Single page application for docs using Discourse API

Feature
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Continuing discussion from here.

The v1 I had in mind for this was actually a lightweight single page application (i.e. docs.discourse.org) interfacing with the Discourse API, which would open links in a new window (meta.discourse.org). That way it’d be easier to style it to taste. But I suppose it might be roughly the same amount of work as a Discourse plugin.

I haven’t had the chance to clean up my ideas yet, but here’s a mockup I was fiddling with:

Page_Discourse_Docs_App(0).png1000×1000 44.3 KB

Page_Discourse_Docs_App_1(1).png1000×716 109 KB

It has 3 components to it:

Top pages

Top pages on forum

An widget populated with the top pages, based on Most Read or same algorithm as Top.

External pages

Dedicated space for blog posts or 3rd party articles that are recommended reading.

Sitemap

List all the pages of a specified category, sectioned by tags. Essentially an automated version of what I demonstrated in the Meta docs TOC.

Search

Default search to a specified category, but let the user toggle between category-specifc and global search.

6 Likes
2

New Relic has a pretty slick implementation of this. They’ve created a site-wide newrelic.com search. Try search “database” for instance and see what comes up:

https://support.newrelic.com/

3 Likes
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Very nice!

I’m doing this too, on our intranet app (Scala + Play Framework). The search API is more than enough to allow such tight integration. Discourse is already part of the whole app.

1 Like