website2022/development/website_updating.html

---
title: Boost C++ Libraries - Updating Website
copyright: Rene Rivera 2006-2007.
revised: 
---


Boost C++ Libraries - Updating Website



Updating and Editing Website Content
====================================

* [Getting Content](#GettingContent)
* [Existing Page](#ExistingPage)
* [New Page](#NewPage)
* [Menus, Sidebars, and Index](#Menus)
* [Feeds](#Feeds)
* [Local Server](#Local_Server)


Getting
 Content
----------------


The website content lives in the [git repository](https://github.com/boostorg/website/).


In progress work is on the `beta` branch, the
 live website is on the `master` branch. The website
 is updated automatically from the git repo. If you want to
 update the website, please create a pull request.


Existing
 Page
--------------


Large sections of the site are automatically generated, this
 includes the release notes, the news pages and any files in the
 generated directory. If you wish to edit these, see below.


The web content is structured to be as simple as possible to
 make generic editing possible. At minimum only a text editor
 and [HTML Tidy](http://tidy.sourceforge.net/) are needed to edit
 content. The content uses [XHTML 1.0 Strict](http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/) for various
 reasons, the most important being to increase accessibility and
 to enforce the separation of style from content. After getting
 the content you want to edit as above, make the changes you
 want and run the result through HTML Tidy with these
 options:
```

tidy --tidy-mark no -i -wrap 78 -m -asxhtml --merge-divs no --merge-spans no --doctype strict *fname*

```

Running HTML Tidy with a consistent set of options also
 helps in keeping an accurate change history in the repository.
 There are [examples](/development/exemplar.html) of
 the kinds of styles supported either directly or through the
 use of [class="*value*"] attributes for the
 various XHTML tags. Please pay attention to any errors and
 warnings that HTML Tidy mentions and strive to remove all of
 them.


**NOTE:** The options for tidy are for
 the latest version. In particular the --merge-\*
 options may not be available in the version that comes as part
 of many Unix/Linux distributions, and Windows utilities.
 Removing the unavailable options is possible and will work. But
 we recommend installing the latest tidy if possible.
 You can obtain up to date Windows binaries, and sources from
 the [HTML Tidy Library
 Project](http://tidy.sourceforge.net/).


The pages should be viewable in most browsers. If possible
 test you changes in as many as possible. Preferably at least
 two modern browsers if you are on Windows. But if you are on another
 platform testing with the "default" browser is best.
 Normally viewing the page in outside of the web server context
 will only show you the content and part of the footer.
 This is because the site uses Server Side Includes (SSI)
 which most browsers will not process. To look at the
 complete content you will need to either run your own Apache
 server, or commit the changes and view the changes online
 at:

| Site | URL | Branch |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Beta | <http://beta.boost.org/> | `beta` |
| This is the experimetal version of the
 website. Development work should be done here first and
 then merged to the live website. |
| Live | <https://www.boost.org/> | `master` |
| The website the general public will
 see. |


New Page
--------


To make adding new pages easier there is a [template](/development/template/template.html) to get one
 started. There are also `_template_.html` files in
 the various site sections which already include the correct
 sidebar menus. To start, copy the template to the section of
 the website you want to add to and name the new file with a
 reasonably clear name. The section is up to you but the
 intended type of content for each is:
Introduction
Content to help new users understand what Boost is for
 and what it is about. This is the one place where new
 visitors are going to visit. Directory: /users
Community
For users who are interested in participating, or are
 already participitating, this section describes how the Boost
 community of users and developers functions. Directory:
 /community
Development
Prospective or existing Boost developers make use of this
 section to quickly get to the most frequetly used content.
 This section is intended to hold the references to resources
 or directly include content that changes frequently. Or
 content that only pertains to library developers, although it
 may be of more widespread interest as users become more
 involved in the Boost community. Directory:
 /development
Documentation
This section organizes documents specific to the Boost
 libraries. This includes at minimum the library documentation
 published with each of the Boost releases. Also included is
 access to the community maintained Wiki. Directory:
 /doc

To provide the section user interface look and feel there
 are some changes that need to be done to the template:


* Each section has a different CSS style reference
 included in the head section. This reference needs
 to change to one of:


	+ Introduction:
	 /style-v2/section-boost.css
	+ Community:
	 /style-v2/section-community.css
	+ Development:
	 /style-v2/section-development.css
	+ Support: /style-v2/section-support.css
	+ Documentation:
	 /style-v2/section-doc.css
* Each section displays a different context sensitive
 sidebar menu through the use of SSI. The reference to the
 sidebar to display needs to change in the sidebar
 section to one of:


	+ Introduction:
	 /common/sidebar-boost.html
	+ Community:
	 /common/sidebar-community.html
	+ Development:
	 /common/sidebar-development.html
	+ Support: /common/sidebar-support.html
	+ Documentation: /common/sidebar-doc.htmlIn the sidebar section there are two menus
 included the first is common to all the pages and contains
 the download link and search box. Do not replace that
 sidebar (/common/sidebar-common.html). It's the
 second #include that should be changed to reflect
 the current section.
* Since this is a new page, you will also need to insert
 your own corresponding copyright in the footer.
* To insert the new content you need to insert it into the
 section-body section. Replace the {stuff}
 placeholder with the content you want. In addition you
 might also want to change the title, in the head,
 and in the section-title section.


