Dev - General Updates and Fixes

[skipjack]

Moving dev stuff from #1380 for more targeted work...

We either need to finish #980 -- which still needs some work, possibly on the antwar level -- or port the site to a more stable build tool like phenomic or gatsby. Porting the site would also offer a few things, like full HMR, that #980 doesn't address but will require some serious thought. Either way these are the infrastructure issues we need to solve:

• Resolve <title> issues (e.g. Dev - Title Missing on Voting Page #720).
• Display index pages correctly (Dev - Display Index Pages Correctly #1085).
• Bail if YAML/Markdown parsing fails (Dev - Bail if YAML/Markdown Parsing Fails #1070).
• Easier specification of custom layouts per guide (e.g. Comparison is hard to read #1367).
• Consider a better hosting/deployment setup like Netlify (e.g. 404 CSS not loading for https://webpack.js.org/ #845).
• Mark releases (synced with main package) and archive them (Dev - Archive Versions #176, feat(automatic-release): Generation of automatic release #1017).
• Consider landing page image load improvements (Dev - OpenCollective Image Lag #1548).

UPDATE: Fixed on The rebuild Branch

• Interactive bundles contain duplicate code (Dev - Bundles Contain Duplicate Code #877).
• Migrate away from marked and clean up process (Markdown Syntax and Processing webpack-contrib/webpack-defaults#73).
• Better HMR, faster builds, and quicker build tests.
• Continue component/utility modularization and simplification.

The last one refers to outsourcing much of the custom dev-related stuff to more modular packages as we've done with the voting app and extracted banner (though neither are actually being consumed yet).

Other Dev-Related Issues

• Dev - Information Architecture #1519 - Synchronized routing and /content structure with less configuration.
• Dev - Convert to PWA (checklist) #1400 - Turn the site into a PWA (sync w @TheLarkInn).
• Dev - Allow Illustrations Via Mermaid #469 - Allow illustrations via Mermaid.

cc @montogeek @probablyup @geoffdavis92 @MoOx @bebraw @hulkish. If I've missed anyone please let me know, but I've tried to include everyone who has shown interest in site dev or has previously worked on site dev regularly.

[skipjack]

From #1526...

We need to think about the caching issue we've run into a few times during deployments. The site is currently hosted on GitHub via the gh-pages branch, and there's some caching layer on top of it that seems to have some issues. I'm thinking we just hold off until the Netlify port, then hammer on it and see what happens, however if someone has an idea for a short-term fix we're all ears.

[skipjack]

With @pierreneter's help we finally got #980 merged! This means our dependencies are at least up to date. I'm going to try to set up slack or hangouts session with those who are interested and who've worked on the site either on this issue, #1400, or other infrastructure related things. Will update once we have a date locked in. Ping me on gitter or slack if you're interested.