27 November: Site redirects, better site structure controls and more

Get more control over URLs, manage your site’s structure more easily, install integrations more easily, and auto-play and loop embedded videos in your docs effortlessly

After all last month’s announcements, we’ve been hard at work making more improvements that should make it easier to work with your content across your docs sites. Stay tuned for more coming soon!

✨ New and noteworthy

More control over site redirects

Want to migrate content into GitBook, or just have a big reorganization? With the new site redirect options, you now have more control over where your old URLs point to. Open your site’s dashboard and open Settings to find the new controls.

You can set up as many redirects as you like for your site — find it in your site’s settings.

GitBook already sets up HTTP 301 redirects if you move or rename a page, so that the old URL points to the new URL automatically. But you can now create a redirect from any path in your site's domain — which is important to avoid broken links in your docs which could impact SEO.

Head to our docs to find out more about site redirects.

Integration improvements

We’ve given our integrations flow a big overhaul to make it easier to browse, install and configure integrations across all your content. Just click Integrations in the sidebar to head into the new page, where you’ll be able to see all available integrations and install them with one click.

Check out our new Integrations page form the sidebar

There’s also a new Integrations button for spaces and sites, which opens a modal showing just the integrations enabled on that space or site. You can click to configure the ones you need or see more details about them, or install any others that you need.

Improved site structure controls

Last month we launched site sections, giving you all the tools to build your docs out into a content hub for your users. This month, we’ve improved the site structure controls to make it easier to manage your site sections and any variants within them.

We’ve also tweaked the way you rename variants — now, you can only do it from the site structure table, and the option is no longer available in the Customization menu.

Head to your site’s dashboard and open Settings to see the new table and test it out.

A new option to auto-play and loop videos

Want your embedded YouTube and Vimeo videos to auto-play and loop in your docs? Just add ?autoplay=1&_loop=1 to the end of your video’s URL when you embed it and your users will never have to hit a play button again — at least in your docs.

Type symbols faster

We’ve added automatic transformations for more symbols in the editor. You can now add an em-dash by typing -- , fractions by typing, for example, 1/2 and math symbols such as ⇒ ≥ and ≠ by typing =>, >= and != respectively.

Improved

• We’ve updated the styling of hint blocks so that they match in both the editor and in published content.

• We’ve made a number of small improvements the site customization area. You should notice an improved overall experience when customizing your site, and a larger preview to show your changes in real-time.

• One particular area of improvement is the color picker — we’ve increased the size of swatches, added a dropper in Chrome, and made some other small changes to make it easier to use and nicer to look at.

• We’ve made some improvements to search in published content. Now, you won't see results from duplicated spaces from different variants on your site, so your users will just get the most relevant results.

• As always, we’ve been making a number of small improvements to Git Sync, to fix bugs and improve performance across the board.

Fixed

• Fixed a bug that meant the ‘last modified’ date of a file didn't update when you renamed or updated it.

• Fixed a bug that prevented you from removing an annotation within the editor — the button works as it should again now.

• Fixed an issue where the GitBook app would crash after creating an organization.

• Fixed a bug in the social preview modal that made the preview itself too small or to large within the window.

• Remove a broken alert in the Customization panel when overwriting customizations for a space.

• Fixed a bug with site sections where deleting the default section didn’t automatically select a new default.

• Fixed an issue where the title of a site variant could be overwritten via customization.

• Fixed a bug that hid spaces or collections in the sidebar if a user had no access to the parent collection.

• Fixed a crash that could happen when using a Mermaid block in the editor.

• Fixed a bug that could cause you to lose content when merging a change request that included content generated by GitBook AI.

---

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.