Feature #11158

Disable backlinks on website

Added by sajolida 2016-02-22 15:01:47 . Updated 2016-02-25 22:33:31 .

Status:
Rejected
Priority:
Normal
Assignee:
Category:
Target version:
Start date:
2016-02-22
Due date:
% Done:

0%

Feature Branch:
Type of work:
Discuss
Blueprint:

Starter:
Affected tool:
Deliverable for:

Description

While working on Feature #11151 we should consider two use cases:

  • People building the website from scratch (ISO builders)
  • People refreshing builds of the website (doc writers and translators)

For doc writers and translators, backlinks sometime lead to tons more build than if we had no backlinks.

I never user backlinks myself and so I’m not convinced by their usefullness. I was not against keeping if they didn’t hurt but seeing the crazy building times we have lately, I’m wondering whether they deserve it.

It’s not currently possiblr to disable backlinks on ikiwiki but people have been discussing this:

A first option could be to move this forward upstream. Then we could have backlinks on the production website but not on the offline website for example or people could disable them locally if they want.

A workaround that could be applied right now would be to set numbacklinks to 1 to limit the triggering of rebuilds due to backlinks and remove them from our template. This needs to be tested.

Subtasks

History

#1 Updated by intrigeri 2016-02-22 20:40:05

  • Assignee set to sajolida
  • QA Check set to Info Needed

I’d personally like to see actual numbers: if this has an effect limited to just a few %’s of build time, maybe it’s not worth having a collective discussion about if (and how) someone unspecified should allow us to fully disable this feature. Wanna benchmark the cheap workaround?

#2 Updated by sajolida 2016-02-24 16:35:08

  • Status changed from Confirmed to Rejected
  • Assignee deleted (sajolida)
  • QA Check deleted (Info Needed)

I did some more testing and actually a refresh triggers building xyz, to update its backlinks only if the link to page xyz is modified. So it’s not that crazy and I’m withdrawing this idea.

#3 Updated by intrigeri 2016-02-25 22:33:31

Thanks!