Document how to make part of a docs site private

[dannysheridan]

What's the issue?

Missing content (not covered in the docs)

URL of the documentation page (if applicable)

No response

Describe the gap or issue

Fern Docs supports the ability to have unauthenticated (public) or authenticated (private) docs. You can do it on the site-level or the page-level.

We've received two customer questions in the last 24 hours about this topic. Here's one of them:

Customer

Hi fern team, is there a way for us to make part of our docs private?

Fernie

Yes, there is. Check out https://docs.nominal.io/data-ingestion/overview. This is a feature of the pro plan of Docs https://buildwithfern.com/pricing#Docs

How should this be improved?

We should document this so folks can self-serve answer this question.

Are you interested in contributing this improvement?

No

Attach Files (Optional)

No response

[cwcowell]

@dannysheridan Do we just want the docs to say this is possible with a pro account, or do we want to tell them how to configure parts of their site for privacy? If the latter, can you point me to sample config code?

[dannysheridan]

We should tell them how to configure parts of their site for privacy.

Example of fully private: https://docs.reasoner.com
Example of partially private: https://docs.nominal.io/data-ingestion/overview

Deep wrote this up in the past few days: https://buildwithfern.com/learn/docs/building-and-customizing-your-docs/rbac

[dannysheridan]

Example of a partially private: https://documentation.babelstreet.com/v-1/welcome

[cwcowell]

Few questions for @dannysheridan and/or @dsinghvi :

1. Does this roles feature work with the current (0.55.1) CLI? I configured a site using the instructions Deep wrote up but the pages I tried to restrict are still public.
2. The sample code defines the default everyone role. Do we need to do that explicitly, or can we leave it out and have it implicitly defined?
3. Deep's text in the docs says child components inherit permissions from parent components. If PARENT has its only viewer set to foo and CHILD defines its viewers as bar, can both foo and bar view child, or only bar? Or only users who have both foo and bar roles? I'd test this myself, but can't because of (1) above.
4. What's the full list of components that can have a roles key? Deep mentions section, page, and api reference -- are there others?
5. Deep mentions that a user gets bounced to the company login page if they try to access a page without the right JWT. Where is the company login page defined?
6. I'm copyediting Deep's text and clarifying it where I can -- and will clarify more based on answers to the above questions -- but it seems like he's covered the use cases that @dannysheridan mentioned in this ticket. Anything else you want me to do for this, other than copyediting and clarifying?

Thanks!

[dannysheridan]

1. https://buildwithfern.com/learn/cli-reference/changelog/2024/10/25 -- Oct 25, 2024 RBAC Added
   https://buildwithfern.com/learn/cli-reference/changelog/2024/10/26 -- Oct 26, 2024 RBAC Removed (temporarily)
   No changelog entry for when it was re-added, but here's a PR from Feb 2025: chore(docs): document rbac #5956
   Yes, this is expected to function on version 0.55.1

2-5 are good questions for Deep.

6. Clarifying is my goal. If a user can set this up self-service once we enable RBAC on their account, that's an effective docs page in my book.