Redesign and migrate site

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The decision was recently taken to switch the documentation site framework from VuePress to Docusaurus. The main motivation is the built-in versioning feature, which is essential for MeiliSearch v1 (expected to release by the end of 2021).

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Docusaurus migration: canceled or postponed

After some reflection, we are not sure that the benefit of the migration will be greater than the cost, or that Docusaurus is the best solution for us.

What's next?

We need to go back to the drawing board and consider all possible solutions. Alongside Docusaurus, there are two possible solutions on opposite ends of the difficulty spectrum.

1. Employ the same stack used for the landing page + resource center to create a custom documentation site

This is the best solution for having visual unity / a consistent brand identity between our different sites, and is probably the most maintainable since it doesn't rely on an outside technology. It also gives us the possibility to build the documentation site inside another of our sites, such as our resource center. However it would also require by far the most work: both for the developers to recreate the site and plugins, and for the docs team to adapt to new tools + workflow.

2. Migrate our site to VuePress-2.

This is the "easiest" solution: it would not require our developers to completely recreate our plugins or our writers to learn new workflows. The main downside is that it would put us somewhat at the mercy of VuePress's maintainers, as well as its limitations. It would resolve the current situation (deprecated stack, dependency problems) with minimal cost, but might also be a "stop-gap" solution that needs to be revisited later on. Consider the fact that we have at least one dedicated React developer, but no dedicated Vue developer on our team.

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We are currently working on a new documentation site using Next.js. We expect the first version of the site to be released around the start of April.