The /content
directory is where all the site's (English) Markdown content lives!
See the markup reference guide for more information about supported Markdown features.
See the contributing docs for general information about working with the docs.
YAML Frontmatter is an authoring convention popularized by Jekyll that provides a way to add metadata to pages. It is a block of key-value content that lives at the top of every Markdown file.
The following frontmatter values have special meanings and requirements for this site.
There's also a schema that's used by the test suite to validate every page's frontmatter.
See lib/frontmatter.js
.
- Purpose: Indicates the versions to which a page applies. See Versioning for more info.
- Type:
Object
. Allowable keys map to product names and can be found in theversions
object inlib/frontmatter.js
. - This frontmatter value is currently required for all pages.
- The
*
is used to denote all releases for the version.
Example that applies to GitHub.com and recent versions of GitHub Enterprise Server:
title: About your personal dashboard
versions:
fpt: '*'
ghes: '>=2.20'
Example that applies to all supported versions of GitHub Enterprise Server: (but not GitHub.com):
title: Downloading your license
versions:
ghes: '*'
You can also version a page for a range of releases. This would version the page for GitHub.com, and GitHub Enterprise Server versions 2.22 and 3.0 only:
versions:
fpt: '*'
ghes: '>=2.22 <3.1'
- Purpose: List URLs that should redirect to this page.
- Type:
Array
- Optional
Example:
title: Getting started with GitHub Desktop
redirect_from:
- /articles/first-launch/
- /articles/error-github-enterprise-version-is-too-old/
- /articles/getting-started-with-github-for-windows/
See contributing/redirects
for more info.
- Purpose: Set a human-friendly title for use in the rendered page's
<title>
tag and anh1
element at the top of the page. - Type:
String
- Optional. If omitted, the page
<title>
will still be set, albeit with a generic value likeGitHub.com
orGitHub Enterprise
.
- Purpose: An abbreviated variant of the page title for use in breadcrumbs and navigation elements.
- Type:
String
- Optional. If omitted,
title
will be used.
Article type | Maximum character length |
---|---|
articles | 31 |
categories | 27 |
map topics | 30 |
Example:
title: Contributing to projects with GitHub Desktop
shortTitle: Contributing to projects
- Purpose: Sets the intro for the page. This string will render after the
title
. - Type:
String
- Optional.
- Purpose: Sets the permission statement for the article. This string will render after the
intro
. - Type:
String
- Optional.
- Purpose: Sets the product callout for the article. This string will render after the
intro
andpermissions
statement. - Type:
String
- Optional.
- Purpose: Render the proper page layout.
- Type:
String
that matches the name of the layout. For a layout namedcomponents/landing
, the value would beproduct-landing
. - Optional. If omitted,
DefaultLayout
is used.
- Purpose: Lists the relative links that belong to the product/category/map topic. See Index pages for more info.
- Type:
Array
. Default isfalse
. - Required on
index.md
pages.
- Purpose: Renders children into groups on the homepage. See Homepage for more info.
- Type:
Array
. Default isfalse
. - Require on the homepage
index.md
.
- Purpose: Renders the linked articles' titles and intros on product landing pages and the homepage.
- Type:
Object
. - Optional.
The list of popular links are the links displayed on the landing page under the title "Popular." Alternately, you can customize the title "Popular" by setting the featuredLinks.popularHeading
property to a new string.
Example:
featuredLinks:
gettingStarted:
- /path/to/page
startHere:
- /guides/example
popular:
- /path/to/popular/article1
- /path/to/popular/article2
popularHeading: An alternate heading to Popular
- Purpose: Indicates whether an article should show a mini table of contents (TOC) above the rest of the content. See Autogenerated mini TOCs for more info.
- Type:
Boolean
. Default istrue
on articles, andfalse
on map topics andindex.md
pages. - Optional.
- Purpose: Indicates whether a page is allowed to have a title that differs from its filename. Pages with this frontmatter set to
true
will not be flagged in tests or updated bysrc/content-render/scripts/reconcile-filenames-with-ids.js
. Use this value if a file'stitle
frontmatter includes Liquid or punctuation that cannot be part of the filename. For example, the article "About Enterprise Managed Users" uses a Liquid reusable in its title,'About {% data variables.product.prodname_emus %}'
, which cannot be in the filename,about-enterprise-managed-users.md
, so theallowTitleToDifferFromFilename
frontmatter is set totrue
. - Type:
Boolean
. Default isfalse
. - Optional.
- Purpose: Render a list of items pulled from GitHub Changelog on product landing pages (ex:
components/landing
). The one exception is Education, which pulls from https://github.blog/category/community/education. - Type:
Object
, properties:label
-- must be present and corresponds to the labels used in the GitHub Changelogprefix
-- optional string that starts each changelog title that should be omitted in the docs feed. For example, with the prefixGitHub Actions:
specified, changelog titles likeGitHub Actions: Some Title Here
will render asSome Title Here
in the docs feed).
