Technical Documentation

Getting started

To preview or build the website, we need to use the terminal.

Install Ruby with Rubygems, perferably with a Ruby version manager, and the Bundler gem.

In the application folder type the following to install the required gems:

bundle install

Making changes

To make changes edit the source files in the source folder.

Single page output

Although a single page of HTML is generated the markdown is spread across multiple files to make it easier to manage. They can be found in source/documentation.

A new markdown file isn't automatically included in the generated output. If we add a new markdown file at the location source/documentation/agile/scrum.md, the following snippet in source/index.html.md.erb, includes it in the generated output.

<%= partial 'documentation/agile/scrum' %>

Including files manually like this lets us specify the position they appear in the page.

Multiple pages

To add a completely new page, create a file with a .html.md extension in the /source directory.

For example, source/about.html.md will be accessible on http://localhost:4567/about.html.

Preview

Whilst writing documentation we can run a middleman server to preview how the published version will look in the browser. After saving a change the preview in the browser will automatically refresh.

The preview is only available on our own computer. Others won't be able to access it if they are given the link.

Type the following to start the server:

bundle exec middleman server

If all goes well something like the following output will be displayed:

== The Middleman is loading
== LiveReload accepting connections from ws://192.168.0.8:35729
== View your site at "http://Laptop.local:4567", "http://192.168.0.8:4567"
== Inspect your site configuration at "http://Laptop.local:4567/__middleman", "http://192.168.0.8:4567/__middleman"

You should now be able to view a live preview at http://localhost:4567.

Building and Deploying

The generated documentation is hosted on the GOV.UK PaaS.

Deployment is a manual process. First, make sure you have and up-to-date copy of the repository. Next, you'll need to build the static HTML files:

bundle exec middleman build

This will create a build subfolder in the application folder which contains the HTML and asset files ready to be published.

To publish the changes, make sure you have the Cloud Foundry command line tools installed, then sign in to Cloud Foundry, using the Ireland location.

From the menus that are displayed once you've logged in, select the gds-data-gov-uk organisation, and the data-gov-uk space.

Finally, deploy your changes by running:

cf push -f manifest.yml

The documentation is cached by CloudFront, so it may take some time for the updates to appear after deployment.