This morning sometime around or before 5 a.m. EST EllisLab began experiencing some website issues. It appears to be related to either an incorrect database setting in their config file, or more likely - a deeper issue connecting to the database in general. Ironically the message says to "contact your hosting provider if the problem persists." (The irony is that they own the hosting provider)
I've seen a number of tweets about people needing the docs. Initially I thought to just upload the docs myself but then I realized I may not have the legal permission to do so. I thought the next best thing might be to show people how to search the docs.
Thankfully Google caches site pages and the ExpressionEngine docs are no exception. The search box that is in the EE docs is actually just a Google search so we can easily utilize that search to find what we might need. Your search string would consist of "your phrase site:expressionengine.com/docs/". For example, if I needed to search for weblog parameters I might search for "weblog parameters site:expressionengine.com/docs/".
That's Great and All, but the Site is still Down!
Yeah, yeah I know. That's why we don't click the normal site link, we click on "Cached". It is important to note that clicking links on these cached pages will take you to the "live" version of the site. So cached pages are good by themselves but not for browsing. Because of this you may need to perform multiple Google searches to find exactly what you're looking for. Now that you know how to search it go find what you need and stop whining on Twitter! Oh yeah, don't forget to download the docs later. They're free to download to anyone who has an account on expressionengine.com.
By the way, you hopefully won't see any CodeIgniter developers asking for docs. Each download of CI comes with the full documentation. I've always liked that!
Update: It appears that it was, in fact, a database outtage and everything is back up.
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