- Optional.
- Purpose: Override the initial platform selection for a page. If this frontmatter is omitted, then the platform-specific content matching the reader's operating system is shown by default. This behavior can be changed for individual pages, for which a manual selection is more reasonable. For example, most GitHub Actions runners use Linux and their operating system is independent of the reader's operating system.
- Type:
String
, one of:mac
,windows
,linux
. - Optional.
Example:
defaultPlatform: linux
- Purpose: Override the initial tool selection for a page, where the tool refers to the application the reader is using to work with GitHub (such as GitHub.com's web UI, the GitHub CLI, or GitHub Desktop) or the GitHub APIs. For more information about the tool selector, see Markup reference for GitHub Docs. If this frontmatter is omitted, then the tool-specific content matching the GitHub web UI is shown by default. If a user has indicated a tool preference (by clicking on a tool tab), then the user's preference will be applied instead of the default value.
- Type:
String
, one of:webui
,cli
,desktop
,curl
,codespaces
,vscode
,importer_cli
,graphql
,powershell
,bash
,javascript
. - Optional.
defaultTool: cli
- Purpose: Render a list of learning tracks on a product's sub-landing page.
- type:
String
. This should reference learning tracks' names defined indata/learning-tracks/*.yml
. - Optional
*Note: the featured track is set by a specific property in the learning tracks YAML. See that README for details.
- Purpose: Render a list of articles, filterable by
type
andtopics
. Only applicable when used withlayout: product-guides
. - Type:
Array
- Optional.
Example:
includeGuides:
- /actions/guides/about-continuous-integration
- /actions/guides/setting-up-continuous-integration-using-workflow-templates
- /actions/guides/building-and-testing-nodejs
- /actions/guides/building-and-testing-powershell
- Purpose: Indicate the type of article.
- Type:
String
, one of theoverview
,quick_start
,tutorial
,how_to
,reference
. - Optional.
- Purpose: Indicate the topics covered by the article. The topics are used to filter guides on some landing pages. For example, the guides at the bottom of this page can be filtered by topics, and the topics are listed under the guide intro. Refer to the content models for more details about adding topics. A full list of existing topics is located in the allowed topics file. If topics in article frontmatter and the allow-topics list become out of sync, the topics CI test will fail.
- Type: Array of
String
s - Optional: Topics are preferred for each article, but, there may be cases where existing articles don't yet have topics, or adding a topic to a new article may not add value.
- Purpose: Set a custom link and link name for
Ask the GitHub community
link in the footer. - Type:
Object
. Properties arename
andhref
. - Optional.
- For GitHub staff only: Set an effective date for Terms of Service articles so that engineering teams can automatically re-prompt users to confirm the terms
- Type:
string
YEAR-MONTH-DAY e.g. 2021-10-04 is October 4th, 2021 - Optional.
If you see two single quotes in a row (''
) in YML frontmatter where you might expect to see one ('
), this is the YML-preferred way to escape a single quote. From the YAML spec:
In single-quoted leaves, a single quote character needs to be escaped. This is done by repeating the character.
As an alternative, you can change the single quotes surrounding the frontmatter field to double quotes and leave interior single quotes unescaped.
Every article displays a mini table of contents (TOC), which is an autogenerated "In this article" section that includes links to all H2
s in the article. Only H2
headers are included in the mini TOCs. If an article uses H3
or H4
headers to divide information in a way that only certain sections are relevant to a particular task, you can help people navigate to the content most relevant to them by using a sectional TOC.
Mini TOCs do not appear on product landing pages, category landing pages, or map topic pages.
Do not add hardcoded "In this article" sections in the Markdown source or else the page will display duplicate mini TOCs.
A content file can have two types of versioning:
versions
frontmatter (required)- Determines in which versions the page is available. See "Versioning documentation" for more info.
- Liquid statements in content (optional)
- Conditionally render content depending on the current version being viewed. See "Versioning documentation" for more info. Note Liquid conditionals can also appear in
data
andinclude
files.
- Conditionally render content depending on the current version being viewed. See "Versioning documentation" for more info. Note Liquid conditionals can also appear in
Note: As of early 2021, the free-pro-team@latest
version is not included URLs. A helper function called lib/remove-fpt-from-path.js
removes the version from URLs.
When adding a new article, the filename is a kebab-cased version of the article's title
frontmatter. For example, the article "About GitHub CLI" has a title
frontmatter of About GitHub CLI
and a filename of about-github-cli.md
.
Directory names for categories and map topics can match the title
or shortTitle
frontmatter.
