DevCentral official reLaunch and NEW SignUp

LiefZimmerman · ‎15-May-2019

Hello Again - We have tested and pushed a fix for the widespread SAML assertion error.
Going forward we expect users should successfully login and engage with the community as designed.

While we recognize this was a less than desirable launch experience, please know that we absolutely feel your pain.
Your feedback is heard loud and clear and, by all means keep it coming.
We still need to capture your current experience so we can document feature enhancements going forward.

We *know* that the DevCentral community is what it is because of awesome members like you.
We value your contributions above all, and we continue to work to bring you the community experience you expect and deserve.

----

BACK AGAIN with another important update.

DevCentral is currently experiencing a login issue preventing 
several users from logging in.
You will see this as a SAML assertion failure.

A permanent fix is currently being worked as our highest priority.

IMPORTANT UPDATE (does not apply to F5 Employees)

The first time community members access DevCentral (after May 15th)
you must choose SIGN UP for a *new* account on our *new* platform. 

You will provide *new* authentication credentials and THEN, 
in the second step you will have the opportunity to provide your 
previous credentials in order to MERGE available previous content. 
The merge will include your previous DisplayName.
Going forward, DisplayName must be unique.

If you have problems beyond this process please contact us with 
as much detail as you can and we'll help you out.
Thank you for your continued patience.

Today DevCentral has reached the end of an intense couple of months - but this is really just another beginning. Allow me to paint a picture...in your mind

In late 2018 we were like, --Somewherrrrre over the rainbow….
Then, a couple weeks ago, things got real and we were like,--Tornado!
But then we nailed it; and we were like, --Pretty colors. and --Munchkins are cute!
Suddenly, a huge puff of "read-only" smoke, and we were like, --A Witch!
And THEN, with the support of some key people on our team and in the community, we were like --There's no place like home.

So, we stayed that way for this past week, put in some more hours, and gathered our courage for today.

Today we are happy to launch YOUR new community website.
Take a look around and give us your feedback. We have our eyes on the horizon and our ears directed squarely at you.

Some last minute housekeeping...

Starting today you will need to SIGN UP for a new account on our new platform. Don't worry, the SIGN UP process will provide you the opportunity to merge your previous DevCentral account and all of your DevPoints into this new account.
A guiding principle was to make sure we preserve historical content, your content, and we took extra efforts to bring as much of that forward as we could.

Thank you for being part of our community!

Dominic · ‎16-May-2019

The site look great but you seem to have disregarded/ broken some common functionality:

The new login form does not seem to work with password managers, can you please add the password field back to the first part of the login form so auto type can be used.

Search result link do not behave link normal hyperlinks, for instance right clicking to open a context menu no longer seems to work, how can I open a result in a new tab so as I can review several results for relevance?

________________________________

A week has passed and DevCentral search is still barely usable. The search bar duissapears every time it looses focus, often half the query is typed and the you try to copy and paste the rest and it dissapears, can be worked aroud but painful mone the less. A bigges problem is that search result still do produce proper hyperlinks so no open in new tab ect that one expects from links. Is this planeed to be fixed?

Will something be done about the login prompt breaking passwordmanager autotype?

Half the time the best part of an acticle is in the comments but you hide it behind 'More Comments' links, will this be changed to actully show all comments in full by default?

So many broken links from in comments forcing the use of the not so usefull search.

SanjayP · ‎16-May-2019

Can we please have below pointers on new login page itself. Right now it doesn't tell how to login and we keep trying login with old account email ID and password.

Starting today you will need to SIGN UP for a new account on our new platform. Don't worry, the SIGN UP process will provide you the opportunity to merge your previous DevCentral account and all of your DevPoints into this new account.
A guiding principle was to make sure we preserve historical content, your content, and we took extra efforts to bring as much of that forward as we could.

Adam · ‎16-May-2019

Am I alone in losing my bookmarks after account merge? Also all the links from google, articles and my local bookmarks are failing to find the pages.

Jakuub · ‎16-May-2019

This is tragic. I cannot find anything on devcentral. 😞

Venkatesh · ‎16-May-2019

same here 😞 Please fix it asap.

Venkatesh · ‎16-May-2019

Getting 404 for all the links.

adam88 · ‎16-May-2019

I'm having lots of issues with the new DevCentral. Aside from the font that's making it harder to read - I have lost all of the articles and questions that I have starred previously and have no idea how to get them back. Aside from that, all of the links from Google searches now lead me to a 404 page, which is a very bad move - Google is a huge help when searching for nuanced topics and it's tragic that this leads me nowhere, we've lost a huge resource. And then the other thing is I couldn't even find my own questions that I posted on the previous DevCentral - I need one of those questions now but I'm having such a hard time finding it here.

