You may have noticed a few changes since the last time you visited the Tanzu Developer Center. The team has been hard at work making sure our content is easier to find, and more oriented toward reaching specific objectives. Today, we have launched that redesign!
We started the Tanzu Developer Center with the goal of creating a space where developers could learn about best practices for developing, deploying, and managing applications — applications that are built to take advantage of current platform technologies and frameworks.
Since its launch in June 2020 (see our launch announcement blog, the Tanzu Developer Center has grown to host hundreds of guides and blog posts. Dedicated guides walk readers through how to use specific technologies. Timely blog posts provide thought leadership and new product announcements.
Since then, along with a lot of additional content, we have continued to add functionality to the site to better serve our visitors. In our 1st birthday announcement in June 2021, we discussed changes, such as the addition of Workshops, which gave developers a hands-on way to use technologies with easy-to-follow guides, as well as fully functional environments to experiment in. [Outcomes] brought additional structure to guides by creating content series oriented toward learning more complex concepts.
But with the addition of so much new content and new features, and more being added all the time, we also started to notice some trends. Through conversations with various users, as well as metrics gathered from the site since its launch, we started to understand new ways in which our site could help readers.
It was not shocking to learn that readers were more interested in specific outcomes around certain technologies (e.g. “How do I export my Spring-based Kubernetes application metrics to Prometheus?“), rather than learning everything there is to know about a specific topic (e.g. “I want to learn everything there is to know about monitoring”). This was obvious. The not-so-obvious question: How would we redesign the site to fulfill this need?
After much research and many conversations, we have built this new redesign with the goal of orienting around how our readers want to use the site. Here are just a couple of the major themes in this launch.
A focus on finding what you are looking for, faster
Rather than lay out content based on the technology used, we went with a different approach. Instead, you will notice topics are much more centered around the objectives readers are looking to achieve. Whether you are just learning the basics of modern applications, or you are tasked with securing your Kubernetes cluster, the Tanzu Developer Center has what you need.
And each of these high-level topics continually dives down further into more specific areas. Do you want to learn about building modern applications? Maybe you are interested in the latest in languages and frameworks. And more specifically, best practices for managing Python dependencies. We have that. Or maybe you already have applications deployed on to Kubernetes but you need to know more about day 2 management. Specifically around implementing distributed tracing. We have that too.
We hope these changes to our topics structure will help you find what you are looking for faster, so you can complete your tasks and meet your learning objectives. And speaking of learning objectives, we have an announcement there too.
Learning isn’t complete after finishing one guide
Guides are great, and useful for completing very specific tasks. But what if the task you need to complete is only a small part of an overall role you are performing at your organization? Maybe today you have been tasked with developing a test-driven development (TDD) practice within your team, and you need a guide to walk you through that process. But you also know that this task is simply part of a larger initiative within your organization to build out a modern application development practice.
This is where Learning Paths come in. Learning paths are a selection of prescriptive and curated content built to help readers master topics too complex for a single guide. Readers can jump around to specific content using the side-bar navigation, or walk the entire path to master a topic.
Much like our focus on topics, we hope these Learning Paths help you find what you are looking for faster. We hope this content aids you in solving your development issues today, as well as getting in front of complex issues coming down the road.
What’s next?
If there is one thing that is constant, it is change. The Tanzu Developer Center team has consistently worked to enhance the site with new features and content since it started, and we plan to keep doing so in the future.
If you have any feedback for us – on this redesign or anything else, drop us a feedback issue on GitHub (we are an open source platform, after all).
If you are interested in new content coming up on the Tanzu Developer Center, check out our new content roadmap, also on GitHub.
If you are interested in contributing to the Tanzu Developer Center, either by writing content or helping with enhancements and bugs, check out our new contribution guides.
And finally, keep an eye on the Tanzu Developer Center for future changes!
