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| 1 | +Read the Docs website migration |
| 2 | +=============================== |
| 3 | + |
| 4 | +:date: Mar 9, 2023 |
| 5 | +:category: Changelog |
| 6 | +:tags: website, migration |
| 7 | +:authors: Eric Holscher |
| 8 | +:description: Read the Docs has a new home for website and content pages that were previously part of our application. |
| 9 | +:status: published |
| 10 | +:image: /images/posts/screenshot-new-website.png |
| 11 | +:image_credit: |
| 12 | + |
| 13 | +Read the Docs is in the process of migrating our primary marketing website to a single site: https://about.readthedocs.com. |
| 14 | +The new site offers users more information about our products and their features, |
| 15 | +in a combined presentation of what was previously divided between two websites (Read the Docs Community and Read the Docs for Business). |
| 16 | +At the same time, the new site will also serve as a single entrypoint for users that are logging in to Read the Docs accounts. |
| 17 | +There has been a good deal of confusion around our two sites, |
| 18 | +and this change makes it more clear which site you're going to. |
| 19 | + |
| 20 | +Importantly, |
| 21 | +**we are keeping both our Community and Business sites separate for logged in users.** |
| 22 | +There are no changes in our commitment to offering free hosting for open source, |
| 23 | +or the separation of infrastructure for Business customers. |
| 24 | + |
| 25 | +Marketing website migration process |
| 26 | +----------------------------------- |
| 27 | + |
| 28 | +The process that we're taking to migrate our marketing site is as follows: |
| 29 | + |
| 30 | +#. ✅ The initial work here was creating a proper marketing site, |
| 31 | + and deploying it to https://about.readthedocs.com. |
| 32 | + This was done in January 2023. |
| 33 | +#. ✅ Redirecting *logged out* Business (``readthedocs.com``) users to the new site. |
| 34 | + This was done in February 2023, and we've been monitoring the impact of this change. |
| 35 | +#. ✅ Redirect *logged out* Community (``readthedocs.org``) users to the new site. |
| 36 | + This was done in August 2023, to make sure the experience is smooth for users who are used to our application web pages. |
| 37 | + |
| 38 | +We're excited about our new website, |
| 39 | +because historically we have done a poor job of explaining our products. |
| 40 | +Being able to have a single site that explains the features of our various sites, |
| 41 | +and the value that Read the Docs brings to the documentation ecosystem is exciting for us. |
| 42 | + |
| 43 | +Technical details |
| 44 | +----------------- |
| 45 | + |
| 46 | +Historically, |
| 47 | +our marketing pages were generated from our Django application, |
| 48 | +and updated only when we deployed a new version of the site. |
| 49 | +With our new approach, |
| 50 | +our marketing site is actually hosted by Read the Docs itself. |
| 51 | + |
| 52 | +Self-hosting our marketing website gives us many benefits that our users love about hosting their docs with us: |
| 53 | + |
| 54 | +* A proper static site generator built for making a website and blog. |
| 55 | +* Pull request previews to allow us to review content changes. |
| 56 | +* Instant deployment of updates whenever we merge to ``main``. |
| 57 | +* All the rest of our features that we offer to our users. |
| 58 | + |
| 59 | +We're using our new build customization features to build our site with `Pelican <https://getpelican.com/>`__, |
| 60 | +and it's been a really fun way to expand the capabilities of our build system. |
| 61 | + |
| 62 | +We hope that you'll join us for the next stage of Read the Docs, |
| 63 | +where we will continue to provide the best documentation hosting for all software projects. |
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