README.md

TeachingTeamGuidelines

This GitHub repository contains Markdown files for providing an online documentation for the HPI MOOC platform ("Xikolo") with ReadTheDocs.

General information

The documentation can be found here: http://teachingteamguidelines.readthedocs.org.

The following three tools are used to make the documentation available:

• GitHub

Used for hosting and editing the necessary files representing the documentations content (the Markdown files) and structure (.yml file).

• MkDocs

This is essentially a Python script, i.e. the technology used to build static HTML files as the output; it takes the Markdown files and a .yml configuration file as input.

• ReadTheDocs

A webservice using MkDocs as the backend for building the documentation out of Markdown files and hosting the HTML documentation site; it connects to GitHub to load the content (Markdown files) and their configuration (mkdocs.yml file).

Updating the guidelines

1st step: Editing process

• Log in here on GitHub, make sure you have owner status for this repository, and
• add/edit markdown file(s) to update the content of the documentation.
• If you want to reorder chapters or add new md-files, edit the mkdocs.yml and adjust the order/filenames.
• Also adjust those changes inside the index.md file.
• Attention: Never rename the mkdocs.yml or the index.md files!
• You can also customize themes and build more complex document structures (follow the link to the manuals below).

2nd step: Building process

The documentation is automatically fetched from the master branch and will be updated via webhook.

If this does not work, there is also a manual process for building the documentation:

1. Log in at ReadTheDocs.
2. Create a new build. ReadTheDocs will fetch the files from GitHub and update the documentation immediately. For more information about this process, look up the ReadTheDocs documentation (link below).

More info ...

... about ReadTheDocs:

• ReadTheDocs Manual
• RTD GitHub Page

... about MKDocs:

• MkDocs Manual
• "Documenting your project with MkDocs": Video by the developer Tom Christie

... about Markdown:

• Syntax documentation on Daring Fireball
• Editor MarkdownPad2 (if you feel more comfortable with editing on your local system and syncing with GitHub afterwards)