For a title that contains punctuation (such as "GitHub's Billing Plans"), you can omit the punctuation in the filename (githubs-billing-plans.md
). For a title that uses a Liquid variable (such as About {% data variables.product.prodname_emus %}
), you can use the words that the Liquid renders as in the filename (about-enterprise-managed-users.md
). A test will flag any discrepancies between title and filename. To override the requirement that titles and filenames match for a given article, you can add allowTitleToDifferFromFilename
in the frontmatter.
When using Liquid conditionals in lists or tables, you can use whitespace control characters to prevent the addition of newlines and other whitespace that would break the list or table rendering.
You can add a hyphen (-
) on either the left, right, or both sides to indicate that there should be no newline or other whitespace on that side.
{%- ifversion fpt %}
For example, to version a table row, instead of adding liquid versioning for the row starting at the end of the previous row, like this:
Column A | Column B | Column C
---------|----------|---------
This row is for all versions | B1 | C1{% ifversion ghes %}
This row is for GHES only | B2 | C2{% endif %}
This row is for all versions | B3 | C3
You can include the liquid versioning on its own line and use whitespace control to strip the newline to the left of the liquid tag. This makes reading the source much easier, without breaking the rendering of the table:
Column A | Column B | Column C
---------|----------|---------
This row is for all versions | B1 | C1
{%- ifversion ghes %}
This row is for GHES only | B2 | C2
{%- endif %}
This row is for all versions | B3 | C3
Links to docs in the docs-internal
repository must start with a product ID (like /actions
or /admin
) and contain the entire filepath, but not the file extension. For example, /actions/creating-actions/about-custom-actions
.
Image paths must start with /assets
and contain the entire filepath including the file extension. For example, /assets/images/help/settings/settings-account-delete.png
.
The links to Markdown pages undergo some transformations on the server side to match the current page's language and version. The handling for these transformations lives in lib/render-content/plugins/rewrite-local-links
.
For example, if you include the following link in a content file:
/github/writing-on-github/creating-a-saved-reply
When viewed on GitHub.com docs, the link gets rendered with the language code:
/en/github/writing-on-github/creating-a-saved-reply
and when viewed on GitHub Enterprise Server docs, the version is included as well:
/en/[email protected]/github/writing-on-github/creating-a-saved-reply
If you create an internal link, you can use the AUTOTITLE keyword to generate an article's title in the rendered link. See the markup reference for details.
Sometimes you may want to link from an article to the same article in a different product version. For example:
- You mention some functionality that is not available for free, pro, or team plans and you want to link to the GitHub Enterprise Cloud version of the same page.
- The GitHub Enterprise Server version of an article describes a feature that shipped with that version, but site administrators can upgrade to the latest version of the feature that's in use on GitHub Enterprise Cloud.
You can link directly to a different version of the page using the currentArticle
property. This means that the link will continue to work directly even if the article URL changes.
{% ifversion fpt %}For more information, see the [{% data variables.product.prodname_ghe_cloud %} documentation](/enterprise-cloud@latest/{{ currentArticle }}).{% endif %}
Sometimes you want to link to a Dotcom-only article in Enterprise content and you don't want the link to be Enterprise-ified. To prevent the transformation, you should include the preferred version in the path.
"[GitHub's Terms of Service](/free-pro-team@latest/github/site-policy/github-terms-of-service)"
Sometimes the canonical home of content moves outside the docs site. None of the links included in src/redirects/lib/external-sites.json
get rewritten. See contributing/redirects.md
for more info about this type of redirect.
Our docs contain links that use legacy filepaths such as /article/article-name
or /github/article-name
. Our docs also contain links that refer to articles by past names. Both of these link types function properly because of redirects, but they are bugs.
When you add a link to an article, use the current filepath and article name.
Index pages are the Table of Contents files for the docs site. Every product, category, and map topic subdirectory has an index.md
that serves as the landing page. Each index.md
must contain a children
frontmatter property with a list of relative links to the child pages of the product, category, or map topic.
Important note: The site only knows about paths included in children
frontmatter. If a directory or article exists but is not included in children
, its path will 404.
The homepage is the main Table of Contents file for the docs site. The homepage must have a complete list of children
, like every Index page but must also specify the childGroups
frontmatter property that will be highlighted in the main content area.
childGroups
is an array of mappings containing a name
for the group, an optional icon
for the group, and an array of children
. The children
in the array must be present in the children
frontmatter property.
To create a product guides page (e.g. Actions' Guide page), create or modify an existing markdown file with these specific frontmatter values:
- Use the product guides page template by referencing
layout: product-guides
. - (optional) Include the learning tracks in
learningTracks
. - (optional) Define which articles to include with
includeGuides
.
If using learning tracks, they need to be defined in data/learning-tracks/*.yml
.
If using includeGuides
, make sure each of the articles in this list has topics
and type
in its frontmatter.