simplify things a bit. Spring cleaning. :broom:
Philip Durbin ๐ (Nov 08 2024 at 20:29):https://harvard.zoom.us/my/pdurbin?pwd=em1WNUZGbnY2YjhxNEdSbjJJMXNSUT09
@Julian Gautier whenever you're ready. And anyone else who's interested, I guess!
Philip Durbin ๐ (Nov 08 2024 at 21:05):Ok, we decided to try putting the CoreTrustSeal guide under "Best Practices". Thanks!
Philip Durbin ๐ (Nov 08 2024 at 21:06):And talked about all kinds of other stuff, of course. :grinning:
Philip Durbin ๐ (Nov 08 2024 at 22:56):I mean, https://sphinx.dataverse.org is kinda getting there, right? :sweat_smile:
Philip Durbin ๐ (Nov 19 2024 at 15:17):@Jan Range should we consider using MkDocs for dataverse.org? I know you have an open pull request to switch pyDataverse to it.
Philip Durbin ๐ (Nov 19 2024 at 15:19):@kuhlaid should we consider Docusaurus for dataverse.org? You set up that nice demo site for us a while back and it's still up.
Jan Range (Nov 19 2024 at 15:35):Thatโs a tough one. I really like MkDocs for its simplicity and how quickly it allows you to create something useful. Its seamless integration with GitHub Pages is another big plus. However, it always gives off a very "documentation-like" vibe, which might not be ideal for a website overview, as it can appear somewhat cluttered. I use it for pyDataverse since itโs widely adopted in the Python community.
I just came across Docusaurus, and at first glance, it looks fantastic! The MDX integration is an excellent feature that provides a lot of flexibility. While you can embed HTML/JS into Markdown files with MkDocs, it sometimes feels a bit clunky. For Dataverse.org, Iโd personally prefer Docusaurus over MkDocs because of its flexibility and more polished appearance.
Philip Durbin ๐ (Nov 19 2024 at 15:44):@Jan Range thanks! And do you have an opinion on Sphinx or Hugo? I've added notes for these in the dataverse.org on GitHub information architecture and static site generator bakeoff doc. Or Jekyll? Jekyll isn't in that doc but which we use it for https://py.gdcc.io.
Jan Range (Nov 19 2024 at 15:52):Iย donโt have any experience with Sphinx, but Iโve used Hugo a bit and think itโs a great tool for building simple websites. However, things start to feel cumbersome when you move beyond the default templates and try to customize them. Not because of Golang itself, but due to the complexity of the template structure, at least with the ones Iโve worked with.
For example, I built https://enzymeml.org with a colleague using Hugo. It was straightforward at first, but when we wanted to make structural changes, it became a real challenge. Thatโs why weโre transitioning to MkDocs now. Itโs easier to maintain and more practical to hand off to a student for ongoing updates, but imo it cannot compete in terms of looks unfortunately.
kuhlaid (Nov 19 2024 at 16:00):I still like Docusaurus. I build another site that uses it for documenting a Dataverse collection: https://jocoknow.vercel.app/docs/datasets/10.7910_DVN_SKP9IB/overview
Docusaurus has built in broken-link/build checking so it will complain if you missed something. Anyway, it works for me. I have not figured out how to get it to push to GitHub pages but it builds for free on Vercel easily.
Philip Durbin ๐ (Nov 19 2024 at 16:32):It does look nice, thanks.
Vaida Plankytฤ ๐จ (Nov 19 2024 at 16:48):on first impression, the Docusaurus demo site looks so good! is it possible to create additional "static-style" pages like the landing page? Maybe we could review the various items in the dataverse.org header and see where they point, and see if the content can be consolidated into just a few pages. Then the rest would really just be the main documentation right?
Vaida Plankytฤ ๐จ (Nov 19 2024 at 16:49):re:Hugo/Jekyll, I'd echo that while they're nice for custom websites and some templating, they don't come with out-of-the-box niceties that are specifically designed for heavy documentation use, and could easily become a major maintenance weight :weight_lift:
Philip Durbin ๐ (Nov 19 2024 at 16:50):@kuhlaid if you're up for it, I'm happy to create a repo at https://github.com/IQSS/docusaurus.dataverse.org if you want to stub out a prototype for us. Like I've done at https://github.com/IQSS/sphinx.dataverse.org (and you're welcome to borrow some of that Markdown if you like).
