Keeping documentation up-to-date is always a challenge, and we were running behind. The new Elixir integration didn't really fit in and some screenshots were outdated, to name a few issues. Recently we've been hard at work improving the documentation by restructuring its content, improving its navigation and adding more content.

You can take a look (and learn a thing or two) at our new and improved documentation website: docs.appsignal.com

Content restructure

We've reworked the navigational structure of the documentation. By grouping content under some key topics, we've seen that's it's a lot easier to find the thing customers are looking for. The docs are now structured along these topics:

• Getting started
• Your applications
• Your organizations
• AppSignal for Ruby
• AppSignal for Elixir
• AppSignal for Front-End
• Metrics
• Support
• AppSignal API
• AppSignal (more about AppSignal itself)

Splitting up content

Our old pages included a lot of information per page. We've split them up into bite-sized pieces, making the informations easier to digest. All our integrations now have their own page, and the Ruby gem and Elixir package have their own pages describing everything you can configure.

Tables of Content

We've introduced a Table of Content for topics that contain a lot of sub-headings and sub-pages, to be found on the overview pages for topics like the Ruby and Elixir configurations.

Navigation update

As more and more content is being added to our documentation, the navigation sidebar grew a little too long to be useful without endless scrolling.

With a collapsible UI we've made it easier to hide those parts of the docs that are unrelated to the things you're looking for. If you're only using Elixir and aren't interested in the Ruby documentation, just collapse that section in the sidebar for laser focus.

Content updates

We've also made a lot of changes to the actual content itself. Some highlights:

• Screenshots on pages now use the latest AppSignal.com design, so you don't need to guess if you're in the right place.
• We've imported the Elixir documentation from our AppSignal for Elixir package and updated it to fit the new structure. Since it's still in beta, this is a continuous work in progress.
• A debugging page describes our support process when a customer reports that something is wrong. Useful for us, but allows for customers to understand what could be wrong.
• In order to make sense of our terminology, we added a terminology page. It aims to describe all the different words we use to refer to the individual parts of AppSignal and their purpose.
• We've added a contributing page for those who are interested in contributing to any of our open source projects.
• The security page is updated to reflect the latest Ruby gem and Elixir package architecture.
• We've created some example applications that are referenced throughout our documentation. They show how to install AppSignal in various applications, and how to connect it to certain libraries.
• Configuration pages describe options in greater detail, what types are accepted, what their default values are and since which version they are available.

We're continuously working on improving our docs, so let us know if you are unable to find an answer, or have suggestions for improvements. Our engineers are always happy to help.