Thanks for your comment, Patrick. Why React? Building a website nowadays is not just HTML + CSS, because doing it this way turns the developer experience into a nightmare. With React we effortlessly have consistent UI components across all pages, including buttons, tables, markdown rendering, colors, and much more. We also add the interactivity much more easily with React. A static website doesn't mean it lacks interactivity; it often has significant interactivity, especially in the documentation section. The difference is that we don't need any runtime environment, we just return the files generated at build time, which are ultimately just HTML, CSS, and JS. The website also has dark mode support, search in the documentation, smooth transitions between pages (no hard reload), so it gives smooth and better user experience overall. I hope this answers your question. Moreover, the website will work absolutely fine even for those who have JS disabled, this is called progressive enhancement. Initially, the server returns HTML and CSS. The browser renders them and tries to fetch the JS files. If it doesn't succeed, the page remains accessible, though it obviously lacks interactivity. I hope this answers your questions, if not, feel free to ask more about it!
Is it hard for ZK devs to update the content? Not at all! I tried to make it so the learning curve for non-JS devs is almost 0. For the documentation you still just need to edit the MDX (Markdown Extended) files and run the build command. I will also add a bash script to automate the build process. For the landing pages, you still mostly only need to modify the markdown files. Only the main page isn't markdown, modifying something small wouldn't be a problem. In the worst case, if something more complex is required, you can handle it with the AI. Nevertheless, the website hasn't been updated for years, so it wouldn't be a big loss :) Best regards, Yurii On Fri, Mar 27, 2026 at 4:19 PM Patrick Hunt <[email protected]> wrote: > On Fri, Mar 27, 2026 at 3:32 AM Yurii Palamarchuk < > [email protected]> wrote: > > > Hi there, > > > > I am proposing an upgrade to the ZooKeeper website and documentation. We > > are moving to a modern React.js stack, which allows landing pages and > > versioned documentation to live in a single application sharing the same > UI > > components, libraries, colors, etc. > > > > The plan is to move all website and documentation source code to the > > website branch and remove the zookeeper-docs Maven project from the > master > > branch. This decouples the Node/JS build environment from the core Java > > repository. > > > > Versioned docs will be managed via archived folders within the website > > branch. Documentation updates would move from master to PRs against the > > website branch. Also I'm not planning to keep the app as a maven project, > > since it's fully JS based. To keep it simple, I will write a bash script > > that installs the dependencies, runs the tests, and the build. > > > > What do you think about moving the docs out of master to centralize the > > site? > > > > Preview: https://zookeeper-website.vercel.app/ > > > > > Looks pretty slick - nice update and visual refresh! Question though - why > React? This is a static website, what are the pro/con of React based? Can > you explain the impact on common use cases like making updates? ZK team > includes a number of people, not all of whom might know React, how hard > will it be for them to make changes? Impact on the release process? > > Regards, > > Patrick > > > > Best regards, > > Yurii Palamarchuk > > >
