GitBook Sidebar Reordering via Website Breaks GitHub Sync and Duplicates Folders

[AbdelrhmanUZaki]

Hello!

In my case, everything works fine when I edit files on GitHub—the changes are correctly reflected in GitBook. However, when I make changes directly in GitBook, such as reordering content in the sidebar, a summary.md file is generated in my GitHub repository. This file includes additional folders that GitBook uses to create navigation URLs.

The issue arises after editing on the GitBook website: once the summary.md file exists in my repository, any subsequent changes I make on GitHub no longer update GitBook. If I manually edit the summary.md file and update it with new files, the sidebar reflects those changes. However, this is inconvenient—I want it to work as it did before I edited anything on the GitBook website.

Why do I need to edit on the GitBook website? Currently, I want to reorder the folders in the sidebar alphabetically, as GitBook doesn’t do this by default. I’ve even tried naming files with numbers (e.g., 01. file1, 02. file2, etc.), but that doesn’t solve the issue.

Ideally, I’d like to edit on the GitBook website without having to manually update the summary.md file in my GitHub repository afterward. Additionally, if I delete the summary.md file from GitHub, add a new file to a directory, and push the changes, the root directory containing that file gets duplicated. The duplicated folder has the same name, and its navigation URL in the browser becomes the old URL with -1 appended. In the sidebar, the root folder appears duplicated as well.

I couldn’t find anything about this issue in the GitBook documentation, either in the Git sync or the troubleshooting/problems section.