Share a document

Every new document is private. Only you can read it, after you sign in. You can share it in two ways.

• Make it public. Anyone with the link can read it without signing in.
• Keep it private and add viewers. Only the GitHub users you add can read it, after they sign in with GitHub.

Make a document public

In the dashboard, select the document’s Private badge or the Share button, choose Public, and select Save. To make it private again, choose Private and select Save.

From a terminal, run pageship visibility <id> public. See the CLI reference.

Add viewers

A viewer is a GitHub user you allow to read one of your private documents.

1. Open the document’s share dialog in the dashboard. The People section shows while Private is chosen.
2. Type the person’s GitHub username. The dialog searches GitHub as you type, and an exact username match comes first.
3. Pick the person, or press Enter to pick the first match. They join the top of the list, marked New, with their avatar, name and username, so you can check that it is the right account.
4. Add anyone else the same way, up to 20 at a time, then select Save. Everyone you picked gets access together. If one of them can’t be added, nobody is, and the dialog says why next to that person.

From a terminal, run pageship viewers <id> --add <username>. See viewers in the CLI reference.

Send the person the document’s link. When they open it, they select Sign in, sign in with GitHub, and Pageship shows them the document. They don’t need a Pageship invitation, and they get no workspace of their own. Pageship sends no email, so you send the link yourself.

Pageship records each viewer by their GitHub account ID, not only their username. If someone else takes over a username later, they don’t get access.

Only personal GitHub accounts can be viewers. You can’t add an organization.

What viewers can read

Viewers read the document’s current revision at its link. Each time you publish a new revision, they see the new one. They can’t open earlier revisions, and the document doesn’t appear in any list for them.

The documents list and the document page show how many viewers a private document has, such as “Private · shared with 3”.

Remove viewers

Open the share dialog, select the remove button next to the viewer, and select Save. Until you save, Undo puts them back. From a terminal, run pageship viewers <id> --remove <username>. Their next visit to the link no longer shows the document.

Nothing in the share dialog changes until you select Save. If you close it with unsaved changes, it asks whether to discard them.

Making a document public removes all of its viewers. Under Public, the share dialog says how many saving it removes. If you make the document private again, it has no viewers until you add them again.

Deleting a document keeps its viewers. If you recover it, they can read it again.

If adding a viewer fails

Pageship looks people up on GitHub with your own GitHub sign-in. If GitHub refuses it, the dialog says “GitHub no longer accepts your sign-in”. If your dashboard session has expired, it says “Your Pageship session has ended”. Either way, select Sign in again.

GitHub allows a limited number of searches per minute. When you reach it, the dialog says “GitHub is limiting lookups for now”. Wait a minute and try again.