Philip Durbin ๐ (Nov 19 2024 at 16:52):@Vaida Plankytฤ well, to be clear, we're talking about the brochure site at dataverse.org, not the documentation site at guides.dataverse.org . So I wouldn't say the use case is "heavy documentation use". It's more, I dunno, "sell Dataverse to the world", I guess. :grinning: Make it look awesome. :grinning:
Vaida Plankytฤ ๐จ (Nov 19 2024 at 16:54):aha, i misunderstood! that makes sense. how complex is the existing site? it seems there's a few template-needing content, like blog posts, publications, etc. but otherwise it's mostly a collection of static pages?
Philip Durbin ๐ (Nov 19 2024 at 16:56):Medium complex? Please see the "hierarchy" tab in the dataverse.org on GitHub information architecture and static site generator bakeoff doc.
Philip Durbin ๐ (Nov 22 2024 at 12:48):As a reminder, we have this topic of moving the Dataverse website to GitHub pretty high on the agenda for the docs working group meeting in a couple hours.
Philip Durbin ๐ (Nov 22 2024 at 16:02):
Philip Durbin ๐ (Nov 22 2024 at 16:03):A new mockup from the docs working group meeting ^^
Philip Durbin ๐ (Nov 22 2024 at 16:03):And we took a lot of notes.
Philip Durbin ๐ (Nov 22 2024 at 16:08):The "image with people collaborating" is inspired by https://dspace.org
Philip Durbin ๐ (Nov 22 2024 at 16:08):Screenshot 2024-11-22 at 11-08-03 DSpace Home - DSpace.png
Philip Durbin ๐ (Nov 22 2024 at 16:45):I kinda wish we had recorded it. It was a good discussion!
Philip Durbin ๐ (Dec 07 2024 at 11:59):I set up a prototype using Hugo at https://hugo.dataverse.org
Source at https://github.com/IQSS/hugo.dataverse.org
Philip Durbin ๐ (Dec 07 2024 at 11:59):Screenshot 2024-12-07 at 06-59-33 The Dataverse Project.png
Philip Durbin ๐ (Dec 07 2024 at 12:01):Especially after our conversation in the recent docs meeting, I'm feeling less constrained to keep things the same as the existing dataverse.org website.
Philip Durbin ๐ (Dec 07 2024 at 12:01):Especially the home page.
Philip Durbin ๐ (Dec 07 2024 at 12:02):This attitude and the flexibility of Hugo itself feels a bit freeing.
Philip Durbin ๐ (Dec 07 2024 at 12:03):With Sphinx, I haven't figured out how to decouple the header links from the top level content. That's what https://github.com/IQSS/sphinx.dataverse.org/issues/1 is about.
Philip Durbin ๐ (Dec 07 2024 at 12:04):With Hugo, I simply specify the links I want: https://github.com/IQSS/hugo.dataverse.org/blob/d5b2f7580106e87683748d1394392e9ae44ea145/hugo.yml#L5-L18
Philip Durbin ๐ (Dec 07 2024 at 12:05):menu:
main:
- identifier: about
name: About
url: /about/
weight: 10
- identifier: community
name: Community
url: /community/
weight: 20
- identifier: download
name: Download/GitHub
url: https://github.com/IQSS/dataverse/releases
weight: 30
This feels freeing because it's easier to decide if we want to put events at /events or /community/events.
With Sphinx, having events at /events means that "Events" shows up in the header as a link. So I end up feeling like Sphinx is forcing us to put content into fewer top level buckets.
Philip Durbin ๐ (Dec 07 2024 at 12:07):I shouldn't say Sphinx. I really mean the PyData theme we're using.
Philip Durbin ๐ (Dec 07 2024 at 12:08):Anyway, Hugo is fun so far. But I might need some help from someone who's better at website design and coding. :sweat_smile:
Philip Durbin ๐ (Dec 07 2024 at 17:28):I must be having fun because I keep tweaking this new Hugo site. Here's the latest:
Screenshot 2024-12-07 at 12-27-22 The Dataverse Project.png
Philip Durbin ๐ (Dec 07 2024 at 17:28):What do you think? :sweat_smile:
Philip Durbin ๐ (Dec 10 2024 at 13:52):Ok, I'm trying to be patient but let's face it, I'm not. :sweat_smile: @Vaida Plankytฤ @Dieuwertje Bloemen @Amรฉlie Fiocca @Dimitri Szabo @Philipp Conzett @Oliver Bertuch @Ceilyn Boyd @Julian Gautier @Dwayne Liburd @Sonia Barbosa et. al, what do you think of https://hugo.dataverse.org ? :grinning:
Philipp Conzett (Dec 10 2024 at 14:15):Looks all good to me! Is Hugo also what will be used for the guides?
