Versioning site content; proxy to specific github.io deployment

[aaraney]

While git versions site content at the repository level, currently github.io deployments do not support browsing previously deployed versions of the site. A use case of this might be, sharing a permalink to some site content with a colleague. You would want to do your best to guarantee that the content you shared is the same as they will see. Currently, the only way to do this is to share a permalink of the markdown file from github. While this works, I don't think it's a fair expectation for a scientist to spend enough time to find the file that renders a certain page on the github.io deployment and share a permalink to that file in github.

Personally, I have not used hugo to do CMS before, but it seems given the content and context of the site, we would want to be able to share a permalink to site content at a certain point in time. In my head, it seems like this functionality would be appropriate to add to the right sidebar on the current site. I think a button that copies a permalink to the originating markdown file on github would suffice. Plus it would a lot easier than managing with a site snapshot per deployment.

[alee]

thanks, this is a good suggestion. It's kind of related to #209 but I think you are more concerned with the state of the site as its evolving. Eventually I think we were envisioning having published frozen standards and a staging site where the standards evolve before reaching the next milestone

[aaraney]

@alee, I agree with your summary of my comment. Given that this effort is being tracked, I think it is safe to close this. Thanks for weighing in @alee!