Insiders

Material for MkDocs follows the sponsorware release strategy, which means that new features are first exclusively released to sponsors as part of Insiders. Read on to learn what sponsorships achieve, how to become a sponsor to get access to Insiders, and what's in it for you!

What is Insiders?

Material for MkDocs Insiders is a private fork of Material for MkDocs, hosted as a private GitHub repository. Almost[^1] [all new features]what's in it for you are developed as part of this fork, which means that they are immediately available to all eligible sponsors, as they are made collaborators of this repository.

[^1]: In general, every new feature is first exclusively released to sponsors, but sometimes upstream dependencies like Python Markdown Extensions enhance existing features that must be supported by Material for MkDocs.

Every feature is tied to a funding goal in monthly subscriptions. When a funding goal is hit, the features that are tied to it are merged back into Material for MkDocs and released for general availability, making them available to all users. Bugfixes are always released in tandem.

Sponsorships start as low as $15 a month.[^2]

[^2]: Note that $15 a month is the minimum amount to become eligible for Insiders. While GitHub Sponsors also allows to sponsor lower amounts or one-time amounts, those can't be granted access to Insiders due to technical reasons.

What sponsorships achieve

Sponsorships make this project sustainable, as they buy the maintainers of this project time – a very scarce resource – which is spent on the development of new features, bug fixing, stability improvement, issue triage and general support. The biggest bottleneck in Open Source is time.[^3]

[^3]: Making an Open Source project sustainable is exceptionally hard: maintainers burn out, projects are abandoned. That's not great and very unpredictable. The sponsorware model ensures that if you decide to use Material for MkDocs, you can be sure that bugs are fixed quickly and new features are added regularly.

If you're unsure if you should sponsor this project, check out the list of completed funding goals to learn whether you're already using features that were developed with the help of sponsorships. You're most likely using at least a handful of them, thanks to our awesome sponsors!

What's in it for me?

The moment you become a sponsor, you'll get immediate access to 26 additional features that you can start using now, and which are currently exclusively available to sponsors:

New features are added every other week. Be sure to come back.

How to become a sponsor

Thanks for your interest in sponsoring! In order to become an eligible sponsor with your GitHub account, visit squidfunk's sponsor profile, and complete a sponsorship of $15 a month or more. You can use your individual or organization GitHub account for sponsoring.

Important: If you're sponsoring @squidfunk through a GitHub organization, please send a short email to sponsors@squidfunk.com with the name of your organization and the GitHub account of the individual that should be added as a collaborator.[^4]

You can cancel your sponsorship anytime.[^5]

[^4]: It's currently not possible to grant access to each member of an organization, as GitHub only allows for adding users. Thus, after sponsoring, please send an email to sponsors@squidfunk.com, stating which account should become a collaborator of the Insiders repository. We're working on a solution which will make access to organizations much simpler. To ensure that access is not tied to a particular individual GitHub account, create a bot account (i.e. a GitHub account that is not tied to a specific individual), and use this account for the sponsoring. After being added to the list of collaborators, the bot account can create a private fork of the private Insiders GitHub repository, and grant access to all members of the organizations.

[^5]: If you cancel your sponsorship, GitHub schedules a cancellation request which will become effective at the end of the billing cycle. This means that even though you cancel your sponsorship, you will keep your access to Insiders as long as your cancellation isn't effective. All charges are processed by GitHub through Stripe. As we don't receive any information regarding your payment, and GitHub doesn't offer refunds, sponsorships are non-refundable.

:octicons-heart-fill-24:{ .mdx-heart }   Join our awesome sponsors{ .md-button .md-button--primary .mdx-sponsorship-button }

Funding

Goals

The following section lists all funding goals. Each goal contains a list of features prefixed with a checkmark symbol, denoting whether a feature is :octicons-check-circle-fill-24:{ style="color: #00e676" } already available or :octicons-check-circle-fill-24:{ style="color: var(--md-default-fg-color--lightest)" } planned, but not yet implemented. When the funding goal is hit, the features are released for general availability.

$ 16,000 – Chipotle

• x
• x
• x
• x
• x + custom sorting
• x

$ 20,000 – Jalapeño

• x
• x
• x (Breadcrumbs)
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x

$ 24,000 – Blockpaprika

• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x

Goals completed

This section lists all funding goals that were previously completed, which means that those features were part of Insiders, but are now generally available and can be used by all users.

$ 14,000 – Goat's Horn

• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x

$ 12,000 – Piri Piri

• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x

$ 10,000 – Carolina Reaper

• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x

$ 8,000 – Scotch Bonnet

• x
• [x] Code annotations: anchor links
• x
• x
• x
• [x] Sidebars automatically scroll to active item

$ 7,000 – Royal Gold

• x
• x
• x

$ 6,000 – Trinidad Scorpion

• x
• x
• x

$ 5,000 – Aji Panca

• x
• [x] Stay on page when switching versions
• x

$ 4,000 – Ghost Pepper

• x
• x
• x

$ 3,000 – Caribbean Red

• x
• x
• x

$ 2,500 – Biquinho Vermelho

• x
• x
• x

$ 2,000 – Black Pearl

• [x] Latest release tag
• x
• x

$ 1,500 – Bhut Jolokia

• x
• x
• x

$ 1,000 – Prairie Fire

• x
• x
• x
• x
• x

$ 500 – Madame Jeanette

• [x] Improved search result grouping
• [x] Improved search result relevance and scoring
• [x] Missing query terms in search results

Frequently asked questions

Compatibility

We're building an open source project and want to allow outside collaborators to run and build our documentation locally without having access to Insiders. Is this still possible?

Yes. Insiders is compatible with Material for MkDocs. Almost all new features and configuration options are either backward-compatible or implemented behind feature flags. When working with outside collaborators, it should be rarely necessary to change the general appearance of your site. Most Insiders features enhance the overall experience, e.g. by adding icons to pages or providing a feedback widget. While these features add value for the user of your site, they shouldn't be necessary for previewing when making changes to content. Currently, the only content-related features in Insiders that can't be properly previewed by non-Insiders users are:

• Annotations
• Card grids

This means that outside collaborators are able to build the documentation locally with Material for MkDocs and when they push their changes, your CI pipeline will build it with Insiders. When using built-in plugins that are exclusive to Insiders, it's recommended to split configuration into a base mkdocs.yml and one with plugin overrides via configuration inheritance.

See the getting started guide for more information.

Payment

We don't want to pay for sponsorship every month. Are there any other options?

Yes. You can sponsor on a yearly basis by switching your GitHub account to a yearly billing cycle. If for some reason you cannot do that, you could also create a dedicated GitHub account with a yearly billing cycle, which you only use for sponsoring (some sponsors already do that).

If you have any problems or further questions, please reach out to sponsors@squidfunk.com.

Terms

Are we allowed to use Insiders under the same terms and conditions as Material for MkDocs?

Yes. Whether you're an individual or a company, you may use Material for MkDocs Insiders precisely under the same terms as Material for MkDocs, which are given by the MIT license. However, we kindly ask you to respect our fair use policy:

• Please don't distribute the source code of Insiders. You may freely use it for public, private or commercial projects, privately fork or mirror it, but please don't make the source code public, as it would counteract the sponsorware strategy.

• If you cancel your subscription, you're automatically removed as a collaborator and will miss out on all future updates of Insiders. However, you may use the latest version that's available to you as long as you like. Just remember that GitHub deletes private forks.