DevCentral Relaunch Part Deux: Wiki Wiki...What?

Good people of the DevCentral community, greetings! On the heels of Chase's relaunch post last week, now that we are live on the new platform, what you have come to know and love as the DevCentral Wiki no longer exists in its current format.


Wait…What?


Yes, you read that correctly. The wiki is no more. When we were scoping the platform transition effort, we wanted to look at not just what the DevCentral audience needs, but what makes the most sense from a documentation perspective. Given that most of the API documentation in the wiki is more along the lines of product reference than insight or tutorial, it made sense to transition that type of content away from the pages of DevCentral where it can (eventually) be more accurately and continually updated by the tech docs team rather than by the DevCentral team. For now, the new home for the API documentation is on Clouddocs at https://clouddocs.f5.com/api/.


The astute observers among you who engage often in the wiki have likely noticed that some of the API namespaces have already transitioned away to CloudDocs (here’s looking at you, iApps LX and BIG-IQ!) The following wiki namespaces have joined iApps LX and BIG-IQ on CloudDocs:


  • iApps
  • iHealth
  • iControl REST
  • iControl SOAP
  • iRules
  • iRules LX
  • tmsh


The remaining namespaces were decommissioned when the new site launched. However, we have identified content from those namespaces that get consistent traffic. Those pages will be converted and released as articles at some point in the near future. If something specific is of interest, please drop a comment below and I’ll prioritize it.


Embedded Links and Bookmarks and Search Queries, Oh My!


Relaunch is the beginning of a new journey, not a destination. We just landed in Kansas and are standing at the inception of the yellow brick road. As such, there are some things outside of our immediate control that might make things a challenge at first. Namely, finding your favorite API documentation by way of embedded links, bookmarks, and search. We have some limitations we’re working through, so outside of the individual API landing pages, your embedded links and bookmarks are unlikely to land properly. Also, search will take some time to rectify itself, but If you navigate directly to https://clouddocs.f5.com/api/, you should be able to quickly click through to your content.


UPDATE - one of our former MVPs Michael Jenkins wrote a tampermonkey script to ease the pain with wiki links. Load this up in your tampermonkey browser extension and it'll rewrite the URL on the click event and send you over to clouddocs.


The Sky is Not Falling


I can hear the collective groan from all you power users. I get it. Your experience on DevCentral matters to me. And because I am as much a client as I am an owner of the DevCentral community, it is imperative to preserve what we have and make it available in the event that something currently in the wiki is critical to you but not necessarily to the community at large. If this is you, the wiki as it exists today is available as a download that you can keep on your system for reference. It will not be updated going forward, but it contains most of what was in the wiki at cutover earlier today.

To Infinity, And Beyond!


The pause button on our platform innovation has been activated for quite some time here at DevCentral. We’re excited to move forward, and we hope you enjoy the new platform and assist us in navigating the bumps common with all launch activities.

Published May 09, 2019
Version 1.0