Hi Geode Dev Community,
I wanted to say hello again and mention that I have submitted an initial PR for
the geode-site modernization. I have not had as much time as I wanted to make a
perfect 100% completed version of the website documents. But it is very far
along, and it may go faster to be fully complete if I can push this in and get
community help for the rest.
https://github.com/apache/geode-site/pull/31
Thank you, Patrick Harmon @patrickharmon (Geode Jira) @harmoncoffee (GitHub)
On Friday, April 24, 2026 at 02:58:09 PM EDT, Bryan G. Behrenshausen
<[email protected]> wrote:
Thanks for this great overview of our work so far, Patrick. I have nothing to
add, except to underscore your request for review and feedback. Patrick and I
are very keen to hear what the community thinks of this direction.
Bryan
On 2026-04-24 11:44 AM, Patrick Harmon via dev wrote:
> Hi Geode Dev Community,
> My name is Patrick Harmon, and I'm a member of the SAS team working to
> modernize Geode. I was real interested in the recent effort to update the
> Apache Geode project website:
> https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/GEODE-10468 (Modernization of Apache
> Geode Website)
> For the past few months, my colleague Bryan Behrenshausen and I have been
> working on issues related to this effort. Some of these include:
> https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/GEODE-10485 (Upgrade to latest website
> template)https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/GEODE-10582 (documentation
> modernization)https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/GEODE-9956 (update
> website generation tools)
> Our work has been progressing, and I'd like to share with you what we've done
> so far. I'd also like to get your feedback on our proposed updates and some
> of the process changes we're imagining.
> The first thing we did was port the Geode website to the docusaurus-based ASF
> website template:
> https://github.com/apache/apache-website-template
> Starting from that template, we have been able to continue modernizing the
> Geode site. And by working with the template, we were able to ensure that the
> new site is aligned with ASF branding and trademark policies:
> https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/GEODE-10474 (Branding updates on
> website)
> I plan to raise a draft PR when it's a little more polished, but the code
> currently resides on a feature branch:
> https://github.com/harmoncoffee/geode-site/tree/GEODE-10468
> You can see a working prototype of the new site here:
> https://apachegeode.pharmondev.com/
> (It's hosted on AWS, and it pulls my local branch and refreshes when commits
> are done. I wanted to wait until there was enough progress on it to share
> here.)
> Here's a list of the primary tasks we've completed so far:
> - Using a docusaurus based environment for hosting the geode-site. -
> Organization of existing docs to mostly match the old website, on the side
> navigation bar. - Arranging the initial site page to provide most of the same
> content from geode.apache.org
> And here's what's in progress:
> - Migration of Apache Geode 1.15 docs- Validating all links, images, and
> anchors are fixed when rearranging the file directories. I believe at
> approximately 600 links are still broken, and 200 anchors need fixing (at
> least based on automatic docusaurus validation)
> On our list (but not yet started) are:
> - Once Completed with 1.15, add the new 2.x versions to the doc- Migration of
> native docs, for C++ and .NET 1.15 versions, and if need any changes for 2.x
> add that- Documentation on how to contribute to geode site when using
> docusaurus- Removal of old geode docs on the main 1.15, and 2.x branches
> A few final notes, too:
> 1. This proposed site upgrade does change the working location of the Geode
> documentation. Currently, the documentation resides in the Geode project
> repository and gets built with a Ruby-based toolchain:
> https://github.com/apache/geode/tree/develop/geode-docshttps://github.com/apache/geode/tree/develop/geode-book
> Docusaurus-based sites expect the documentation to be in the same location as
> the website files themselves—hence the need to migrate all existing
> documentation to the geode-site repository
> (https://github.com/apache/geode-site). I do not believe there would be any
> reason to retain documentation inside the Geode development rather just in
> the geode-site repository. So with this change, we would likely be suggesting
> the deprecation of the previous documentation system and location.
> 2. Docusaurus can utilize markdown, very similar to the existing
> documentation. So I have stripped most of the files and put them into
> markdown files, then adjusted the yaml front matter to organize and name the
> content. Since I'm utilizing auto-formatting of docusaurus, I went through
> each document and explicitly ordered them with the front matter. As you
> review, please help me ensure that our content listings are correct.
> I was talking with Jinwoo Hwang (Geode PMC member and my SAS colleague), and
> my initial thought is to keep just 1.15.x, and 2.x documentation versions
> updated on the website, as these are the only two supported Geode versions.
> This can be revisited if we need to, but I believe that once I have the
> entirety of the documentation renamed and formatted, with links working, I
> will go through a diff phase of the other versions and see how much really
> changed, maybe add those independently if we believe it's required. I have
> not analyzed this separately yet.
> I would love to hear some feedback, thoughts, and suggestions.
> Thank you, Patrick Harmon @patrickharmon (Geode Jira) @harmoncoffee (GitHub)
>
