Hi, It seems like a good step to tackle the SEO optimization problem is to offer a "curent" link in our site to point to the latest docs. That's how PostgreSQL and Spring do it and once this link is indexed by google, it will always render the latest version of the docs: http://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/static/ http://docs.spring.io/spring/docs/current/spring-framework-reference/html MySQL does not offer this option and when googling something about MySQL, there's a big chance of getting a 5.0 page instead of 5.6 or 5.7. I think we should add a "current" "symbolic link" in the docs folder: https://docs.jboss.org/hibernate/orm/ and when we publish a new version, we need to go to Google Webmaster Tools (at least that's how I do it on my blog) and ask google to reindex that particular "current" link. I guess that could be automated too. Vlad _______________________________________________ hibernate-dev mailing list hibernate-dev(a)lists.jboss.org https://lists.jboss.org/mailman/listinfo/hibernate-dev

Thanks for pointing that out. The robots.txt is in place https://docs.jboss.org/robots.txt. But I couldn't find the sitemap.xml According to Google: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/156184?hl=en The sitemap.xml is important if: - Your site is really large - Your site has a large archive of content pages that are isolated or well not linked to each other. If you site pages do not naturally reference each other, you can list them in a sitemap to ensure that Google does not overlook some of your pages. So we meet both these two requirements. Maybe we need to add a sitemap.xml and reference the link to the "stable" docs only and the modification date. Vlad On Mon, Dec 7, 2015 at 9:46 AM, Gunnar Morling <gunnar(a)hibernate.org&gt; wrote: > Hi Vlad, > > We already have something like this, at > http://docs.jboss.org/hibernate/stable/. The latest final version docs > are available there. It's only that results from there have not a good > search result ranking apparently. > > --Gunnar > > > > 2015-12-04 20:42 GMT+01:00 Vlad Mihalcea <mihalcea.vlad(a)gmail.com&gt;: > > Hi, > > > > It seems like a good step to tackle the SEO optimization problem is to > > offer a "curent" link in our site to point to the latest docs. > > That's how PostgreSQL and Spring do it and once this link is indexed by > > google, it will always render the latest version of the docs: > > > > http://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/static/ > > > > > http://docs.spring.io/spring/docs/current/spring-framework-reference/html > > > > MySQL does not offer this option and when googling something about MySQL, > > there's a big chance of getting a 5.0 page instead of 5.6 or 5.7. > > > > I think we should add a "current" "symbolic link" in the docs folder: > > > > https://docs.jboss.org/hibernate/orm/ > > > > and when we publish a new version, we need to go to Google Webmaster > Tools > > (at least that's how I do it on my blog) and ask google to reindex that > > particular "current" link. I guess that could be automated too. > > > > Vlad > > _______________________________________________ > > hibernate-dev mailing list > > hibernate-dev(a)lists.jboss.org > > https://lists.jboss.org/mailman/listinfo/hibernate-dev > _______________________________________________ hibernate-dev mailing list hibernate-dev(a)lists.jboss.org https://lists.jboss.org/mailman/listinfo/hibernate-dev