In addition to the immediate content for the new page one
 needs to add an entry to the page so it can be accessed from
 the sidebar and index. See below...


Menus, Sidebars, and
 Index
---------------------------


The various navigation elements are structured to make
 adding new entries easy and to keep all places where wuch
 entries show consistent. To do this the site makes use of SSI
 to reduce the locations that have those entries to
 *one*. This means that changing it at the single common
 place one doesn't have to worry about changing all the pages,
 they all reflect the new content immediately. To add items to
 the various section menus edit the corresponding menu file in
 the website/common directory:


* Introduction: /common/menu-boost.html
* Community: /common/menu-community.html
* Development: /common/menu-development.html
* Documentation: /generated/menu-doc.html


Generated Pages
---------------


There are various sections of the web site that are
 generated by a php script from quickbook source files: the home
 page, news, downloads, version history and feeds. The content
 is not directly editable, but instead is generated from source
 Quickbook documents. For example, to add a news item one
 would:


1. Create a new file in the /feed/news directory,
 say /feed/news/gui\_review\_ends.qbk.
2. In a shell, run the /site-tools/update.py
 script. This will generate the page for the new news item,
 regenerate the /feed/news.rss file to include it,
 update pages which link to the new item and update the file
 /site-tools/state/feed-pages.txt which tracks the
 current state of generated files.
3. Add the new files to the SVN repository, and commit.


The same procedure applies to the other feeds, but keep in
 mind that some feeds may combine entries from more than one
 feed subdirectory. Currently this requires Quickbook and Python
 in your path.


Local
 Server
-------------


Even though the web site is designed so that one only needs
 some basic tools and a web browser to make changes there are
 some aspects that are dynamic and hence will not work without
 an accompanying web server. To set up local web server for
 doing changes to the dynamic content one needs to:


1. Install and get working [Apache 2.x.](http://httpd.apache.org/) and [PHP 5.3 or later](http://php.net/) (install PHP as an
 Apache module, not as CGI).
2. Set up a symbolic host lookup in your hosts
 file by adding "127.0.0.1 boost.localhost".
3. Add a virtual host in Apache to match the new local
 host. A likely configuration to work is:
```

<VirtualHost 127.0.0.1:80>
  ServerName boost.localhost
  DocumentRoot "/path/to/boost/website"
  <Directory "/path/to/boost/website">
    Options +MultiViews +Includes +ExecCGI +FollowSymLinks +Includes
    AllowOverride All
    Order allow,deny
    Allow from all
    # For apache 2.4:
    # Require all granted
  </Directory>
</VirtualHost>

```
4. Create a local PHP configuration file for Boost specific
 settings as
 "/path/to/boost/website/common/code/boost\_config\_local.php"
 that contains something like:
```

<?php
define('BOOST\_WEBSITE\_SHARED\_DIR', '/path/to/boost/shared');
define('STATIC\_DIR', '/path/to/boost/shared/archives/live');
?>

```

For a brief explanation of the settings see the
 [common/code/boost\_config.php](https://github.com/boostorg/website/blob/master/common/code/boost_config.php) file.
5. In order to view the documentation, or the build
 sub-site, you'll need to setup the appropriate directories.
 /build needs to contain the [website
 branch of Boost.Build](https://github.com/boostorg/build/tree/website). A soft link to another directory
 can be used here (which is how it's done on the server).
 STATIC\_DIR needs to be the location of unzipped
 copies of the appropriate boost distribution to serve the
 documentation. By default, boost\_config.php sets STATIC\_DIR
 to $BOOST\_WEBSITE\_SHARED\_DIR/archives/live. Follow steps
 similar to this, changing variables as necessary:
```

BOOST\_WEBSITE\_SHARED\_DIR=/home/www/shared
mkdir -p $BOOST\_WEBSITE\_SHARED\_DIR/archives/live
cd $BOOST\_WEBSITE\_SHARED\_DIR/archives/live
wget https://boostorg.jfrog.io/artifactory/main/release/1.74.0/source/boost\_1\_74\_0.tar.gz
tar -xvf boost\_1\_74\_0.tar.gz
```


### Ubuntu setup


To setup the site on Ubuntu, I needed to do:
```

sudo apt-get install apache2 libapache2-mod-php5
sudo a2enmod headers
sudo a2enmod rewrite
sudo a2enmod include
sudo a2dismod deflate
sudo service apache2 restart
```

I had to disable `deflate` because it interacts
 badly with php's `virtual` function.