Contribution Guidelines

We use Hugo to format and generate our website, the Docsy theme for styling and site structure, and Netlify to manage the deployment of the site. Hugo is an open-source static site generator that provides us with templates, content organization in a standard directory structure, and a website generation engine. You write the pages in Markdown (or HTML if you want), and Hugo wraps them up into a website.

All submissions, including submissions by project members, require review. We use GitHub pull requests for this purpose. Consult GitHub Help for more information on using pull requests.

Quick start with Netlify

Here’s a quick guide to updating the docs. It assumes you’re familiar with the GitHub workflow and you’re happy to use the automated preview of your website updates:

1. Fork the ClusterLink repo on GitHub.
2. The documentation site is under the website directory.
3. Make your changes and send a pull request (PR).
4. If you’re not yet ready for a review, add “WIP” to the PR name to indicate it’s a work in progress. (Don’t add the Hugo property “draft = true” to the page front matter, because that prevents the auto-deployment of the content preview described in the next point).
5. Wait for the automated PR workflow to do some checks. When it’s ready, you should see a check named like this: Pages changed - clusterlink-net
6. Click Details to the right of “Pages changed” to see a preview of your updates. Previews will be deployed to https://deploy-preview-<PR#>--clusterlink-net.netlify.app/
7. Continue updating your doc and pushing your changes until you’re happy with the content.
8. When you are ready for a review, add a comment to the PR, and remove any “WIP” markers.

Updating a single page

If you’ve just spotted something you’d like to change while using the docs, Docsy has a shortcut for you:

1. Click Edit this page in the top right hand corner of the page.
2. If you don’t already have an up-to-date fork of the project repo, you are prompted to get one - click Fork this repository and propose changes or Update your Fork to get an up-to-date version of the project to edit. The appropriate page in your fork is displayed in edit mode.
3. Follow the rest of the Quick start with Netlify process above to make, preview, and propose your changes.

Previewing your changes locally

If you want to run your own local Hugo server to preview your changes as you work:

1. Follow the instructions in Getting started to install Hugo and any other tools you need. You’ll need at least Hugo version 0.110 (we recommend using the most recent available version), and it must be the extended version, which supports SCSS.
2. Run hugo server --gc in the website directory. By default your site will be available at http://localhost:1313/. Now that you’re serving your site locally, Hugo will watch for changes to the content and automatically refresh your site.
3. Continue with the usual GitHub workflow to edit files, commit them, push the changes up to your fork, and create a pull request.

Creating an issue

If you’ve found a problem in the docs, but you’re not sure how to fix it yourself, please create an issue in the ClusterLink repo. You can also create an issue about a specific page by clicking the Create Issue button in the top right hand corner of the page.

Useful resources

• Docsy user guide: All about Docsy, including how it manages navigation, look and feel, and multi-language support.
• Hugo documentation: Comprehensive reference for Hugo.
• Github Hello World!: A basic introduction to GitHub concepts and workflow.