[drupal-docs] Plan for moving to new handbook (was: Moving Nodes vs. Creating New Nodes)

[puregin]

I'd suggest that we make a plan and make sure that we're
pretty clear about the usual items: what, who, when, how, where,
why, etc. before we  leap into action.

       We need to be aware that there's still some activity around the
old handbook, and we don't want to pull the rug out from under
anyone or archive off something that's only half done.

For example, I'm currently working my way through the handbook,
removing embedded headings as per the style guide.  I started with
"General information" and have worked my way into Contributor's
guide, with the exception of a few pages I don't have edit permissions
for.

Here's some ideas, which need to be discussed and  elaborated:

Plan A:
----------
     Make a mass copy of the existing handbooks.   The new copy
will become the archive, frozen in time.  The old copy will be
edited and updated.
      Links to content will not break, and will point to the current 
version;
i.e., a link to node/12345 will still point to node 12345, which 
hopefully
will continue to have much the same content, but updated - or at least a
reference to the old content.

Plan B:
----------
     Make a mass copy of the existing handbooks.  The *old* copy
will become the archive.   It will have links to the new handbooks 
section
inserted.
     Links to content will not break, and will point to the archive 
version.
The reader can follow the embedded references to the new version.

Plan C:
----------
     <insert your plan here :-) >

In any case, we need to figure out a bunch of things.

Could everyone please look at this list and supply some
answers/idea and/or new questions?

   - what will we copy?
        - nodes
        - comments
        - book structure
        - ? what else
        - is there anything we shouldn't copy?
  - what contents, attributes, metadata needs to be modified?
  - how will the copy be make?
        - the new copy will have to have the same structure as the old.
           Obviously the new copy's children should point to the new 
copy's
           parent nodes...  Other structures to preserve?  How will we
           deal with comments?  Images?
        - is this best done with a script run against the database?
        - is there an 'archivebook' contributed module (should there be?)
        - shall we copy all of the books at once, or do a 'handbook' at 
a time?
   - who will do this?
   - where should we copy this to?
        - how shall the archived be named, linked to, presented, etc.
        - how shall the new version be named, presented, etc.
   - when shall this be done?
       - what needs to be done first?
       - what other constraints do we need to consider?
    - how shall we test our results, to make sure we've done what
       we wanted to without breaking anything along the way?


On 7 May 2005, at 11:50 PM, bryan kennedy wrote:

> On May 5, 2005, at 11:54 PM, puregin wrote:
>
>>      I've been thinking about this, and it seems to me that the
>> thing to do is to make a copy of each node which we want
>> to move, and then move the original.
>
> Okay, this is what I have started to do with the new "About the
> handbook" section.  Please take a look and see if this meets up with
> what you have described.
>
> http://drupal.org/handbook/about

     Looks good, Bryan!    The copyright notice should probably
be updated to read '2005' rather than 2002-2004 (it's a new
edition, isn't it?)

     I like the URL aliasing.  Are we going to do this by hand for
all pages?  Do we have a plan (chapter names, section numbers?)
for this?

>
> I also built an entire map of the current handbook with URLs so that
> we can map old URLs to new content in the future if we need to keep
> links from breaking.  If anyone is interested in this FreeMind
> (http://freemind.sourceforge.net/) mindmap just let me know and I can
> send it through to them.

     This sounds cool, I will check it out.  I've got my own little 
content
maps which I use to try to understand the current structure.
Things are a bit of a moving target now - it's nice to have a way
of understanding the history of a complex structure such as this.
We'll have to compare notes on good tools for this.

>
> I started copying content out of the original pages into new nodes.
> I am doing a couple things as I create these new nodes in the
> handbook v2:
>      -trying to adhere to the new "Authoring guidelines" http://
> drupal.org/handbook/about/authoring
>      -giving all pages structural and human readable URL aliases
>      -disabling commenting (for now all discussion should be funneled
> through this list.  We can discuss whether we want comments again in
> the future)
>
       Good idea about the comments off for now.  I've actually been
thinking that it might be nice to have a separate tab for "reviewers' 
notes".
There would be an additional "reviewer" role - a small group of people
who could review and annotate sections.   E-mail should be fine for now.

       It would also be nice to have sectional numbering automagically
generated, as a configurable option, so we can say 'nice work
on 2.1.3', or 'what's up with 4.2.2?', instead of messing with long
titles.

> Next up we will need to start organizing and re-writing some of the
> bigger sections with some deference given to Kierann's card-sort
> activity, the survey, and current wisdom.

     I'm actually thinking that Kieran's module documentation sprint
might be a good place for all of us to focus our energy for a while
as we discuss and figure out the details of the move to handbook 2.

     Nice to see things rolling along!

     Regards, Djun