Banner to Indicate When Viewing Legacy Documentation

[garronej]

Hello GitBook team,

GitBook variants are a great feature that allows us to version our documentation. This is especially helpful for users who need to consult the documentation corresponding to the specific major version they’re using.

However, we’ve noticed an issue: users can sometimes land on legacy pages without realizing they are not viewing the latest version. This can lead to confusion and outdated guidance.

It would be very helpful to have a built-in banner or notice that informs users when they are viewing an older version of the documentation.

Reference: keycloakify/docs.keycloakify.dev#44

[zenoachtig]

Hi @garronej, you can do this with our newly announced Announcement feature, available in your site's Customization settings under the "Layout" tab. You can set up an announcement that will show up at the top of the site.

Because customization settings can be set per space, you can set up the announcement to only show up on specific variants. To do this, click the dropdown at the top left of the customization screen (showing "Site-wide settings" by default) and pick the space you want to add the banner to.

Next, go to Layout and set up the banner as you wish. You can use the Link field to link it to any space, or input the site's root URL to always go to the latest version.

It might take a bit of fiddling to set up the banner individually for each variant, but should be easy to maintain after that.

Let me know if this helps!

[garronej]

Oh! Very neat, sorry for missing that! Thank you @zenoachtig!

[zenoachtig]

You're welcome!

Actually thinking about your use case bit longer, you could also do the opposite: create a site-wide announcement banner that points to the newest version, and then disable that banner in a variant-specific override on the newest version. That would actually centralise the configuration and save some time.

I haven't tested that method, but don't see why it shouldn't work if we did our jobs right 😊

[garronej]

Ah neat! Thanks!