Site Tips

Support Home

• "RightScale Documentation" logo above the blue header directs you back to our Documentation Home Page.
• So does the first entry in the breadcrumb below the header.  (Home > OtherBreadCrumbs > ...)

Page TOC and Section TOC

• Most documents build out a dynamic Table of Contents (TOC) for that page.
• Many guides and landing pages (for cloud providers for example) build out a header that lists both the Page and Section TOC.  (A section TOC is similar to chapters in a guide.)  Example:  Google Compute Engine (see actionable header links)

Navigation Footer

All Support pages have a navigation footer. The navigation footer contains hyperlinks to all of the most useful Support Portal and related pages.

Remember the Breadcrumbs!

Whether you find content on the Support Portal by browsing or using the Support Search function, the breadcrumbs are always displayed so that you can go to the parent directory using one mouse click. Use the breadcrumbs to go up one level or several levels from your search. For example, a search for Create a New SQS Queue would result in the following result:

Site Map (Alphabetic Index)

Check out the Site Map in the bottom navigation.  You can find things there by browsing through the page links, clicking on the link for the alphabetic index of the Support Portal, or using your browser search function within the Site Map.  By default, hierarchical map is displayed. The Site Map builds an alphabetic index (a-z) for folders/landing pages and individual files.

Standard

The Support Search window searches the Support site only.  The advanced options are easy to use, yet very powerful.

The Support Search uses the Lucene Search Engine.  It is fully documented here.  Here are a few basic but practical examples you can submit right from the standard Find:

ssh AND tag:faq  - Find all FAQs with "ssh" in them.  (Note:  AND is case sensitive)

haproxy AND tag:tutorial AND tag:advanced - Find all advanced tutorials with "haproxy" in them

Advanced

Use the Advanced Search and fill out the forms as needed. Take advantage of the power of the Lucene search engine without having to learn its syntax.  For example:

All of these words:  Elastic load balancer

The Exact Phrase: Private cloud

Been Tagged With: intermediate

Will find all intermediate tutorials on our Support Site that contain the words "elastic" and "load" and "balancer".  If you want to find those three words literally run together, place them in double quotes.  That is, change the Search query slightly like this:

All of these words:  "Elastic load balancer"

Note that having a pattern surrounded in double quotes can have a subtle effect on the search results.  Searching for "create credentials" will produce different results than simply create credentials.  Surrounding it in quotes searches on the entire phrase.

User Level

Although subjective, we have tried to categorize with the following levels:

• beginner
• intermediate
• advanced

Document Type

Each type of document contains a consistent set of elements so that you can quickly and easily view the document and make sense of it.  The look and feel of each document is consistent and repeatable, improving your learning experience.

• tutorial - Step by step procedures to accomplish a specific task.  They range from beginner tutorials that may take a few minutes, to more advanced tutorials that can take hours.  Tutorials consist of a clearly stated objective, prerequisites (if any), background or overview level information and the steps required to complete the objective.
• concept - Conceptual information.  Concept documents answer the question "What is a ...?"
• reference - Reference information usually takes the shape of lists or tables. Some reference information is exhaustive and auto-generated, such as the API or Help Text reference information.
• FAQ - Frequently Asked Questions.  You can locate FAQs by category, browsing the document title, or using our Search engine.  (e.g. Show me all FAQs containing the word "haproxy")  FAQs generally answer the question "How do I ...?"  They tend to be tighter scoped than tutorials however.  There is a global FAQ Knowledge Base and several localized FAQ knowledge bases.  (For example, tied to a specific Cloud such as Azure or Google Compute Engine.)
• RN - Release Notes.  We have designed special templates for our Release Notes to make sure they are easy to access, navigate, and read.  Our Release Notes are split into current and archive, as well as by product.
  1. Cloud Management Platform  (e.g. the Dashboard)
  2. ServerTemplates
  3. RightLink
  4. MCIs and RightImages
• map - Map of documents to access.  Often maps are landing pages with some conceptual information too.

Note:  Most, but not all documents have been tagged with this metadata.  The effort to categorize appropriate documents is ongoing.

Logging In and Logging Out

By design, we made this unobtrusive.  Most won't need to login at all, so we tucked it away in the top navigation bar at the top of the page.  You'll find the links to login or logout at the very top right of any page in our site. 

Important!  Due to spam account creations, we have disabled the ability to create your own account on the Support Portal.  You will have to contact Services to get an account created.  The primary benefit of doing this is the ability to get email notifications on pages you want to track changes on.  (This feature is restricted however to RightScale and premium partner accounts.)