Add some notes related to the Emacs www pages

2 files changed, 90 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/admin/FOR-RELEASE b/admin/FOR-RELEASE
index 1e4f9f3b48d..0821593955e 100644
--- a/admin/FOR-RELEASE
+++ b/admin/FOR-RELEASE
@@ -10,6 +10,14 @@ directory in the Emacs build tree:
 emacs -Q --eval "(progn (require 'info) (setq Info-directory-list '(\".\")))" \
   -f info-xref-check-all
 
+Setting Info-directory-list avoids having system info pages confuse
+things.  References to external manuals will be flagged as
+uncheckable.  You should still check these, and also that each
+external manual has an appropriate redirect in the file manual/.htaccess
+in the web pages repository.  E.g.:
+Redirect /software/emacs/manual/html_mono/automake.html /software/automake/manual/automake.html
+Redirect /software/emacs/manual/html_node/automake/ /software/automake/manual/html_node/
+
 make emacs.dvi, elisp.dvi, and deal with any errors (undefined
 references etc) in the output.  Break any overfull lines.
 Underfull hboxes are not serious, but it can be nice to get rid of
diff --git a/admin/notes/www b/admin/notes/www
new file mode 100644
index 00000000000..e932fc01e6a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/admin/notes/www
@@ -0,0 +1,82 @@
+-*- outline -*-
+
+Copyright (C) 2013 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
+See the end of the file for license conditions.
+
+NOTES FOR EMACS WWW PAGES
+
+* Renaming pages, redirects
+
+Sometimes you want to move a page to a new location.
+If the old location might be referenced somewhere else, you should add
+some form of redirect to the new location.  There are several ways to
+do this:
+
+** Use a refresh directive in the old file
+https://www.gnu.org/server/standards/README.webmastering.html#htaccess
+
+Change the entire contents of the old file to be something like:
+
+<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0; url=/software/emacs/manual/elisp.html">
+
+I can't think of any reason to use this method.
+
+** Use a .symlinks file
+https://www.gnu.org/server/standards/README.webmastering.html#symlinks
+
+This is really an interface to mod_rewrite rules, but it acts like
+symlinks.  Remove old-page.html altogether, and create a ".symlinks"
+file in the relevant directory, with contents of the form:
+
+  # This is a comment line.
+  old-page.html new-page.html
+
+Anyone visiting old-page.html will be shown the contents of new-page.html.
+Note that changes to .symlinks file are only updated periodically on
+the server via cron (twice an hour?).  So there will be a delay (of up
+to 30 minutes?) before you see your changes take effect.
+
+This method is ok, but:
+i) a person visiting old-page.html has no idea that the page has moved.
+They still see old-page.html in their address bar.  (In other words,
+the mod_rewrite rule does not use the [R] flag.)  Sometimes this is
+what you want, sometimes not.
+
+ii) it doesn't work write if the new page is in a different directory
+to the old page: relative links from the visited page will break.
+
+** Use a .htaccess file
+
+Remove old-page.html altogether, and create a ".htaccess" file in the
+relevant directory, with contents of the form:
+
+  # This is a comment line.
+  Redirect 301 /software/emacs/old-page.html /software/emacs/dir/new-page.html
+
+Use "301" for a permanent redirection, otherwise you can omit the number.
+Note that paths must (?) be relative to the top-level www.gnu.org.
+
+I think this is the best method.  You can specify temporary or
+permanent redirects, and changes go live more-or-less straight away.
+
+This method is useful for making cross-references to non-Emacs manuals
+work; see manual/.htaccess in the repository.  You only have to add a
+single redirect for every given external manual, you can redirect
+html_node to hmtl_node and html_mono to html_mono.
+
+
+
+This file is part of GNU Emacs.
+
+GNU Emacs is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
+it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
+the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
+(at your option) any later version.
+
+GNU Emacs is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
+but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
+MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
+GNU General Public License for more details.
+
+You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
+along with GNU Emacs.  If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.