Making Updates to the Boost Website Content

Any boost developer can update the Boost website content between releases.

• We strongly recommend the use of HTML Tidy when editing HTML and XHTML files intented for the website. Using tidy helps in preventing errors in the HTML, in keeping a clear revision history, and in conforming to Web standards to help make the website readable by the majority of people. The Boost web pages currently have a variety of different types of HTML and XHTML content. Each needs to be dealt with differently by tidy. Most pages are regular HTML 3.x/4.x, for these use a tidy invocation of:

  tidy --tidy-mark no -i -wrap 78 -m some_page.html
  

  Other pages are using the more recent XHTML 1.0 and XHTML 1.0 Strict standards. Most notably this include the home page. Some additional options are needed to make tidy enforce the XHTML standard:

  tidy --tidy-mark no -i -wrap 78 -m -asxhtml some_page.html
  

  That command is also useful if one is converting from HTML to XHTML. To have tidy check for the XHTML 1.0 Strict format use:

  tidy --tidy-mark no -i -wrap 78 -m -asxhtml --doctype strict some_page.html
  

  If you have a choice as to what format to use, prefer the XHTML 1.0 Strict format as that opens the content to the widest audience.
• If the change you are making is intended to be part of a release, you should first make the change in our CVS repository, so it doesn't get lost or overwritten by the next person that updates the page between releases. Of course if you don't check in (say because the change is not supposed to be in the next release), and someone else changes the page after you, the change may be lost. This procedure does not account for that case; you'll have to use your head and figure out what to do.
• You will upload the file(s) by scp'ing to the appropriate subdirectory of shell.sf.net:/home/groups/b/bo/boost/htdocs/. For example, to update the page you are reading, I would issue

  scp updating_the_website.html david_abrahams@shell.sf.net:/home/groups/b/bo/boost/htdocs/more/
  

• It is crucial to ensure that you set group write permission on every file you upload. If you don't do that, nobody else will be able to change it, which is particularly deadly at release time. If you are on Unix or Cygwin, you may be able to do that with a chmod command before uploading the file. The absolutely failsafe thing to do is to ssh into shell.sf.net and do the chmod there. The files also need to have general read permission, and any directories should have general execute permission and the "set user or group ID on execution" (s) bit should also be set. If you're not touching any directories, you can do it all with one command, e.g.

  ssh david_abrahams@shell.sf.net "chmod a+r,g+rw /home/groups/b/bo/boost/htdocs/more/updating_the_website.html"
  

Revised $Date: 2005/07/08 14:46:06 $

© Copyright David Abrahams 2005

© Copyright Rene Rivera 2005

Distributed under the Boost Software License, Version 1.0. (See accompanying file LICENSE_1_0.txt or copy at www.boost.org/LICENSE_1_0.txt)