[SamyPesse]

GitBook CEO, here.

We use Cloudflare to serve HTTPS traffic for all custom hostnames configured by our users.

When a user configures a custom hostname, they point their DNS via CNAME to one of our domains (which, at the end of the chain points to Cloudflare). We then request Cloudflare (using their Cloudflare for SaaS product) to generate an SSL certificate for this hostname and serve the traffic properly.

When users move away from GitBook, they often don't remove their content from GitBook and only change the DNS on their side. We don't request to remove the hostname from Cloudflare for SaaS until the content is deleted from GitBook, as the goal is to avoid breaking links for URLs that are still pointing to GitBook.

We'd expect Cloudflare to always use the DNS setup of the domain as the primary factor for deciding where to route the traffic.

We don't know the rationale behind why Cloudflare routing continues internally routing the traffic to GitBook when the domain is no longer pointing to the GitBook hostname. But it is not us doing that intentionally.

Our support can help unblock this situation by manually removing this domain from our Cloudflare for SaaS. You can reach out at [e-mail].

[jivings]

Thanks for the reply! I figured from this thread that it wasn't anything malicious from Gitbook's side and more of a Cloudflare bug, so it's good to hear your explanation!

Edit: Oh also, I did remove the domain from Gitbook so you should really remove it at that point no?

[SamyPesse]

We only remove the domain from Cloudflare when the content is deleted. The main reason is to avoid broken links when users update their domain on GitBook.

Ex: 1. You configure docs.mycompany.com with your GitBook space 2. You share links to docs.mycompany.com on social medias 3. You update the domain to docs.anothercompany.com 4. It's better if the docs.mycompany.com links can continue working until you remove the DNS entry

In summary, we want the users to decide through their DNS config when GitBook should serve the content or not to avoid breaking links without an intentional action from the user.

Unfortunately, because of how Cloudflare doesn't use the DNS configuration to decide where to route the traffic, it causes issues atm. We'll look at what we can do on our side to mitigate this.

[jivings]

Any sort of help message about this when disabling the domain would help :)