Re: Search points to ancient manuals

From: Craig Ringer <ringerc(at)ringerc(dot)id(dot)au>
To: Marti Raudsepp <marti(at)juffo(dot)org>
Cc: Magnus Hagander <magnus(at)hagander(dot)net>, Josh Berkus <josh(at)agliodbs(dot)com>, PostgreSQL WWW <pgsql-www(at)postgresql(dot)org>, Kevin Grittner <kgrittn(at)mail(dot)com>
Subject: Re: Search points to ancient manuals
Date: 2012-11-02 12:43:20
Message-ID: 5093BFE8.7040009@ringerc.id.au
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On 11/01/2012 07:35 PM, Marti Raudsepp wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 1, 2012 at 1:13 PM, Craig Ringer <ringerc(at)ringerc(dot)id(dot)au> wrote:
>> I've often wished that the docs would redirect to the /current/interactive version when the referer is google. Not enough to write the code yet, though.
>
> That solution is backwards. You click on the Google link that says
> "Documentation: 8.1: EXPLAIN", but when you click on it, you magically
> end up in PostgreSQL 9.2 docs.

You're right, especially with people searching for a specific version or
choosing a specific version from the hit list.

It was a poorly thought out suggestion.

> I suspect most of our
> referrers link to versioned docs, which boosts their rank, and the
> search engine has no way of telling that the individual versions are
> mostly equivalent.

I'd say so, yes. That's partly because when you visit the docs site, you
have to pick a version. You have to edit the URL to get /current .

> We might detect search engines by their User-Agent header and always
> serve them redirects to /current/ (if the page exists in current) or
> the latest version. But that would have the effect of de-indexing old
> versions of pages that have been revised -- which isn't an issue most
> of the time, but is not ideal either.

Yep; in particular, that's bad when the old versions have significantly
different info, as with `custom_variable_classes`, which is gone in 9.2,
or the `shared_buffers` changes for 9.3.

Maybe if the user visits old docs there just needs to be a banner with a
prominent "This documentation is specific to version xx of PostgreSQL;
if this is not the version you are using please choose yours from the
links above."

--
Craig Ringer

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