Read the Docs Blog - Posted in 2013https://blog.readthedocs.com/archive/2013/atom.xml2013-12-23T00:00:00ZABlogRead the Docs 2013 Statshttps://blog.readthedocs.com/read-the-docs-2013-stats/2013-12-23T00:00:00Z2013-12-23T00:00:00ZEric Holscher<div class="section" id="read-the-docs-2013-stats">
<p>2013 has been a big year for <a class="reference external" href="https://readthedocs.org/">Read the Docs</a>.
Our mission is to make documentation hosting easier,
with the overall goal of increasing the quality of documentation in the programming world.
I believe that we have been doing good work towards that goal,
and I want to share some numbers to reflect our progress.</p>
<div class="section" id="community">
<h2>Community</h2>
<p>Our community has been great this year.
I have been really happy to see a few people submit multiple patches and features.
This year, we had:</p>
<ul class="simple">
<li><a class="reference external" href="https://github.com/rtfd/readthedocs.org/graphs/contributors?from=2013-01-01&to=2013-12-21&type=c">39 people</a> who committed code</li>
<li>550 commits</li>
<li><a class="reference external" href="https://github.com/rtfd/readthedocs.org/search?q=created%3A%3E%3D2013-01-01&source=cc&type=Issues">271 issues</a> - 218 closed, 53 open</li>
</ul>
<p>Many thanks to <a class="reference external" href="http://blog.wraithan.net/">Wraithan</a> in particular,
who has taken on a large role in helping maintain the site and servers.</p>
<p>If there is anyone else out there who would like to help with operations,
especially outside of US timezones,
please <a class="reference external" href="mailto:eric%40ericholscher.com">let me know</a>.</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="page-views">
<h2>Page Views</h2>
<p>Our growth in page views has always been crazy to me.
It was somewhere in mid-2011 that Read the Docs went from a hobby project,
into something projects depended on.
This growth has never stopped,
and today a large number of important projects depend on Read the Docs.</p>
<p>Our stats:</p>
<ul class="simple">
<li>65 Million Page Views</li>
<li>13 Million Unique Visitors</li>
</ul>
<p>For context,
these numbers are similar to what <a class="reference external" href="https://blog.mozilla.org/files/2013/12/mozilla_eoy_2013_EN_72dpi_FINAL.jpg">MDN has</a>.</p>
<div class="admonition note">
<p class="first admonition-title">Note</p>
<p class="last">These numbers are actually a bit low.
Some themes don’t support default Sphinx template blocks,
so we can’t count them in our stats correctly.</p>
</div>
<p>I think an image shows this a bit better than words:</p>
<img alt="../../_images/2013-stats.png" src="../../_images/2013-stats.png" style="width: 100%;" />
</div>
<div class="section" id="site-stats">
<h2>Site Stats</h2>
<p>Our pageviews are driven mainly by 100 or so high traffic sites.
We have a lot of small projects that are up on Read the Docs too that we love.</p>
<p>The stats:</p>
<ul class="simple">
<li>7949 projects</li>
<li>11679 users</li>
<li>1040182 builds</li>
</ul>
</div>
<div class="section" id="funding">
<h2>Funding</h2>
<p>Our hosting costs are sponsored by <a class="reference external" href="http://rackspace.com/">Rackspace</a>,
which is fantastically generous of them.</p>
<p>Development on Read the Docs is funded by the community <a class="reference external" href="https://www.gittip.com/readthedocs/">on Gittip</a>.
I am very grateful for the support that the community has given the project over the years.
It is great validation that people value the service you are providing,
even when you give it away for free.</p>
<p>The stats:</p>
<ul class="simple">
<li>$167/wk currently</li>
<li>114 people giving money</li>
</ul>
</div>
<div class="section" id="conclusion">
<h2>Conclusion</h2>
<p>2013 has been a great year for Read the Docs.
We have made a lot of progress,
and I think 2014 will be even better.</p>
<p>We are working on a number of new features to expand the user base,
and make the site more approachable.
We forward to continuing to improve the documentation ecosystem in the new year.</p>
</div>
</div>
A New Theme for Read the Docshttps://blog.readthedocs.com/new-theme-read-the-docs/2013-11-04T00:00:00Z2013-11-04T00:00:00ZEric Holscher<div class="section" id="a-new-theme-for-read-the-docs">
<p>We have been <a class="reference external" href="https://github.com/rtfd/readthedocs.org/pulse/monthly">hard at work</a> improving <a class="reference external" href="http://readthedocs.org/">Read the Docs</a> over the past month.
A large amount of back end work has been going on,
and now we have a brand new documentation theme to showcase it.</p>
<p>We have looked at how people use documentation,
and built a beautiful and highly functional <a class="reference external" href="http://docs.readthedocs.org/en/latest/">new interface</a> for browsing documentation.
We created a solution that looks great and works well.</p>
<div class="section" id="creation">
<h2>Creation</h2>
<p><a class="reference external" href="https://twitter.com/enemykite">Dave Snider</a> approached me about a month ago,
interested in helping improve the documentation ecosystem.
We talked about what could improve the Read the Docs experience for the greatest number of our users,
and a new theme seemed like a great place to start.</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="the-new-theme">
<h2>The New Theme</h2>
<div class="section" id="full-site">
<h3>Full site</h3>
<p>The full documentation page is now beautiful and streamlined.