Julian Gautier (Dec 10 2024 at 14:15):Heya Phil. Thanks for pinging me. Sorry I don't have time right now to check it out. Trying to make progress on other projects
Oliver Bertuch (Dec 10 2024 at 14:19):Hate to say it, please don't take this the wrong way: the design seems rather old school, not very modern. More like amateurs hacking on an open source software than a professional product you can put your trust in.
Philip Durbin ๐ (Dec 10 2024 at 14:33):@Philipp Conzett no, the plan for now anyway is to stick with Sphinx for the guides.
Philip Durbin ๐ (Dec 10 2024 at 14:34):@Oliver Bertuch can you please link to some examples that look more professional, modern, and trustworthy?
Oliver Bertuch (Dec 10 2024 at 14:53):Although I hate our menu, I like the overall structure of my home org https://www.fz-juelich.de/en
Oliver Bertuch (Dec 10 2024 at 14:54):Also pretty good structure and nice layout at a competitor: https://dspace.org/
Oliver Bertuch (Dec 10 2024 at 14:56):I also like the look and feel of https://www.harvard.edu/
Philip Durbin ๐ (Dec 10 2024 at 15:52):Thanks, this helps.
Philip Durbin ๐ (Dec 10 2024 at 15:52):Do you think we should use a different Hugo theme?
Philip Durbin ๐ (Dec 10 2024 at 15:52):Or use something other than Hugo?
Philip Durbin ๐ (Dec 10 2024 at 15:53):I'm asking this because I'd like to settle on a platform that's good enough and git-based. Then people can make pull requests to improve the website.
Vaida Plankytฤ ๐จ (Dec 10 2024 at 15:57):ooh, this is all exciting! snowed under a bit (metaphorically) but hoping to review this very soon. :geek:
Oliver Bertuch (Dec 10 2024 at 16:05):Philip Durbin ๐ said:
I'm asking this because I'd like to settle on a platform that's good enough and git-based. Then people can make pull requests to improve the website.
Hugo/Jekyll + md is a fine tech choice. I was just complaining about design and potentially content. I approve and appreciate GitOps.
Philip Durbin ๐ (Dec 10 2024 at 16:19):Ok, thanks. Is Sphinx also an acceptable tech choice for you? I have a prototype going at https://sphinx.dataverse.org as well but I think I like Hugo a bit better.
Philip Durbin ๐ (Dec 10 2024 at 16:28):Part of the problem here is that I'm not a web designer. I would love for someone to help make the site more modern, professional, and trustworthy.
Oliver Bertuch (Dec 10 2024 at 16:33):Sphinx is fine as well. Nice combo with MD possible too. If the header is too much if a burden, ditch it
Oliver Bertuch (Dec 10 2024 at 16:33):Yeah I'm not at design as well :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:
Philip Durbin ๐ (Dec 10 2024 at 16:37):My most popular tweet is "if you think experts are expensive you should see how much amateurs cost". :sweat_smile:
Julian Gautier (Dec 10 2024 at 16:40):Would it be worth it to reconsider tackling the migration and redesign separately? That's what's been done for the SPA for the most part, to make things more manageable
Philip Durbin ๐ (Dec 10 2024 at 16:44):That's a good thought. Using Sphinx (well, the PyData theme, especially the header) was sort of forcing me to make the site less flat but otherwise I was trying to keep https://sphinx.dataverse.org mostly true to the original site.
Philip Durbin ๐ (Dec 10 2024 at 16:44):With https://hugo.dataverse.org I went in a different direction, trying to incorporate feedback on how we could make the homepage better.
Philip Durbin ๐ (Dec 10 2024 at 16:45):But maybe I could create a https://hugo2.dataverse.org that tries to stay true to the original. I think the site can be as flat as we want with Hugo.
