Sites

What a site is

Publishing one document gives you one page. A site is the next step up: a folder published as a set of pages with a list of them down the side, a homepage, and one address for the lot.

It suits documentation, a handbook, notes for a course, a changelog. Anything where the pages belong together and a reader should be able to move between them.

One site is included on both plans, and there is no limit on how many pages it holds or how many people read it.

Making one

1. Put the documents you want in a folder. A site is always made from a folder.
2. From the folder's menu in the sidebar, choose Publish as site.
3. The site panel opens, with tabs for its pages, its appearance, and its address.

Choosing the pages

Being in the folder does not put a document on the site. You choose which ones are in, one at a time, so a folder can hold drafts and notes that stay private alongside the pages that go out.

• Add to site and Remove from site decide what is published.
• Homepage marks the one people land on. Every site needs one.
• Drag to reorder sets the order readers see in the navigation.
• A page can be given a label for the navigation, which is useful when the document's own name is too long to sit in a list. There is a switch to go back to using the document's name.

Navigation and sections

Pages can be grouped into sections, so a site with twenty pages reads as four groups of five rather than a list of twenty.

The navigation itself can sit in its default place, be aligned left, or sit at the top right. It can also be hidden entirely, which suits a site that is really one page with a couple of others behind it.

Each page also gets a contents list built from its own headings, so a long page is navigable without you doing anything.

Publishing, and republishing

Choose Publish Site and it goes live.

The address

A site has its own address, and each page sits beneath it. You can edit it, and Docmode tells you as you type whether it is free, already taken, or reserved.

You can also give the site a title of its own, shown above the navigation and in a reader's browser tab.

Logo and favicon

On Pro a site can carry your own logo above its navigation, in place of the site name, and your own favicon: the small picture in a reader's browser tab.

Your own domain

On Pro a site can be served from an address you own, rather than from an address here. This is the one part of Docmode with a genuinely technical step in it, so it is walked through one instruction at a time.

1. In the site panel, open Custom Domain and enter the address you want to use.
2. Docmode gives you a DNS record. A DNS record is the instruction that tells the internet where your address should point. You add it wherever you bought the domain, which is the same place you manage the domain itself.
3. Leave the panel open. It checks every ten seconds and tells you what it finds, including when nothing has changed yet.
4. Once the record is found, Docmode proves the domain is yours and sets up its security certificate, which is what puts the padlock in a reader's browser. Then it switches over.

Putting a password on it

On Pro a site can be locked with a password. You choose what the password covers: the whole site, one page, or one section of it.

A locked page is never sent to a reader's browser until the password is right. It is not delivered and then hidden, so there is nothing in the page for anybody to find by looking.

A password can be changed at any time, and changing it signs out everybody using the old one, on every device.