Investigate Docusaurus

[Chris00]

It was suggested on Discuss that Docusaurus might be useful to build the site. Investigate how this approach would work with the automated tasks.

[bluddy]

I don't see the point of creating/maintaining some custom framework (which I think is what we have right now?) if we want to be able to keep up with the latest features in the web world.

Also, it might be a good idea to get some Reason guys involved. They should be better informed on this stuff. Are we ok asking ReasonML javascript pros for assistance? They have a vested interest in OCaml's success as well. We can post on their chat forum (https://reasonml.chat).

[agarwal]

I certainly agree that our own half-baked system is pointless, but at least back in 2011, when we implemented ocaml.org, we didn't find any great alternative. I remember looking at things like Drupal, which I deemed terrible. There was also a push for us to use wiki software, but most of us felt that was too limiting. The one advantage of a wiki was that contributing content could be easier, but given we are a community of programmers, we thought modifying a markdown file and doing a git commit wasn't too much of a blocker (perhaps we were wrong given the dirth of contributions over the last few years). Note all the content was originally in html, but we did do a big port to markdown in the hopes that would reduce the friction of contributing content.

I took a quick look at Docusaurus and it does seem nice. I think what's most important is to have some real web programmers contributing to ocaml.org. I would very much welcome Reason/OCaml contributors.

Notes from my recent research, these are promising possibilities that use some or all ocaml:

• hugo + isolated reasonreact apps for dynamic portions
• next.js (ssg only) + reasonreact (used by rescript lang dot org)
• gatsby.js + reasonreact (some instructions available)
• finch (ocaml ssg) + isolated reasonreact apps for dynamic portions
• eleventy + templates implemented in ReScript
• rewrite eleventy using ReScript or jsoo
• ocaml explore's example of using jekyll-format + omd + mdx

If you look at how ReScript/reasonml is using docusaurus, the equivalent in the ocaml world would be using it to build out the official tutorial and reference docs for important libraries such as core, async, lwt, postgres bindings, web frameworks.