This is one of those updates that you don't see, but hopefully still notice.
We migrated our infrastructure to another service provider and took the chance to also upgrade the underlying servers and software to their latest versions. It was initially planned to also move from eniston.io to eniston.com for the main domain, but we ran into various issues a couple of hours after the switch that we decided to roll back on that.
You should hopefully feel that everything runs faster and snappier, as the overall performance improved significantly after the upgrade. We also refactored a few slow queries and will continue to refactor more parts of the code to improve speed and security.
Our main datacenter remains in Germany, but we recognize that our customers are spread all over the globe. Because of that, latency may be the reason eniston is somewhat slower to you, depending on where you are. We are currently preparing our first datacenter outside of Germany.
Because the majority of our customers are located in the US and Canada, our first additional datacenter will be located in the western region of the USA. We plan to introduce this datacenter sometime in April, with more following later this year.
We also added an option to disable the table of contents for the "Docs" theme. Many like it, many don't. If you decide to disable the TOC, think about the people viewing your workspace. Maybe they prefer to have it. Anyway, it's now up to you, the admin, to disable or enable it. It's enabled by default.
Navigation
We also improved (hopefully) the navigation of the "Docs" theme. It is now possible to click on a category title to get to the detail view. This was kind of hidden before, as it was only accessible by using the breadcrumb navigation.
We also added an option to collapse all categories by default and only allow one category to be open at a time. This may be handy if you have a very large navigation. You can change this behavior in the "Appearance" settings of your workspaces.
As a part of "going with what's popular", we decided to integrate an AI assistant into our editor. The AI assistant is powered by OpenAI ChatGPT 4 and lives right where you need it when creating and editing content.
eniston AI assistant
The AI assistant can help with various tasks such as creating completely new content (if you have a writer's block), improve writing, expand text and a couple of more pre-defined prompts.
Consider this an "early access" phase as we're still fine-tuning a few things over then new weeks.
The AI assistant is part of our "Enhanced Editor" add-on, which currently costs €7.49 per month. Other features are custom text color and text background color, as well as footnotes. We plan to launch additional editor features which will be included in the subscription.
Please note that AI responses can be inaccurate, so be sure to fact check certain things. We cannot be held responsible for false claims and inaccurate information provided by ChatGPT.
Today's update brings a few improvements to the "Articles" list, as well as a choice for the default view mode (Dark / Light / System) and two bug fixes.
Articles list
The "Articles" list provides a quick glimpse into all articles that exist within a workspace. It is sorted alphabetically by default. Due to quite a few requests, we added a new view that will allow you to group those articles by category. The view preference is stored in the current session and will eventually reset to the default sorting.
Default view mode
Dark mode, light mode, system preference... everyone has different preferences and some change during the day. The default mode for the frontend view (where you and visitors view your workspaces) has always been light mode. Visitors were able to switch to dark mode if they preferred.
That switch still exists and won't go anywhere. But we added a new option to the "Appearance" settings that allow you to set the default mode. Visitors will still be able to use the toggle to switch the mode however they prefer. This is stored in the browser's local storage, and if a preference was already set by a recurring visitor, changing this value in the settings won't overwrite it.
Bug fixes
We also fixed a bug that would throw a server error when a draft article had a shadow category assigned. Draft articles don't appear in the frontend, but we missed a little where clause in our database query that would allow them to sneak in when shadow categories were loaded. This is now fixed.
Another bug we fixed was causing paginations to miss track of which page you were on. So when going back and forth, at some point, an error 404 would be thrown. Really weird, but yeah, that is now also fixed.
As of today, you can change the slug of a category.
What is a slug?
A slug is a set of words or numbers used in a URL for a specific webpage, such as example.com/this-is-the-slug. The slug is used to identify specific posts or pages, or in this case a category.
Slugs are usually auto-generated based on the title. And as with all web urls, they should (and usually are) be entirely lowercase, not contain spaces and be unique per workspace. Spaces are usually replaced by a hyphen or underscore. Punctuation marks are generally removed.
Slug preview
How to change slugs?
Slugs can be changed within the category settings after the category was created. Simply click the "gear" icon and find the section "Category slug" in the panel.
In a future update later this year, we will also make it possible to change article slugs.
Today we shipped a few new features and lots of minor UI changes across the backend. Most of the UI changes are a reflection of our recent survey. More updates to improve the usability are coming soon.
Duplicate articles
It is now possible to duplicate a single article within a workspace. Set the new (or same) category, define a new title and duplicate. All article settings and attachments will be duplicated.
What about workspaces? We received quite a lot requests via email if it was possible to duplicate an entire workspace. We planned to ship this feature today as well, but it's not quite ready yet. We plan to release this mid October. Stay tuned.
Highlight important resources
Today's update also includes a new section called "Important resources". If you want to directly point your users into a certain direction of most relevant articles or pages, you can now create up to 6 sections that will be shown on the front page of your workspace.
Today we added 3 new integrations: Boei, re:tune and Google Tag Manager.
GTM basically gives you a bit more flexibility when adding third-party scripts. As with all integrations, be sure to update and link to your privacy policy.
Today we made a change about how we collect taxes. Due to the fact that we have businesses (B2B) as well as consumers (B2C) using our software, we a legally obligated to show final prices (inclusive of VAT) on our website. Before this update, prices were shown without taxes.
We did not update our pricing, but existing customers – especially non-business entities – will see a slight decrease on their monthly / annual statement. So they will pay a little less than before.
If you have questions regarding this change, feel free to get in touch.
Introducing collapsible content / accordions
We also added a small but certainly nice addition to our editor. You can now create collapsible content.
Today we updated a few behind-the-scenes processes and fixed a bunch of things. We also updated the underlying software versions to their latest versions.
Additional workspaces
We recently increased the available workspaces in our "Business" plan from 8 to 10. While this should be sufficient for most customers, some just need a little more and have been asking us to increase the limit even further. For those customers, we added the possibility to add more workspaces via a one-time purchase, no recurring costs.
To add more workspaces to your account, simply head over to the new "Add-ons" settings.
Fixed GIF uploads
We made some adjustments to file uploads and improved the way GIF files are handled. They should now remain animated and not lose the animation anymore.
Today we are excited to finally launch the ability to create custom texts for themes. We also improved and fixed a few things.
Use your own words
This one had quite a few upvotes and we finally shipped it – custom translations. To use your own texts, head over to the new "Languages" settings and click "Translate".
You can also set any other language as your workspace language now. Simply edit the default language.
What about multilingual content?
It's coming. Custom translations was step one. Step two will introduce the possibility to add / create more than one language and also create translations for categories and articles.
We have no ETA on that yet, though.
Subcategory sorting
We also added the possibility to sort sub-categories. This was missing from the last update where we introduced subcategories.
Enable/disable articles
It is now possible to disable articles. This will prevent them from being shown in the frontend. This is available in the article settings.
Article settings
The smaller stuff
The UI has been updated and improved all throughout the backend. The sidebar (seen on desktop view) has been slightly revamped as well. Also, we further improved dark mode, added "Discord" to the "Profiles" settings and fixed a handful of bugs.