The best way to do a major migration such as this is always to maintain the old one in the background. You could have done a simple URI redirect for https://devcentral.f5.com to go to https://devcentral.f5.com/v2/... where the new site will reside with an option to switchover to the old version to get to content while people get used to the new site. Then gradually decomm the old site.

Hille · ‎16-May-2019

For the moment I'm not happy with the new DevCentral, I can't find a thing and I'm getting a lot of 404 pages.

Can you please revert to the old DevCentral.

Also if you search, you cannot open a Link in a new page-tab.

For the moment, I'm not happy.

LiefZimmerman · ‎16-May-2019

Wanted to jump in here quickly and let you all know - we are listening.

We have folks looking into your concerns; thanks for your patience.

tganzer · ‎16-May-2019

Are all the previous google search results invalid now? Hearing from customers they are getting all 404 errors for DC content.

Brady_Monson · ‎16-May-2019

I didn't get a 404, but I did get redirected to sign in, then spat out on the new landing page rather than to my google search result just now.

Juraj · ‎16-May-2019

I've lost all my starred/bookmarked articles 😕 I've been using them as a reference point. None of the browser bookmarks work either. This is a terrible disappointment. 😒 👎

LiefZimmerman · ‎16-May-2019

- Bookmarks and Starred articles from the previous site were very intertwined with that legacy URL structure. Sorry for your disappointment but hopefully the combo of Search and go-forward Follow/Bookmark/Notify features can get you back to rights.

Juraj · ‎16-May-2019

, if there were a tool that could do URL rewrites ... oh wait a minute, F5 BIG-IP, I heard it can do quite an interesting stuff with iRules. You guys might want to check it out.

jaikumar_f5 · ‎17-May-2019

Well I was able to sign up again yesterday morning. Though it took to me to next page where it asked for the old merge account & then password, it dint pull my earlier profile. It took a day for it to reflect I think. I did logout and log back in multiple times to see if it reflects. But it dint. After a days time, its all reflecting now 😎

ll · ‎17-May-2019

For the 404 when coming from Google search engine, you can find the the article by searching the title directly in DevCentral.

Tedious but it works.

Hille · ‎17-May-2019

Hi, Even links referenced in the new DevCentral get a 404.

Nicol4s · ‎17-May-2019

Yeah.

Now when I wanna see a DevCentral topic through Google, I have to use Google's cache to access said article.

It would be great if the integration with common search engines is fixed...

Pete · ‎17-May-2019

All linked content from Google or any other search engine reveals a "404 - PAGE NOT FOUND" error message.

You may have wanted to test this before rolling into production. The old site was easier to search and like many other people, all my bookmarks for DevCentral no longer work.

Another not happy customer.

Jonathan_Mansfi · ‎17-May-2019

Any way F5 could host the old content somewhere with a rewrite in front of it? (Instead of a 404, return a 301 from the new devcentral to the hosting location of the old content with a rewrite in front so you don't need to rework the site?) That might allow everyone to pull whatever linked content they need. I'm currently troubleshooting a split-brain issue and running into a lot of dead links.

JRahm · ‎17-May-2019

Hi All,

Rather than responding to all the individual threads, I'll compile here.

Regarding search, embedded links, and bookmarks, I wrote about this last week: "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."
We are aware of the power of BIG-IP and iRules. I've written just a few here and there over the years. Our hosted solution makes this not possible at this time.
If you want an offline copy of the wiki the way it (mostly) was, you can download it here.
We are troubleshooting the login issues actively and will provide updates as we learn new information.
Stronger supporting documentation is coming for merging your old accounts, but favorites were not ported over, you'll need to rebuild those.

John_Doe · ‎17-May-2019

Worst idea ever - unconditionally move loyal users to new (and ugly) design.

material design in not that fancy for most of the users who do work and not hanging out on devcentral website
ugly and unreadable font for articles headers - somebody in F5 devcentral design team has impaired vision? Go ahead, buy glasses, contact lens or eve do yourself a present - make an eye vision operation. WHAT THAT BOLD FONT IS FOR??? With condensed space between letters. Are there any UI/UX pros in F5 team or none? It that none of at this moment.
Why no option to use old design? Come on, its 21st century out of the office - plenty of computatiional resources out there - make a mirror of website with _usable_ design and look and feel.
Blue design. Now F5 and A10 is the same. Yep.
Search fail. Google is the main source for navigation. Not your website. GOOGLE. Not your website. It is an additional step in reach to process: go to devcentral, login instead for serarh-google and move to page
LOGIN. WHAT IS THAT FOR ON EARTH?!?!? Are guys have KPI for DAU and MAU on devcentral??? Are you a social network? And not just network hw/sw commercial vendor? Are-you-sure?
Did those "smart people" (note the quotation marks) tried look and feel of new design in various browsers? What about pages/questions/articles TITLES? Informative titles ARE GONE. Instead of "kerberos sso for apm" now it's just like "Feed" for a page title. You, "smart people" just can not be SO "smart" - it's impossible fk up with usability.
What about pipls bookmarks?

