New Documentation

TL;DR

  • New domain
  • New style
  • New search
  • New diagrams
  • New PDF export

Maybe you already noticed it: We have a beautiful new documentation website, and we think you will love it. Our new website is based on the material theme for MkDocs with some customizations and it's rocking a bunch of new and improved features.

The HEPTAconnect documentation is now available under a new domain: heptaconnect.io. We have moved from a subdomain under heptacom.de to a dedicated domain and we are also using the .io domain ending.

Perhaps the most notable change are the stunning visuals. The main landing page shows the HEPTAconnect logo and prominently advertises the four most important sections of the documentation. Have you noticed the glowing backdrop behind the cards when you hover over them?

Speaking of sections: We have restructured our content into different sections. Most of our existing content went into Portal Developer and Reference. The sections Integrator and Administrator are completely new and bring different perspectives into the documentation. Truth be told, they are not finished yet. But we have big plans to extend the documentation with new content for them, so stay tuned.

And when we are already on the topic of staying tuned: We noticed that most RSS readers don't update as frequently as we would like them to. So starting from today we will additionally publish our blog entries on Twitter. So if your RSS reader is giving you trouble, feel free to follow us there.

Let's get back to the star of today's show: The new documentation website has an amazing new search function. A big problem we had with the search on the old website was the small space where the search results would get crammed into. Search results were nearly indistinguishable from one another rendering them downright useless. The new search bar makes use of all the space it can get to give results that are actually helpful.

If you are hyped to try it out, a good first search term would be "Basic flow". The first result will take you to a brand-new page with our new sequence diagrams to visualize how data flows through HEPTAconnect. Those diagrams show both the perspective of a portal and the perspective of HEPTAconnect core components during an exploration, an emission and a reception in a basic flow. Let us know if they could help you to better grasp the big picture.

And there is still more. MkDocs has another trick up its sleeve. The entire documentation is available for download as a PDF file with a cover page and a linked table of contents. So when your client demands a copy of the documentation, it's just one click away. Take a look on the left side of the footer.

Last but not least, the switch from docsify to MkDocs means that our documentation is finally visible for Google and other search engines. So hopefully you can soon find your answers even faster from your favourite search engine.