Building and Customizing Your Docs

Product Switching

Allow users to seamlessly navigate between different products you offer.
Webflow
View Webflow’s Product Switcher

Each product can contain its own distinct versions, tabs, sections, pages, and API references. Products can share content as well.

Add Products to Your Docs

1

Define your products

Create a products folder inside of your fern folder. To specify a product’s contents and navigational structure, add a .yml file to the products folder for each product. Make sure to include the navigation and tabs properties, if applicable.

$fern/
>  ├─ fern.config.json
>  ├─ generators.yml
>  ├─ docs.yml
>  └─ products/
>    ├─ ...
>    ├─ product-a.yml
>    └─ product-b.yml
1navigation: 
2  - section: Introduction
3    contents:
4      - page: Shared Resource
5        path: ../pages/shared-resource.mdx
6  - api: API Reference
2

Add your product configuration

To define a product, add an item to the products list in docs.yml, specifying the display-name and path.

The optional parameters are: image, icon, subtitle, slug, and versions.

If you provide both an image and an icon, the image will take precedence.

Products can be versioned or unversioned. The following is an example of how more complex products might be organized:

$fern/
>  ├─ fern.config.json
>  ├─ generators.yml
>  ├─ docs.yml
>  ├─ pages/
>    ├─ ...
>  └─ products/
>    ├── product-a.yml # basic unversioned product
>    ├── product-b/ # unversioned product with product-specific pages
>    │   ├─ pages/...
>    │   └─ product-with-pages.yml
>    └── product-c/ # versioned product
>        ├─ product-c.yml
>        └─ versions/
>          ├─ v1/
>          │  ├─ v1.yml
>          │  └─ pages/...
>          └─ v2/
>            ├─ v2.yml
>            └─ pages/...

For more information on setting up versions, follow our versioning docs.

docs.yml
1products:
2  - display-name: Product A
3    path: ./products/product-a.yml
4    icon: fa-solid fa-leaf # optional
5    slug: product-a # optional
6    subtitle: Product A subtitle # optional
7
8  - display-name: Product B
9    path: ./products/product-b/latest.yml # <-- default showing latest
10    image: ./images/product-b.png # optional
11    slug: product-b # optional
12    subtitle: Product B subtitle # optional
13    versions: # optional
14      - display-name: Latest
15        path: ./products/product-b/latest.yml
16      - display-name: V2
17        path: ./products/product-b/v2.yml
3

Remove extra navigation from docs.yml

If your docs.yml file includes a navigation field or a tabs field, be sure to remove. Those fields should now belong in the product-specific .yml files.

Customizing Selector Styling

You can directly customize the appearance of the product and version selectors by targeting their CSS classes:

  • fern-product-selector - Controls the styling of the product selector
  • fern-version-selector - Controls the styling of the version selector
Example of a styled product selector

Common Styling Adjustments

Adjusting positioning: Use transform: translateY(Npx) to adjust the vertical positioning of the selectors. This ensures that the product and version selectors match the line height of your logo for better visual alignment.

Enhancing visual prominence: You can modify the border radius and add borders to make the selectors more prominent and better integrated with your site’s design aesthetic.

1.fern-product-selector {
2  transform: translateY(2px);
3  border-radius: 8px;
4  border: 1px solid var(--border);
5}
6
7.fern-version-selector {
8  transform: translateY(1px);
9  border-radius: 1000px;
10  border: 1px solid var(--border);
11}

Customizing Dropdown Styling

The dropdown menus for product and version selectors can be customized using these specific CSS classes:

  • fern-product-selector-radio-group - Controls the styling of the product dropdown
  • fern-version-selector-radio-group - Controls the styling of the version dropdown
Example of a styled product selector

Common Styling Adjustments

Enable a grid layout for the dropdown:

1.fern-product-selector-radio-group {
2  display: grid;
3  grid-template-columns: repeat(2, 1fr);
4  gap: 8px;
5}