Hi,

We are evaluating how we could improve the user experience for using WildFly and one of the idea is to create a « Get Started » page on wildfly.org that would be an entry point for users that wants to try WildFly.

This would be useful not only for new users (that have no previous knowledge of WildFly) but also existing users to let them understand the more recent ways to use WildFly.

The expectation for this page would be simple:

* no knowledge of WildFly required

* Few prerequisites:

  * Java & Maven installed

* Few steps:

  * Step 1: create a Maven project (using WildFly archetypes, more on that below)

  * Step 2: run mvn package

  * Step 3: run ./targer/server/bin/standalone.sh

  * Step 4: verify the application is up and running

* Next steps

  * the page should link to next logical steps after getting started with WildFly (eg deploy on Kubernetes, secure WildFly, etc.)

This page would provide a good user experience and rely on the WildFly archetype to bootstrap all the « plumbing » that needs to be done to setup WildFly so that the users can focus on "their » code.

We already have WildFly archetypes[1] but there are opportunities for a simpler one which focus on that user experience.

Darran is already working on such one[2] that takes advantage of the wildfly-maven-plugin to provision WildFly so that everything is controlled from the project pom.xml

Having a good archetype would also make sure that this "getting started" page is always up to date with the latest release of WildFly (as we update the archetype for every new release of WildFly).

For a quick review of Darran’s PR[3], we are not far from being able to release it and build on top of it for this « get started » page.

We can already start working on this page and create its shell while polishing up the archetype.

What do you think?

Best regards,

jeff

[1] https://mvnrepository.com/artifact/org.wildfly.archetype

[2] https://issues.redhat.com/browse/WFLY-17651

[3] https://github.com/wildfly/wildfly-archetypes/pull/26

-- 

Jeff Mesnil
Engineer @ Red Hat JBoss EAP
http://jmesnil.net/