Welcome to the (long-overdue) refreshed batect.dev. This site has been reimagined from the ground up to better serve you. Some of the most exciting changes include:
- A logo for Batect (and a capital letter)
- Improved readability
- Reorganised documentation structure
- Improved search
- Improved hosting
- Elevation of bundles to the top-level navigation
- A blog
- A proper home page
As always, I'm keen to hear your feedback on these changes. Please open an issue or post on Spectrum if you have any suggestions or encounter any problems.
A logo for Batect (and a capital letter)
Batect now has a shiny new logo:
Much like Batect itself, I've tried to keep it simple. (You'll be pleased to hear I discarded ideas including a dolphin juggling containers on a unicycle and a rocket with a bunch of containers strapped to the side.)
Oh, and you'll notice that I've embraced the capital letter: the 'official' spelling is now Batect, not batect. The lowercase letter always felt awkward, and others writing about Batect seemed to use the lowercase spelling only around 50% of the time. So, rather than try to fight it, I've embraced it. Batect's all grown up now.
The new logo and capitalisation should be updated in most places now. If you notice any lowercase instances of 'Batect', please open an issue.
Improved readability
Given that documentation is largely words, getting the display of words right has been a priority for me. This entire site is now built with Docusaurus, which uses Infima for its default styling. Infima is designed for content-heavy sites such as documentation, and provides a set of sensible defaults that offer good readability.
On top of Infima, I've selected some great open source fonts that help differentiate between body and heading text, making it easier to scan through longer pages.
Reorganised documentation structure
The documentation has been reorganised to better address the needs of different groups of users:
- "I'm new here, show me what Batect is and why I care": quick hello world example and sample projects
- "Help me get up and running with Batect": deeper getting started tutorial and installation instructions, as well as conceptual explanations
- "What's the name of the configuration option to do X?": configuration file and CLI reference, as well as a cheat sheet
- "I'm trying to use Batect with Y, what's the best way to set that up?": guides for using Batect with different tools and ecosystems
- "I've got a problem": specific how-to guides for common issues and how to solve them
On top of this reorganisation, each page has been reviewed, updated and clarified, and diagrams have been added in places to aid explanations.
Improved search
The old documentation site had very basic search that didn't always find the most relevant results. For example, it struggled with synonyms. The new site uses Algolia DocSearch to provide relevant results, quickly. And it's keyboard friendly as well: just press Command+K (macOS) or Control+K (Windows and Linux) to open the search dialog.
(The search index may take 24 hours to pick up the new site - if search seems a bit wacky on December 7 or 8, this will be why.)
Improved hosting
The documentation is now hosted on Netlify, which brings a bunch of cool features. The most exciting one is support for server-side redirects. Previously, I was hesitant to change URLs for fear of breaking links, but this meant that the documentation wasn't always organised in the most logical way. I'll now be able to more easily shift content around as Batect continues to evolve.
Elevation of bundles to the top-level navigation
The old bundles page was shoehorned into the old documentation because there wasn't really any other place to put it, but this hid them. They're now highlighted in the top-level navigation at the top of the page, and the layout of the page has been much improved as well.
A blog
While documentation is great for more formal communication of information, there wasn't a great way to highlight new features, publish less formal tutorials or ideas and make announcements. I'm looking forward to being able to use this blog for all of those things and more.
A proper home page
Batect is no longer just a small project used by a single team - it now has hundreds of users all around the globe. These users (you!) recommend Batect to their friends and colleagues, but the old home page that greeted them was a huge wall of text that didn't do a great job of highlighting Batect's best features to those who haven't used it. The new home page is much simpler and gets to the point.
In closing
I'm always working to make Batect easier to use and great documentation is a key part of that. If you run into any issues with the new site or have any recommendations on how to improve it, please don't hesitate to let me know.