We got rid of the visual clutter and integrated a full-project Table of Contents in the sidebar.
When you go into a specific page,
a page-level contents get embedded in the sidebar as well.
This allows you to keep context inside the documentation when you land on a page from a search.</p>
<div class="section" id="old">
<h4>Old</h4>
<a class="reference external image-reference" href="http://i.imgur.com/hWOnmKy.png"><img alt="http://i.imgur.com/hWOnmKy.png" src="http://i.imgur.com/hWOnmKy.png" style="width: 100%;" /></a>
</div>
<div class="section" id="new">
<h4>New</h4>
<a class="reference external image-reference" href="http://i.imgur.com/7oLntvR.png"><img alt="http://i.imgur.com/7oLntvR.png" src="http://i.imgur.com/7oLntvR.png" style="width: 100%;" /></a>
</div>
</div>
<div class="section" id="flyout">
<h3>Flyout</h3>
<p>Read the Docs provides a lot of functionality for documentation projects.
The flyout is the avenue to accessing that functionality.
We need to pack all our functionality into this space.</p>
<p>In the new theme,
the flyout is integrated into the bottom left of the theme.</p>
<div class="section" id="id1">
<h4>Old</h4>
<div class="system-message">
<p class="system-message-title">System Message: INFO/1 (<tt class="docutils">/home/docs/checkouts/readthedocs.org/user_builds/goblog/checkouts/latest/new-theme-read-the-docs.rst</tt>, line 61); <em><a href="#id1">backlink</a></em></p>
Duplicate implicit target name: “old”.</div>
<p>The old flyout let you:</p>
<blockquote>
<div><ul class="simple">
<li>Change versions</li>
<li>Go back to Read the Docs</li>
</ul>
</div></blockquote>
<a class="reference external image-reference" href="http://i.imgur.com/CBDPzbD.png"><img alt="http://i.imgur.com/CBDPzbD.png" src="http://i.imgur.com/CBDPzbD.png" style="width: 50%;" /></a>
</div>
<div class="section" id="id2">
<h4>New</h4>
<div class="system-message">
<p class="system-message-title">System Message: INFO/1 (<tt class="docutils">/home/docs/checkouts/readthedocs.org/user_builds/goblog/checkouts/latest/new-theme-read-the-docs.rst</tt>, line 73); <em><a href="#id2">backlink</a></em></p>
Duplicate implicit target name: “new”.</div>
<p>The new flyout lets you:</p>
<blockquote>
<div><ul class="simple">
<li>Change versions</li>
<li>Go back to Read the Docs</li>
<li>See the current version</li>
<li>Show if the current version is out of date</li>
<li>Download docs for offline viewing</li>
<li>Contribute edits on GitHub or Bitbucket</li>
<li>Do a full-text search (Coming soon)</li>
</ul>
</div></blockquote>
<a class="reference external image-reference" href="http://i.imgur.com/9DRP8fj.png"><img alt="http://i.imgur.com/9DRP8fj.png" src="http://i.imgur.com/9DRP8fj.png" style="width: 50%;" /></a>
</div>
</div>
<div class="section" id="mobile">
<h3>Mobile</h3>
<p>The new theme really shines on mobile.
We provide a beautiful interface for phones and tablets,
while staying completely functional.</p>
<a class="reference external image-reference" href="http://i.imgur.com/29uEpVs.png"><img alt="http://i.imgur.com/29uEpVs.png" src="http://i.imgur.com/29uEpVs.png" style="width: 100%;" /></a>
</div>
</div>
<div class="section" id="using-it">
<h2>Using it</h2>
<p>There are two ways that you can use this theme on Read the Docs.
The first is to simply leave your <code class="docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">html_theme</span></code> variable set to <code class="docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">default</span></code>.
This is now the default Read the Docs theme.
You can also set <code class="docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">RTD_NEW_THEME</span> <span class="pre">=</span> <span class="pre">True</span></code> in your project’s <code class="docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">conf.py</span></code>,
and we will use our theme when building on Read the Docs no matter what <code class="docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">html_theme</span></code> is set to.</p>
<p>After you change these settings,
simply rebuild your docs and the theme should update.
More information about the theme can be found on the <a class="reference external" href="https://sphinx-rtd-theme.readthedocs.io/en/stable/">theme documentation page</a></p>
<p>If you want to continue using the old theme,
simply set <code class="docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">RTD_OLD_THEME</span> <span class="pre">=</span> <span class="pre">True</span></code> in your <code class="docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">conf.py</span></code>.</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="conclusion">
<h2>Conclusion</h2>
<p>This theme is a great addition to the documentation ecosystem.
It is highly functional and beautiful,
allowing users to easily navigate and find what they need.</p>
<p>We have a few more tricks up our sleeves,
but theme is ready to launch today.
Over the next few weeks we’ll be adding a bit more functionality to it,
which should be even more delightful.</p>
<p>I hope that you enjoy using it.
If you have any feedback,
please <a class="reference external" href="http://github.com/snide/sphinx_rtd_theme/issues">open an issue</a> on GitHub.
To follow announcements for Read the Docs,
follow <a class="reference external" href="http://twitter.com/readthedocs">us on Twitter</a>.</p>
<p>If you want to support work like this,
help <a class="reference external" href="https://www.gittip.com/readthedocs/">fund development on Read the Docs</a> on Gittip.</p>
</div>
</div>