GitLab 9.4 release post

Review Apps link: https://release-9-4.about.gitlab.com/2017/07/22/gitlab-9-4-released/

Items link: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com/blob/release-9-4/data/release_posts/2017_07_22_gitlab_9_4_released.yml
Intro link: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com/blob/release-9-4/source/posts/2017-07-22-gitlab-9-4-released.html.md

Release Post

• Blog handbook: https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/marketing/blog/
• Release post handbook: https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/marketing/blog/release-posts/

General Contributions

General contributions from the team.

Due date: 07/16 (6th working day before the 22nd)

• Label MR: blog post release
• Add milestone
• Intro
• MVP
• Add cover image image_title (compressed)
• Upgrade barometer
• Top feature
• Performance improvements
• Omnibus improvements
• Deprecations
• Documentation links
• Add features to data/features.yml
• Authorship (author's data)

Features

PMs: please check your box only when all your features and deprecations were added with completion (documentation links, images, etc). Pls don't check your item if there are still things missing.

• Fabio - CI/CD
• Victor - Discussion
• Mark - I2P
• Mike - Platform
• Joshua- Monitoring
• Stan - Geo
• Job - Edge

Tip: make your own checklist:

• Primary features
• Improvements (secondary features)
• Deprecations
• Documentation links
• Illustrations
• Update features.yml

Review

Content review (PMs)

Due date: 07/20 (2nd working day before the 22nd)

• Label MR: blog post release review-in-progress
• General review (PM)
  • Check Features' names
  • Check Features' availability (CE, EES, EEP)
  • Check Documentation links
  • Update data/promo.yml
  • Check all images' size - compress whenever > 300KB
  • Meaningful links (SEO)
  • Check links to product/feature webpages
• Copyedit (tech writers, content marketing)
  • Title
  • Description
  • Grammar, spelling, clearness (body)
• Marketing review (Amara)
• Final review (Job)

Structural Check

Due date: 07/20 (2nd working day before the 22nd)

• Label MR: blog post release review-structure
• Check frontmatter (entries, syntax)
• Check image_title and twitter_image
• Check image shadow {:.shadow}
• Check images' ALT text
• Videos/iframes wrapped in <figure> tags (responsiveness)
• Add/check <!-- more --> separator
• Add/check cover img reference (at the end of the post)
• Columns (content balance between the columns)
• Badges consistency (applied to all headings)
• Remove any remaining instructions
• Remove HTML comments
• Run deadlink checker
• Update release template with any changes (if necessary)