I think it's just new manager, head of department or something.

A new gyu. Promoted or just freshly hired.

Who need to "show something for what we've paying you money".

FIRST RULE: It works? DO NOT (ever) touch then.

***

Would you, Devcentral, please, return back following functionality a lot of f5 customers used a lot:

availability to jump to dc pages from google (and yes; nobody cares about your kpi for dau/mau; remove this "0D51T00006j2WCYSA2" from uris)
informative page titles. as was before.

DC is supportive mechanism for sales. It doesn't generate sales itself. DC head thinks he (or she or whatever it's gender) is important guy in F5? No it's not.

DC. is. supportive. thing. Let it be so. Let DC perform its main function - streamline process of getting tech info and interchange.

Thank you in advance.

NOT THANK YOU for new broken and ugly design and for broken flow.

jerlev · ‎17-May-2019

What a mess! F5 should have done a better job with this transition. Why should users have to register again?!?! Not cool!

Juraj · ‎17-May-2019

Frankly, I can't agree more with 's post. DevCentral used to be one of the best things about F5, because people could GOOGLE their question and get directly to the article/question/post discussed/answered here at DevCentral. The best support ever. Now, it's ruined. People are getting confused by a bunch of 404s, Google searches pointing to broken links. The most important condition of a successful DevCentral migration - old links still working - is broken. I have my browser bookmark manager full of broken DevCentral links. Every time I found something interesting on DevCentral, I bookmarked it. Twice, in my browser and under my DevCentral account as well. None of that is working now. Are you seriously considering this a successful migration?

About two weeks ago, I was presenting about F5 on one of the local conferences, and DevCentral was one of the things I was highly recommending to all the people new to F5. If I knew this was coming I wouldn't have done that.

JRahm · ‎17-May-2019

@jerlev: I understand the frustration. However, for years members have been frustrated that they have to maintain multiple accounts to use the F5 services in each portal. DevCentral is the first to transition to a future reality of shared credentials. That requires a credential change.

@juraj: I completely understand the pain threshold everyone is experiencing. It takes time to index a site, but the search issue should resolve itself in the next week or so.

John_Doe · ‎17-May-2019

,

google search ruined
~~login to view content~~ (now it's available without sign in)
bookmarks ruined
right-click (open in a new tab) ruined
a lot of white real estate space on left and right of article body (should one cw rotate display?)
DC is on of SalesForce - additional sniffing and spying on DC visitors (with all that cross-analytics and stuff)
compare 1.31MB page load and 2.71s load time vs 2.89MB and 7+s load time for https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:3Tv01A7pWEkJ:https://devcentral.f5.com/questio... and https://devcentral.f5.com/s/feed/0D51T00006i7jHySAI
human readable URLs and page titles are gone
"Show more" plague all over the site
mobile layout ugly
Search is too way "fancy" and dynamic

GDPR could be a reason for migration.

Jason, may I please have some questions?

is that ok that F5 let third-party company (SF) to spy and gather analytics on F5's customers?
having APM quite good for SSO, why is it problem to make seamless login with F5's hw/sw support?
could it be possible to have fallback option and use old design and robust look and feel?
It literally hampers to navigate - was there any UAT (user acceptance testing)?
are there any options to make navigation less laggy (original website was much more responsive)?

Thank you.

p.s. at least it doesn't (sales-)force one to login to view content.

p.p.s. googlecache it the savoiur for now

Markp · ‎19-May-2019

Basically usable after the changes. Even the links in your own documentation is 404...

WS1 · ‎19-May-2019

One second after logging in I thought "where have I seen this ugly design before?" Cannot remember but it is the support site of one of our other vendors.

My firewall vendor hosts part of their support pages on salesforce, too and every now and then I get SSO errors from salesforce which won't go away for hours. Not good when you are trying to fix a problem. I really hate this, I hope this problem will not exist here.

What really drives me nuts every day is not being able to open links (i. e. search results) in new tabs . PLEASE fix this!