Amรฉlie Fiocca (Dec 10 2024 at 17:49):Hi, Philip ! I don't really know the technical options of these tools but my first view is visual and I'm not fan of the big empty space on the sides. I suppose it's possible to customize but yes we need a designer :sweat_smile:
Philip Durbin ๐ (Dec 10 2024 at 18:13):It's true. There is quite a bit of empty space on the sides.
Vaida Plankytฤ ๐จ (Dec 10 2024 at 18:17):heh, we've been having the same conversation at RSpace about our design. I made it "vertical" so that it would be easier to make mobile-friendly, but it results in a lot of scrolling and doesn't feel like the best use of space. the more marketingy websites tend to be good at filling up the whole space, while I know a lot of technical-focused projects tend to have more of a "here's an intro to our thing in markdown" look that feels more like scrolling an article.
Philip Durbin ๐ (Dec 10 2024 at 18:17):True. There's less empty space on mobile. :sweat_smile:
Philip Durbin ๐ (Dec 10 2024 at 18:19):Another thing I was thinking while hacking on https://hugo.dataverse.org is where the blog should go. With the theme I'm using (PaperMod) it gets added to the bottom.
Philip Durbin ๐ (Dec 10 2024 at 18:20):Generally speaking, I'm wondering if where content that changes (such as a blog) should be. The old/current site at https://dataverse.org has the blog and tweets at the bottom (though the tweets seem to be broken).
Vaida Plankytฤ ๐จ (Dec 10 2024 at 18:21):i'm off for a long winter break, but i'd love to discuss this more in the new year! this is all great stuff and it's good we're talking about how exactly to best present the content as well as the technical stack.
Philip Durbin ๐ (Dec 10 2024 at 18:21):Oh, and the map. The map also changes. It's toward the bottom, just above the blog.
Philip Durbin ๐ (Dec 10 2024 at 18:22):New Years Resolution: new website for Dataverse! :tada:
Vaida Plankytฤ ๐จ (Dec 10 2024 at 18:22):hm, having a preview to the latest few blog posts on the landing page could be quite nice, or have it be a little "notice" at the very top:
image.png
Vaida Plankytฤ ๐จ (Dec 10 2024 at 18:23):the map is quite powerful, i'd say it can go pretty high up, alongside the key "metrics" we discussed :sunglasses:
Vaida Plankytฤ ๐จ (Dec 10 2024 at 18:24):something like https://zeon.studio/preview?project=hugoplate is a good example of using up horizontal space, as well as showcasing features with a list of bullets and case studies/testimonials! and a nice hero section at the top that gives a TL;DR and action item :sunglasses:
Vaida Plankytฤ ๐จ (Dec 10 2024 at 18:25):alright, time for me to go have some celebratory bubble tea! :tea: take care y'all, was great meeting and working with you this year! happy holidays :holiday_tree:
Philip Durbin ๐ (Dec 10 2024 at 18:26):Ah, this one: https://themes.gohugo.io/themes/hugoplate/
Interesting. Thanks!
Dieuwertje Bloemen (Dec 11 2024 at 08:14):I agree with @Julian Gautier that maybe the design and the migration should be separated. Would it be an idea to offer a way for people who have time to make up some options/mock-ups (can also be done in photoshop or whatever) to get some concrete ideas going that can be compared or chosen between. If there's a design, it's always easier to turn it into code than to have some html and make it look pretty without any idea of where you're going design-wise in the end, I think.
Jan Range (Dec 11 2024 at 11:00):While primarily utilized for simultaneous code and design generation, you might consider trying v0. Its chat-based interface allows you to explore design options and brainstorm ideas. I also use it to create designs since I'm not particularly skilled at it. For instance, you can chat and modify the designs further.
Here's an example where I prompted to convert the existing page into a more modern design:
https://v0.dev/chat/XBemEnIRQ9O?b=b_HkA5I57ZFhx
Dieuwertje Bloemen (Dec 11 2024 at 11:49):I made a quick and simple mock-up losely based on some of the examples discussed (and the IQSS website, which is great for color inspiration because of the orange: https://www.iq.harvard.edu/). My mock-up example. If we want a full redesign, I would just start collecting ideas and then picking the best options/elements and finalizing a design. But maybe that's something to take our time for (possibly something for the community meeting, or is that too far out?).