data/release_posts/2017_07_22_gitlab_9_4_released.yml

+###
+#
+# Release post data file
+#
+# Start the release post with this file, named `YYYY_MM_22_gitlab_X_Y_released.yml`
+# placed into `data/release_posts/`.
+#
+# Notes:
+#  - All description entries support markdown. Use it as you do for a regular markdown file.
+#   Just make sure the indentation is respected.
+#
+## Optional entries:
+#
+# - Features
+#   - Top:
+#     - documentation_text: "Learn more about Amazing Feature" # text displaying the documentation_link
+#   - Primary:
+#     - documentation_link: 'https://docs.gitlab.com/#amazing' # webpage or documentation
+#     - documentation_text: "Learn more about Amazing Feature" # text displaying the documentation_link
+#   - Secondary, upgrade barometer, deprecations:
+#     - documentation_link: 'https://docs.gitlab.com/#amazing' # webpage or documentation
+#     - documentation_text: "Learn more about Amazing Feature" # text displaying the documentation_link
+#     - image_url: '/images/x_y/feature-a.png'
+#   - Optional to all features:
+#     - image_noshadow: true # this eliminates double shadows for images that already have a shadow
+#
+# Read through the Release Posts Handbook for more information:
+# https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/marketing/blog/release-posts/
+#
+###
+
+features:
+# TOP FEATURE
+  top:
+    - name: Amazing Feature
+      available_in: [ees, eep] # required
+      documentation_link: 'https://docs.gitlab.com/#amazing' # webpage or documentation - required
+      documentation_text: "Learn more about Amazing Feature" # optional
+      description: | # supports markdown
+        Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit. Aliquid laudantium,
+        quisquam pariatur architecto quo vel sequi, aperiam ex autem itaque saepe
+        sint dignissimos, quis voluptates similique.
+        Hic veritatis facere eligendi, minus nisi eveniet delectus fugiat.
+
+        <figure class="video_container">
+          <iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/videoid" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="true"> </iframe>
+        </figure>
+
+        Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, `consectetur adipisicing` elit.
+        Rerum nisi et ex rem, obcaecati, commodi incidunt fugit,
+        deleniti nesciunt aperiam consequuntur.
+
+        1. Lorem ipsum dolor.
+        1. Lorem ipsum dolor sit.
+
+        > Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet.
+
+        Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, [consectetur adipisicing elit](#link).
+        Quae repellat, at ullam amet.
+
+        ![Amazing feature screenshot](/images/X_Y/amazing-feature.png){:.shadow}
+
+        Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit.
+
+# PRIMARY FEATURES
+  primary:
+    - name: Lorem ipsum
+      available_in: [ce, ees, eep] # required
+      documentation_link: '/features/lorem-ipsum' # webpage or documentation - optional
+      documentation_text: "Learn more about Lorem ipsum" # optional
+      image_url: '/images/9_X/feature-a.png' # required
+      image_noshadow: true # optional
+      description: | # supports markdown
+        Lorem ipsum [dolor sit amet](#link), consectetur adipisicing elit.
+        Perferendis nisi vitae quod ipsum saepe cumque quia `veritatis`.
+
+    - name: Lorem
+      available_in: [ees, eep] # required
+      documentation_link: 'https://docs.gitlab.com/#lorem' # webpage or documentation - optional
+      documentation_text: "Learn more about Lorem" # optional
+      image_url: '/images/9_X/feature-a.png' # required
+      description: | # supports markdown
+        Lorem ipsum [dolor sit amet](#link), consectetur adipisicing elit.
+        Perferendis nisi vitae quod ipsum saepe cumque quia `veritatis`.
+
+# SECONDARY FEATURES
+  secondary:
+    - name: Lorem ipsum
+      available_in: [eep] # required
+      documentation_link: 'https://docs.gitlab.com/#'
+      documentation_text: "Learn more on how to lorem ipsum." # webpage or documentation - optional
+      image_url: '/images/9_X/feature-a.png' # optional
+      image_noshadow: true # optional
+      description: | # supports markdown
+        Lorem ipsum [dolor sit amet](#link), consectetur adipisicing elit.
+        Perferendis nisi vitae quod ipsum saepe cumque quia `veritatis`.
+
+        Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit.
+        Voluptate eveniet, adipisci earum sed harum nostrum
+        itaque beatae, repellat sunt unde.
+
+    - name: Sunt nam accusantium nostrum
+      available_in: [ees, eep] # required
+      documentation_link: 'https://docs.gitlab.com/#' # webpage or documentation - optional
+      documentation_text: "Praesentium tempore nulla asperiores" # optional
+      description: | # supports markdown
+        Lorem ipsum [dolor sit amet](#link), consectetur adipisicing elit.
+        Perferendis nisi vitae quod ipsum saepe cumque quia `veritatis`.
+
+    - name: Omnibus Improvements
+      available_in: [ce, ees, eep] # required
+      documentation_link:  # webpage or documentation - optional
+      description: | # supports markdown
+        Lorem ipsum [dolor sit amet](#link), consectetur adipisicing elit.
+        Perferendis nisi vitae quod ipsum saepe cumque quia `veritatis`.
+
+    - name: Performance Improvements
+      available_in: [ce, ees, eep] # required
+      documentation_link:  # webpage or documentation - optional
+      description: | # supports markdown
+        Lorem ipsum [dolor sit amet](#link), consectetur adipisicing elit.
+        Perferendis nisi vitae quod ipsum saepe cumque quia `veritatis`.
+
+# MVP
+mvp:
+  fullname: # Name Surname
+  gitlab: # gitlab.com username
+  description: | # example (supports markdown)
+    Dosuken extended our [Pipelines API](http://docs.gitlab.com/ce/api/pipelines.html#list-project-pipelines)
+    by [adding additional search attributes](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/merge_requests/9367).
+    This is a huge improvement to our CI API, for example enabling queries to easily return the latest
+    pipeline for a specific branch, as well as a host of other possibilities. Dosuken also made a great
+    contribution last release, laying the foundation for
+    [scheduled pipelines](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/merge_requests/10133). Thanks Dosuken!
+
+# COVER IMAGE LICENCE
+cover_img:
+  image_url: 'https://www.pexels.com/photo/countryside-dawn-dusk-field-355521/'
+  licence: CC0
+  licence_url: 'https://www.pexels.com/photo-license/'
+
+# CTA BUTTONS
+cta:
+  - title: "Join us for an upcoming event" # default
+    link: '/events/'
+  - title: "Join the release webcast" # optional
+    link: 
+  - title: Lorem ipsum amet # optional
+    link:
+
+# UPGRADE BAROMETER
+barometer:
+  description: | # example (supports markdown)
+    _**Example:**_
+
+    To upgrade to GitLab 9.2, no downtime is required.
+
+    However we're also migrating data for CI jobs. If you have a significant number of jobs, this could take some time.
+
+    Starting with GitLab 9.1.0 it's possible to upgrade to a newer version of GitLab without having to take your GitLab instance offline. However, for this to work there are the following requirements:
+
+    1.  You can only upgrade 1 release at a time. For example, if 9.1.15 is the last release of 9.1 then you can safely upgrade from that version to 9.2.0. However, if you are running 9.1.14 you first need to upgrade to 9.1.15.
+    2.  You have to use [post-deployment migrations](https://docs.gitlab.com/ce/development/post_deployment_migrations.html).
+    3.  You are using PostgreSQL. If you are using MySQL you will still need downtime when upgrading.
+
+    This applies to major, minor, and patch releases unless stated otherwise in a release post.
+
+    A new version of our API was released in [GitLab 9.0](https://about.gitlab.com/2017/03/22/gitlab-9-0-released/#api-v4). While existing calls to API v3 will continue to work until August 2017, we advise you to make any necessary changes to applications that use the v3 API. [Read the documentation](https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/api/v3_to_v4.html) to learn more.
+
+# DEPRECATIONS (optional)
+# include as many deprecation blocks as necessary
+deprecations:
+  - feature_name: Lorem ipsum dolor
+    due: July 22nd, 2017. # example
+    description: |  # example (supports markdown)
+      Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit.
+      Veritatis, quisquam.