We could list the stable doc only in the sitemaps and exclude all the others from the robots.txt. This way Google will only index the stable docs. To navigate between versions we need to add a selector somewhere on the page to load a specific version of the docs, but that doesn't have to be indexed by Google. Vlad On Tue, Dec 8, 2015 at 1:05 PM, Sanne Grinovero <sanne(a)hibernate.org&gt; wrote: > Stefania (my girlfriend but also a professional SEO consultant) also > pointed out that we should make sure that indexing engines understand > that the documentation pages are intentionally similar, as you get > penalised for duplicate content. > > So as you suggest we need to mark - for each guide - which one is the > "main" reference. I don't know if using a sitemap only is enough, I > was told that we need to add some headers in each webpage to refer it > to its canonical URL, I'll ask if we need both actions. > > On 7 December 2015 at 08:12, Vlad Mihalcea <mihalcea.vlad(a)gmail.com&gt; > wrote: > > Thanks for pointing that out. > > > > The robots.txt is in place https://docs.jboss.org/robots.txt. > > But I couldn't find the sitemap.xml > > > > According to Google: > > https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/156184?hl=en > > The sitemap.xml is important if: > > > > - Your site is really large > > - Your site has a large archive of content pages that are isolated or > well > > not linked to each other. If you site pages do not naturally reference > each > > other, you can list them in a sitemap to ensure that Google does not > > overlook some of your pages. > > > > So we meet both these two requirements. > > Maybe we need to add a sitemap.xml and reference the link to the "stable" > > docs only and the modification date. > > > > Vlad > > > > On Mon, Dec 7, 2015 at 9:46 AM, Gunnar Morling <gunnar(a)hibernate.org&gt; > wrote: > > > >> Hi Vlad, > >> > >> We already have something like this, at > >> http://docs.jboss.org/hibernate/stable/. The latest final version docs > >> are available there. It's only that results from there have not a good > >> search result ranking apparently. > >> > >> --Gunnar > >> > >> > >> > >> 2015-12-04 20:42 GMT+01:00 Vlad Mihalcea <mihalcea.vlad(a)gmail.com&gt;: > >> > Hi, > >> > > >> > It seems like a good step to tackle the SEO optimization problem is to > >> > offer a "curent" link in our site to point to the latest docs. > >> > That's how PostgreSQL and Spring do it and once this link is indexed > by > >> > google, it will always render the latest version of the docs: > >> > > >> > http://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/static/ > >> > > >> > > >> > http://docs.spring.io/spring/docs/current/spring-framework-reference/html > >> > > >> > MySQL does not offer this option and when googling something about > MySQL, > >> > there's a big chance of getting a 5.0 page instead of 5.6 or 5.7. > >> > > >> > I think we should add a "current" "symbolic link" in the docs folder: > >> > > >> > https://docs.jboss.org/hibernate/orm/ > >> > > >> > and when we publish a new version, we need to go to Google Webmaster > >> Tools > >> > (at least that's how I do it on my blog) and ask google to reindex > that > >> > particular "current" link. I guess that could be automated too. > >> > > >> > Vlad > >> > _______________________________________________ > >> > hibernate-dev mailing list > >> > hibernate-dev(a)lists.jboss.org > >> > https://lists.jboss.org/mailman/listinfo/hibernate-dev > >> > > _______________________________________________ > > hibernate-dev mailing list > > hibernate-dev(a)lists.jboss.org > > https://lists.jboss.org/mailman/listinfo/hibernate-dev > _______________________________________________ hibernate-dev mailing list hibernate-dev(a)lists.jboss.org https://lists.jboss.org/mailman/listinfo/hibernate-dev

Hi, I think one thing not mentioned on this thread is the fact that we are not controlling the root of the webserver (afaik). The docs are hosted on docs.jboss.org and I think we only have write access to the hibernate sub-folder. And even if we had access to the root and could modify robots.txt and add a sitemap.xml we would need to take all the other documentation hosted on this server into account. --Hardy

Hi, On Wed, Dec 09, 2015 at 03:12:54PM +0200, Vlad Mihalcea wrote: > Is there any change we host the docs on hibernate.org and simply redirect > the old pages from > > http://docs.jboss.org/hibernate > > to > > http://hibernate.org/orm/documentation That would be an option I guess. Host the documentation somewhere else. I am sure we discussed this before, but I cannot remember the outcome.

Regarding hibernate.org. The website is build via Awestruct from this repo https://github.com/hibernate/hibernate.org and pushed to GitHub Pages for hosting. The simplest solution would be to add the documentation to the site, but that might blow up the repository too much and make syncs to production too slow. I am not familar whether one could upload the documentation to GitHub Pages into a separate directory. I am not familiar on what and what not can be done here. Either way, the upload of new documentation needs to be scriptable, since pretty much all Hibernate projects have a script of some form to upload the documentation of a release to documentation server. --Hardy

We could leave the ones that are on docs.jboss.org in place and just move the current stable ones. I see no benefit to moving ORM 3.2 docs over e.g.