Philip Durbin ๐ (Dec 11 2024 at 12:03):Wow! Thanks, @Dieuwertje Bloemen! I'm just going to grab a screenshot to put inline:
Screenshot 2024-12-11 at 7.02.59โฏAM.png
Philip Durbin ๐ (Dec 11 2024 at 12:05):You too, @Jan Range! Another screenshot:
Screenshot 2024-12-11 at 07-05-10 v0.png
Philip Durbin ๐ (Dec 11 2024 at 12:10):The only thing that makes me nervous, personally, is having some design and not being able deliver on making it real. Given my limited skills in this area, it's much easier for me to add content (Markdown) to an existing theme (let's say say a Hugo theme) than to create the theme myself.
Philip Durbin ๐ (Dec 11 2024 at 12:12):So maybe that's a question... does anyone here have the skills (or know someone who does) to create a Hugo theme? That's assuming we go with Hugo. I can tell you that any Hugo theme I come up with is going to be worse than PaperMod or Hugoplate.
Philip Durbin ๐ (Dec 11 2024 at 12:13):I have a slight preference for just picking a theme that's "good enough" and shipping a new site.
Philip Durbin ๐ (Dec 11 2024 at 12:14):If we have someone who can create a theme for us, that changes everything. It gives us more options and we can throw whatever designs we want at this talented individual.
Vaida Plankytฤ ๐จ (Dec 11 2024 at 12:17):ohh we are cooking :cooking:
Philip Durbin ๐ (Dec 11 2024 at 12:17):Yes! I'm loving all the designs and feedback! :heart:
Jan Range (Dec 11 2024 at 12:20):I think that heavily depends on what you want to achieve using the website. While it is nice to have a beautiful design, the question is if it is necessary for users. In its current state, it is informative, and the goal is to transport this information effectively while being maintainable/developable. Hence, I lean to @Philip Durbin ๐ suggestion of taking a theme and leaving it as such - I would value the ease of use and feasibility over a design, given it is a community project.
Jan Range (Dec 11 2024 at 12:22):My experience customizing Hugo has not been great, but that may depend on your template. In a nutshell, it is HTML sprinkled with GoLang directives/variables. In itself, it is not complex, but those template file structures and namings can be a pain :grinning:
Vaida Plankytฤ ๐จ (Dec 11 2024 at 12:31):there's an additional difficulty to having a customised theme -- adding new elements and making tweaks would have more of a bottleneck because we'd be relying on a specific persom who is able to make the design consistent. i feel that'd add friction to keeping the website up to date :big_smile: echoing what Jan has said basically
Amรฉlie Fiocca (Dec 11 2024 at 12:37):I agree, from an experience with my association's website... we had someone create a beautiful template (https://informasciences.ch/) at the start of the project but he left and now we're in a problem because no one really has the skills to, update or modify it easily, so we're thinking of going back to something more generic and easier to maintain.
Vaida Plankytฤ ๐จ (Dec 11 2024 at 12:37):i think the following approach could be good, which we have started on already:
Vaida Plankytฤ ๐จ (Dec 11 2024 at 12:38):step 3 would essentially be the migration to GitHub step as well.
Vaida Plankytฤ ๐จ (Dec 11 2024 at 12:39):idk if we should shortlist 2 or so setups and then have us try and edit the content, e.g. add a blog post, change some text, and see which one feels less painful? :thinking:
Vaida Plankytฤ ๐จ (Dec 11 2024 at 12:41):the content would also need to consider what angle we're taking; is this page a marketing site promoting dataverse to potential institutions/users? what do they care about knowing? what do existing users want as quick links? the initial hugo page that was shared had a lot of that figured out imo!
Philip Durbin ๐ (Dec 11 2024 at 13:04):@Amรฉlie Fiocca interesting that you're considering a switch to a simpler, more maintainable site! Makes sense. I hope you get to keep the robots and general sci-fi vibes. :big_smile:
Philip Durbin ๐ (Dec 11 2024 at 13:07):@Vaida Plankytฤ yes to all of that. I do think the choice of Hugo or Sphinx or whatever is important. I'd encourage anyone who thinks they might want to edit the site locally (on their laptop or whatever) to clone these repos and see if you can get them working:
Philip Durbin ๐ (Dec 11 2024 at 13:07):If the README doesn't explain the setup well, please let me know!
Philip Durbin ๐ (Dec 11 2024 at 13:07):I would suggest making some local edits. Play around. Which do you like better, Hugo or Sphinx?
