Help Wanted: Open all external links in a new browser tab

[cwarnermm]

Problem space
Currently, links to external sites from the Mattermost product documentation take the visitor away from docs.mattermost.com.

Target audience
All users

Goal
All external links across the product documentation site open in a new browser tab, rather than the current tab.

Delivery expectations

• 1 PR with all proposed changes
• Leave all links to other pages of the product documentation site as-is.
• Links to the Mattermost Developer or API documentation sites count as an external site link and should be updated.
• Comment in the PR to request a generated preview of your work. The Docs team will add the appropriate labels to your PR.

Tech needed

• HTML,
• RST, MD formats
• Sphinx

Affected repository
mattermost/docs

Where to get help
Join the Mattermost Docs team on the Mattermost Community Server in the ~Documentation Working Group channel to discuss this ticket, or feel free to comment in this docs ticket.

[Abhishek-Vaidya]

I can help in solving this issue can you assign me this issue?

[cwarnermm]

Happy to have your help with this documentation improvement, @Abhishek-Vaidya!

[Abhishek-Vaidya]

can I know the path of the HTML and JavaScript files of the documentation webpages, so that I can edit them and solve your issue? I was unable to find these files.

[neflyte]

HTML templates can be found in source/templates, and CSS/JS files can be found in source/_static.

[cwarnermm]

Hi @Abhishek-Vaidya! One approach to a ticket like this might be to format all links site-wide to open in a new tab. However, this particular documentation site features a mix of links that point to other pages of the same doc set as well as external links to other websites. With this in mind, formatting all links to open a certain way may impact more links than intended.

Another approach to this ticket may include encoding only the external links on a given docs page to open in a new tab. This would ensure that only the links that include such configuration would open that way, and all other links would open within the same tab.