414265 - add some description of system requirements on the website

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Bugzilla :: bugzilla.org, enhancement, P2)

Description

[Dave Miller [:justdave]]

Received the following in email.  Since it was sent privately I'm not including the sender's contact info, but he can identify himself later if he wants.

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Howdy. I have some feedback for the Bugzilla.org site. I’ve used Bugzilla once before, and was looking into using it again at a new company. But, I’m not very technical, and I must admit, I had a really hard time finding basic information about “what do you need to run Bugzilla?” After some searching, I found requirements buried in the Release Notes for each version. However, even those requirements don’t even mention anything about what operating system you need, whether there are any recommendations for disk space, processing power, etc.

It may be that those things are “understood” by people in the trade – that Bugzilla can run on Windows, Linux, UNIX, anything. But even if that’s the case, someone who is new to Bugzilla or to open source (like me) isn’t going to know that. Further, I’d argue that this is one of the first things any potential customer is going to need to know first. The requirements, or again, something like “What do I need to run Bugzilla?” should have some sort of prominent placement on the Bugzilla.org web site.

In fact, you have a perfect place to put this: as a section in the “About” page. You already have text like this:

Why Should You Use Bugzilla?

Many companies are finding that Bugzilla helps reduce downtime, increase productivity, raise customer satisfaction, and improve communication. Bugzilla can also help reduce costs by providing IT support accountability, telephone support knowledge bases, and by keeping tabs on unusual system or software issues. Bugzilla can do the same for your organization, regardless of its size.

Just add another paragraph, something like this:

What Do You Need to Implement Bugzilla?

Requirements for Bugzilla can vary widely depending on how you plan on using it, blah blah blah

Operating Systems

Bugzilla can be implemented on the following operating systems:

Windows (hyperlinked to the page describing how to install Bugzilla on Windows, for example)

Linux

Disk Space

Xxx

Processing Power

Bugzilla is so “lite” you can host it on your Blackberry.

Software Components

A Bugzilla implementation consists of a number of software components. Requirements for these vary depending on the specific release you are implementing, so you should see the Release Notes your release for more detail.

Click HERE to see the Release Notes for the current stable build (hyperlinked to those notes, the Minimum Requirements section)

Anyway, as I said, just a humble suggestion!

Thanks!

Comment 1

[Sam Folk-Williams]

Hmm that is a pretty glaring omission. I thought there was something about this in the docs but now i'm not seeing it. 

I can try to write this up...

Comment 2

[Frédéric Buclin]

Attachment: New "Requirements" page

This is of course not the code which will be implemented, but this is the generated HTML page for the new "Requirements" page.

Feedback welcome.

Comment 3

[:glob ✱]

Comment on attachment 650590 [details]
New "Requirements" page

this looks ok to me, however it may be worth noting that bmo's system is designed for very high concurrent access (eg. we can handle then "slashdot effect"), which is quite unusual.

perhaps better example hardware would be that driving redhat's or activestate's install.

Comment 4

[Frédéric Buclin]

Checking in index.html;
/www/bugzilla-org/src/requirements/index.html,v  <--  index.html
initial revision: 1.1
done
Checking in lib/nav.tmpl;
/www/bugzilla-org/lib/nav.tmpl,v  <--  nav.tmpl
new revision: 1.28; previous revision: 1.27
done
Checking in src/about/index.html;
/www/bugzilla-org/src/about/index.html,v  <--  index.html
new revision: 1.8; previous revision: 1.7
done