Help Wanted: Learn how to replace existing Sphinx Search

[cwarnermm]

Learn how to replace the existing search functionality with a third-party search technology, such as SwiftType.

The benefits of replacing the default Sphinx search include better capacity for cross-tool integration, more relevant search results, easier to navigate search results.

You can find information about the default Sphinx search here: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/44154226/how-do-i-customize-sphinx-rtd-theme-default-search-settings. Information about Sphinx configuration options can be found here: https://www.sphinx-doc.org/en/master/usage/configuration.html.

[Sayanta66]

Hi, @cwarnermm can you assign this issue to me? I will work on it. And, can you also point out the document that needs to be fixed?

[cwarnermm]

Hi @Sayanta66. This ticket is a bit different from the tickets requesting content updates. This technology ticket is to change the default search engine in the product documentation (available at docs.mattermost.com) to another engine entirely -- something more robust and provides better search results to users. The Mattermost Support team is using an instance of SwiftType, and that may be a good engine to try out.

This ticket is ideal for someone interested in cloning an instance of the docs repository in a local development environment, and learning how the default search engine works, how it's configured, and then learn how it can be replaced with another engine entirely. There will be considerable investigation and technical learning involved with this one, which is why it's labelled as a Medium Difficulty ticket.

With this context in mind, would you like me to assign this ticket to you?

[Sayanta66]

Okay so for a beginner like me probably it is not a good fit, right?

[cwarnermm]

This ticket is a good fit for any contributor at any level who would like to:

• learn how the default Sphinx search works natively out-of-the-box
• identify how the default search engine can be replaced with another service entirely that offers better search capabilities

However, I wouldn't classify this as a good first issue ticket because of the complexity and technical nature of the work involved.

That being said, if you haven't done so already, I highly encourage you to clone a copy of the docs repo locally, and try building the docs yourself locally to get a better sense of how the docs repository works, how the content is generated, and what source files make up the various components of what you see on docs.mattermost.com.

Working with the docs repository locally requires a local development environment, and requires specific development dependencies installed locally on your machine.

See the docs repository Readme for details.