Developers welcome major overhaul to GitHub's support documentation

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published 2 July 2020

GitHub has merged its two developer support sites into a single unified documentation hub to support users and integrators, offering a single repository of guidance and resources.

The platform, docs.github.com, merges the now-defunct help.github.com site and the widely-used developer.github.com, giving users the capacity to search across all of GitHub’s product content in a single place.

Previously, users seeking support would navigate either to the help platform, which was primarily curated for beginners, or the development platform, targeting advanced users, with GitHub addressing these two communities separately.

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“As our product offerings have evolved, we decided to create a single place where everyone can find the information they need, whether you’re a new developer signing up for your GitHub account or a seasoned developer in the community,” said the platform’s product documentation team manager Jenn Leaver.

“This new site combines the product content that was on help.github.com and developer.github.com into a unified experience. With docs.github.com, you’re able to search across all of GitHub’s product content in one place.”

Users can explore docs.github.com by product, with support documents divided into branches, from GraphQL API to GitHub Actions, or they can use the search function to find something specific. The platform also lists a collection of getting started articles, as well as the most popular entries.

Leaver added this launch was the first step in creating an advisory platform on which users can discover new tools and methods, with further improvements coming in future. Language support, for example, will soon be expanded beyond its existing support for English, Japanese, Simplified Chinese, Brazilian Portuguese and Spanish.

The news has been welcomed by developers on social media, with others also calling for the concept to be extended to private repositories. Startup CTO and advisor Tom Jowitt, for example, called on GitHub to roll out an organisation-wide private documentation hub.

The project has been a long time in the making for the development hub and represents a culmination of efforts from engineers, designers, content strategists, writers, and many others. GitHub is expected to post further details in a behind-the-scenes blog post soon.

Keumars Afifi-Sabet is a writer and editor that specialises in public sector, cyber security, and cloud computing. He first joined ITPro as a staff writer in April 2018 and eventually became its Features Editor. Although a regular contributor to other tech sites in the past, these days you will find Keumars on LiveScience, where he runs its Technology section.