Philip Durbin ๐ (Dec 11 2024 at 13:08):If you like neither one, please say so! :big_smile:
Philip Durbin ๐ (Dec 11 2024 at 13:14):By the way I looked at this mockup a lot when hacking together https://hugo.dataverse.org
It's the one the #docs working group came up with the other day. And I referred to the notes.
Philip Durbin ๐ (Dec 11 2024 at 13:15):I do think we're circling ever closer to agreeing on the content we want. :big_smile:
Philip Durbin ๐ (Dec 11 2024 at 13:32):Oh, and by the way, I started trying to add a "trusted by" section to the Hugo site but I couldn't figure out how to place logos side by side. This is the kind of stuff I could use help with. :heart:
Philip Durbin ๐ (Dec 11 2024 at 14:31):One more quick point: we recently moved the GDCC website from OpenScholar (Drupal) to GitHub Pages and from my perspective the benefit of opening up the editing of the site via pull requests is huge.
So I'm in favor of moving quickly and reaping that benefit. Let the community make pull requests soon, I say!
Vaida Plankytฤ ๐จ (Dec 11 2024 at 15:23):sounds like a plan! i'll have a go myself once i'm back. i've played with Hugo before and I liked how easy it was to add content once the various templates were set up. looking forward to seeing any new stuff you all cook up in the meantime! :sunglasses:
Sonia Barbosa (Dec 11 2024 at 21:43):@Dwayne Liburd
Philip Durbin ๐ (Dec 13 2024 at 14:42):@Sonia Barbosa yesterday @Dwayne Liburd and I had a nice chat about all this.
Philip Durbin ๐ (May 21 2025 at 20:31):We discussed this today at our monthly meeting. There's a new comment at https://github.com/IQSS/dataverse-pm/issues/349#issuecomment-2898908802
Philip Durbin ๐ (Jul 15 2025 at 20:18):BOOM! :bomb: A new contender by @Germรกn Saracca! Astro!
Code at https://github.com/IQSS/astro.dataverse.org
Oliver Bertuch (Jul 16 2025 at 08:01):Didn't know about Astro - another example of static site generators. As I know Jekyll and Hugo better, I looked for a comparison - maybeย this oneย helps others as well.
Philip Durbin ๐ (Aug 01 2025 at 15:26):I just gave the Astro site (and this topic in general) a shout out in the community news: https://groups.google.com/g/dataverse-community/c/WGAZpOfRvHk/m/uCLTf-VgAgAJ
Philip Durbin ๐ (Aug 01 2025 at 15:27):For anyone new to this topic, https://github.com/IQSS/dataverse-pm/issues/349 is the issue to track this project and dataverse.org on GitHub information architecture and static site generator bakeoff is the main doc to look at.
Philip Durbin ๐ (Oct 27 2025 at 17:11):@topic I want to thank everyone who contributed to the conversation about the design of the dataverse.org home page. In particular, I'd like to thank @Dieuwertje Bloemen and @Vaida Plankytฤ ๐จ who I believe made the following mockups:
Philip Durbin ๐ (Oct 27 2025 at 17:11):
Philip Durbin ๐ (Oct 27 2025 at 17:11):
Philip Durbin ๐ (Oct 27 2025 at 17:12):@Dwayne Liburd @Sonia Barbosa @Ceilyn Boyd @Danny Ebanks @Cheng Shi Rebecca and I just reviewed these mockups and they were very useful!
Vaida Plankytฤ ๐จ (Oct 28 2025 at 10:18):@Philip Durbin ๐ yes, i made that second one in Paint! :smile: really glad they were useful. let us know how the thinking on the website evolves, I'd love to help out.
Philip Durbin ๐ (Oct 28 2025 at 20:13):dataverse.org was migrated from OpenScholar to vanilla Drupal today. I just announced it here: https://groups.google.com/g/dataverse-community/c/IMheyu5XkOA/m/p0EGFtMiAQAJ
Philip Durbin ๐ (Oct 28 2025 at 20:15):On a related note, I have a database backup of the vanilla Drupal content but I don't know how to get it running locally (so that I can hopefully add a REST API and get content out to migrate to a static site). Can anyone help with this? Here's the docker compose I tried: docker-compose.yml
Last updated: Nov 01 2025 at 14:11 UTC