25 October: Site sections with global search, sponsored docs for open source and more
Make your docs a content hub with site sections, create and reuse content across a space, add buttons to your site header, use stepper blocks in your content, and even more…
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It’s been a huge week of announcements from the team, so we have a bumper edition of our changelog for you that attempts to cover everything that’s new in the app.
While the features mentioned below are all live or rolling out right now, there’s a ton more stuff coming soon that we detailed or teased over on the GitBook blog — so head there for the full story.
✨ New and noteworthy
Site sections
You can now add multiple topics, such as separate products or product areas, to a single docs site, and separates them into tabbed sections at the top of the screen, to turn your docs into a content hub. Site sections are available as part of our new Ultimate plan.
Global site search
When you add multiple spaces to a site using site sections, it also unlocks global search across all those spaces. So your users can use the search bar in your site header and find pages and information from any space with a single search.
Add buttons to your site header
Now, you can add primary and secondary buttons to your docs site’s header, along with the links you could add before. Head into the Customization menu for your site, choose the Layout tab, then add the buttons you need. This is great for things like ‘sign up’ and ‘sign in’ links, for example.
Stepper blocks
We’ve added a new kind of block that’s designed for detailing step-by-step guides — the stepper block. You can add steppers to any page, and add almost any other block within a step.
Improved insights
We’ve given our built-in docs site insights a small facelift. You’ll now see some data trends on each card to show how your content performance has changed over the last week, four weeks, or year — right on your docs site’s overview page. We have more insights improvements to come soon, so stay tuned!
Reusable content
We’re continuing to roll out reusable content — our new name for synced blocks. You can now create and reuse blocks of content across a space. When you edit the original content, those changes sync across all of its instances — making it easy to update published docs faster than ever.
Sponsored sites for open source
Today, we’re announcing a new free docs site plan that’s designed specifically for open source projects. The Sponsored site has all the features you need to publish incredible documentation, including customization, data insights and integrations. It puts a small, relevant ad in the corner of your project’s docs — every view earns you money and you keep the ad revenue. The ads will never track or retarget users — and GitBook doesn’t take a penny from you. Find out all about it in our announcement post.
Copy and paste files between spaces
Now, when you copy any block that includes a file — such as an image or an API block — and paste in a new space, the file will come along with you. We know this is something you’ve been asking about for a while, and we’re glad we could make it happen without compromizing on GitBook’s file management experience.
New pricing for new users
We’re updating our pricing for new users to cover different needs and use cases. Our new pricing structure introduces site plans, which apply to each site you publish. Right now these changes only apply to new customers or new organizations. Head over to our pricing page to see our new plans and how they stack up.
Want to hear more about everything we announced this week? Head to our blog to see all the announcements, teases and reflections on the future of documentation in GitBook.
Improved
We’ve removed the word ‘you’ from next to your name and email in GitBook, because we figure you probably know who you are.
Along with adding primary and secondary buttons to your docs site’s header, we’ve also overhauled the UI for adding and managing all the links in your header. Head into the Layout tab of the Customization menu to check it out.
While refreshing our pricing, we also updated the in-app pricing table in the Plans section of Settings to remove outdated information and add more relevant descriptions to existing features.
We’ve made a number of small improvements to loading times to help spaces and change requests load faster.
Fixed
Fixed some inconsistent styling of buttons and text input areas across the UI.
Fixed a bug that prevented the Organization settings option appearing in the Settings menu in some situations.
Fixed a crash that could happen when the Page Options menu was opened on a page with locked live edits.
Fixed a bug that broke the layout of an integration’s page in the app and made the content hard to read.
Fixed some bugs that were preventing the GitSync flow from finishing correctly and causing error messages to appear for some users.
Fixed a bug that hid the Options button on a card, so it was impossible to add links or cover images.
Fixed a bug that was preventing labels in the Page Options menu from appearing.
Fixed a number of other small visual inconsistencies and bugs across the UI.
We’re constantly working on improving the way you and your team work in GitBook, and value your input on features, bugs, and more. Make sure you head to our official GitBook community to join the discussion.