On Wed, Dec 9, 2015 at 10:08 AM Sanne Grinovero <sanne(a)hibernate.org&gt; wrote: > > On 9 December 2015 at 13:54, Hardy Ferentschik <hardy(a)hibernate.org&gt; > wrote: > > Hi, > > > > On Wed, Dec 09, 2015 at 03:12:54PM +0200, Vlad Mihalcea wrote: > >> Is there any change we host the docs on hibernate.org and simply > >> redirect > >> the old pages from > >> > >> http://docs.jboss.org/hibernate > >> > >> to > >> > >> http://hibernate.org/orm/documentation > > > > That would be an option I guess. Host the documentation somewhere else. > > I am sure > > we discussed this before, but I cannot remember the outcome. > > Right, this isn't new but for some reason (probably time?) we never got to > it. > I thought the outcome was that we couldn't move the docs away from the > jboss.org servers, but Emmanuel just told me there's no such rule. > > So let's plan to move them all! > > I think we need: > - redirects in place from the previous location > - make/update/verify a sitemap for hibernate.org > - get the docs on hibernate.org > - insert the right metadata in the older docs so to point to the > latest as their "canonical form" > > And like Vlad suggested, let's simply exclude from indexing all very > old guides and docs which aren't easily patched to have the right > pointers to their latest version (I'm thinking especially about old > guides which don't have a 1:1 match). > > I could spend a bit of time on this during Christmas, not before. > > Sanne > > > > > Regarding hibernate.org. The website is build via Awestruct from this > > repo > > https://github.com/hibernate/hibernate.org and pushed to GitHub Pages > > for hosting. > > The simplest solution would be to add the documentation to the site, but > > that might blow up the repository too much and make syncs to production > > too slow. > > > > I am not familar whether one could upload the documentation to GitHub > > Pages > > into a separate directory. I am not familiar on what and what not can be > > done > > here. > > > > Either way, the upload of new documentation needs to be scriptable, > > since pretty > > much all Hibernate projects have a script of some form to upload the > > documentation > > of a release to documentation server. > > > > --Hardy > >

I am not really sure what "have their headers patched to declare that the new guides are the canonical version" means in practical terms...

On Wed, Dec 9, 2015 at 10:55 AM Sanne Grinovero <sanne(a)hibernate.org&gt; wrote: > > On 9 December 2015 at 16:36, Steve Ebersole <steve(a)hibernate.org&gt; wrote: > > We could leave the ones that are on docs.jboss.org in place and just > > move > > the current stable ones. I see no benefit to moving ORM 3.2 docs over > > e.g. > > I'm ok to leave them there, but if we do they at least need to have > their headers patched to declare that the new guides are the canonical > version. > Otherwise they might be flagged "duplicated content" as I guess many > paragraphs didn't change much over time (or at all), and since the > position on docs.jboss.org is much older than the copy on > hibernate.org, that would penalize the score of hibernate.org > > > > > On Wed, Dec 9, 2015 at 10:08 AM Sanne Grinovero <sanne(a)hibernate.org&gt; > > wrote: > >> > >> On 9 December 2015 at 13:54, Hardy Ferentschik <hardy(a)hibernate.org&gt; > >> wrote: > >> > Hi, > >> > > >> > On Wed, Dec 09, 2015 at 03:12:54PM +0200, Vlad Mihalcea wrote: > >> >> Is there any change we host the docs on hibernate.org and simply > >> >> redirect > >> >> the old pages from > >> >> > >> >> http://docs.jboss.org/hibernate > >> >> > >> >> to > >> >> > >> >> http://hibernate.org/orm/documentation > >> > > >> > That would be an option I guess. Host the documentation somewhere > >> > else. > >> > I am sure > >> > we discussed this before, but I cannot remember the outcome. > >> > >> Right, this isn't new but for some reason (probably time?) we never got > >> to > >> it. > >> I thought the outcome was that we couldn't move the docs away from the > >> jboss.org servers, but Emmanuel just told me there's no such rule. > >> > >> So let's plan to move them all! > >> > >> I think we need: > >> - redirects in place from the previous location > >> - make/update/verify a sitemap for hibernate.org > >> - get the docs on hibernate.org > >> - insert the right metadata in the older docs so to point to the > >> latest as their "canonical form" > >> > >> And like Vlad suggested, let's simply exclude from indexing all very > >> old guides and docs which aren't easily patched to have the right > >> pointers to their latest version (I'm thinking especially about old > >> guides which don't have a 1:1 match). > >> > >> I could spend a bit of time on this during Christmas, not before. > >> > >> Sanne > >> > >> > > >> > Regarding hibernate.org. The website is build via Awestruct from this > >> > repo > >> > https://github.com/hibernate/hibernate.org and pushed to GitHub Pages > >> > for hosting. > >> > The simplest solution would be to add the documentation to the site, > >> > but > >> > that might blow up the repository too much and make syncs to > >> > production > >> > too slow. > >> > > >> > I am not familar whether one could upload the documentation to GitHub > >> > Pages > >> > into a separate directory. I am not familiar on what and what not can > >> > be > >> > done > >> > here. > >> > > >> > Either way, the upload of new documentation needs to be scriptable, > >> > since pretty > >> > much all Hibernate projects have a script of some form to upload the > >> > documentation > >> > of a release to documentation server. > >> > > >> > --Hardy > >> >