Code example for developer product page

[agjohnson]

Meta: I used pygmentize to generate the html for the mockup

% pygmentize -o test-rtd-yaml.html test-rtd.yaml

So we could mostly generate the html from various source files if we want to
make this really maintainable.

Requires #3

[agjohnson]

Another thought: this could be a template of sorts for our 404/5XX error pages too. I'm sure we could come up with some fun examples to replace our ascii man and whale art. Pages could simulate things going absolutely wrong in a terminal, like accidentally rm -rf /, or diagnosing network issues. I suppose something fairly approachable though, but our current error pages are a bit of a nod to technical users already, and that is something to preserve I feel.

[humitos]

404/5XX error pages

In particular for the 404 pages, I'd love to add more contextual data to them like a link to the project's home, at least: readthedocs/readthedocs.org#2551

[nienn]

I agree that more contextual information is useful. It's always a good idea to help the user get back to a place where he can take action, and we could do that in the same terminal style. I like the terminal analogy but it makes it even more important that it contains useful information, as I'm sure that we all see enough errors and are sometimes a bit tired of them. So the analogy needs to be kept light, useful and fun!

[agjohnson]

In particular for the 404 pages, I'd love to add more contextual data

Ah yes, that would be a great addition. I could see us having multiple 4xx/5xx error pages. The error pages related to our application and our website can be goofy/etc. But perhaps we do ultimately want a set of generic error pages for hosted documentation error pages (so customers are showing RTD branded ascii man/etc). Granted users can override these, but that would give us some ability to make our own error pages more unique

[ericholscher]

Is this still a useful PR?

[agjohnson]

Yes, it's a concept page though, so still draft. I think I'd revisit this with error pages first, the developer product page is a neat idea for a landing page, but we already have several versions of content for these users.