Paul_Dawson · ‎21-May-2019

All of the historical links on google are broken and when searching and following a like return a 404 from devcentral.

blackiyto · ‎21-May-2019

I didn't get a 404, but I did get redirected to sign in.

JRahm · ‎21-May-2019

Hi all, specific to the wiki 404s from bookmarks, embedded links, or search, one of our former MVPs Michael Jenkins wrote a couple Tampermonkey scripts that might help you out:

Nicol4s · ‎21-May-2019

I'm afraid it doesn't work at all on my browser.

I'm not redirected to clouddocs.

Venkatesh · ‎21-May-2019

@Jason Rahm does this work in chrome? I don't think so. There is a huge impact for everyone because of this. Please fix it asap.

JRahm · ‎21-May-2019

I'm using Chrome, and it works fine for me, though I just checked and I actually have two running, and I only shared one of them. Whoops. Updated my message above, give that a try.

Nicol4s · ‎22-May-2019

I'm sorry to bother you but I've tried to enable both Tampermonkey scripts with no luck on either Firefox or Chrome.

For example, I'm trying to reach this page : https://devcentral.f5.com/questions/saml-slo-fails-48126

Please send help.

Thank you.

ll · ‎22-May-2019

First result when I search directly on the new devcentral:

https://devcentral.f5.com/s/feed/0D51T00006i7eFpSAI

Nicol4s · ‎22-May-2019

Ok this link works.

Thanks.

It would be great to have some url rewrite mecanism but implemented server side though....

sm123456 · ‎22-May-2019

The search results list does not give proper links! You cannot middle click on them or right click to open in new window. That's VERY annoying, because I'm used to listing through search results and opening many of them in background tabs, but now I have to look at them one by one, then going back every time.

JRahm · ‎22-May-2019

Hi @sm123456, that was fixed Friday. You might need to clear your cache

jaikumar_f5 · ‎22-May-2019

Hey Guys, I made a simple video tutorial for the 404 fix made by Jenkins. Hope it helps. Click here.

John_Doe · ‎22-May-2019

"How come, ~~Chief~~ ?"

Have a look at this one article. In its semi-original form (thanks to godlike ggl) https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Hmo8lK-APIEJ:https://devcentral.f5.com/article... and on brand new website https://devcentral.f5.com/s/articles/configuring-apm-client-side-ntlm-authentication

What can you spot?

pictures are a bit late for text (step 3 for example)
comments are messed up in time

And here https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:QNdBPXrW0VwJ:https://devcentral.f5.com/questio... and https://devcentral.f5.com/s/feed/0D51T00006i7iG2SAI there are NO subcomments/answers AT ALL.

It means that migration failed on a terms of data integrity. What else may be more important?

"Still no ~~arr~~ migration back?"

Yeah, it's hilarious.

Tampermonkey, "make changes on your browsers side" - what else should we do to have more or less bearable users experience with DC?

Gosh...

It's a linkgate! You're clicking it wrong.

***

It takes a big man to admit when he's wrong.

Markp · ‎22-May-2019

Imagine thinking that its ok to migrate and breaking links and putting effort into tampermonkey scripts instead of fixing the actual issue. Its embarrassing.

You know there is a thing called iRules?

JRahm · ‎22-May-2019

Hi @Markp, I appreciate your situation and the feedback. The tampermonkey scripts were contributed by a member of the community. We're working on our end to get the embedded content updated.

jaikumar_f5 · ‎23-May-2019

@F5 Team,

Please have this addressed too, no right click on the profile notification works, it throws error. Also the notifications are not instant, sometimes I don't see the notification for hours...

'

Pete · ‎23-May-2019

Come on - just put the site back to the way it was and quit messing around. Paying customers should not be your beta testers!

sm123456 · ‎02-Jun-2019

sorry, but the search result links are NOT fixed, they are not right/middle-clickable, it's not possible to open search result in background tab.

And who the hell thought it could be a good idea to not show long posts unless you click "Show More". This is just useless, most informative answers are long and all this "feature" does is makes it harder to find information. All answers should be fully visible by default and collapsing them makes no sense.

The new version of devcentral is disappointing, it has not improved on anything, but broken working things and introduced horrible UI that has no reasonable justification. If I were designing community website for my worst enemy, the current DevCentral is probably what my end result would look like.

Dominic · ‎05-Nov-2019

,

Well it is six month later and DevCentral is still virtually unusable. Almost none of the issues raised in the comments above have been addressed and the passage of time has not helped as far as google search result are concerned.

From where I sit you might as well replace the whole sut wth a page not found notice, such a pity to have such a great resource, and a major reason to use you your products, turned in to a shadow of it former self. Even worse that F5 does not seem to really care.