Configuration of the Software
By Software we mean all the code that formats, displays, and builds the text files into webpages.
Mainly, we use GitHub to host the files, Jekyll to build them into a website, and Netlify to continuously build and deploy it. Lastly we use Algolia Search to index and search the entries and documentation.
GitHub
GitHub is a Git hosting service that we use to host the source files (repository) of the project and to keep track of the changes made to them. GitHub offers other useful features:
- User interface: Changes to the repository can be done directly on a web browser. We recommend installing the development environment for a more enjoyable experience. We recommend Atom as a text editor, and GitHub Desktop as a Git client.
- Ticketing: we use GitHub Issues to keep track of bugs, questions, feature requests, and pull requests.
The project’s repository is named sphere and it is owned by the DIYbiosphere organization.
Jekyll
Jekyll is an open-source static site generator written with Ruby. It uses the Liquid templating language.
Netlify
Netlify is a continuous deployment service. Every push to master triggers Netlify to build the site with Jekyll, push new/changed entries to the Algolia index, and deploy the result - there’s no separate gh-pages branch involved. Pull requests also get their own preview build, so you can see your changes rendered before merging.
Algolia
Algolia is a web search service platform. We are currently using the Hacker plan which is free and allows for 10,000 records and 100,000 operations for month. If we were to see a significant demand over this plan, they offer free plans to selected open source and not-for-profit projects.