Fallback content

How Scrollup handles pages that haven't been translated yet — automatic fallback to English with a visible notice.

When a visitor navigates to a locale that doesn’t have a translation for a given page, Scrollup automatically renders the English version and shows a notice at the top of the page.

How fallback works

At build time, Scrollup generates routes for every locale × every English page. If a translated version exists, it’s used. If not, Astro serves the English content at the locale-prefixed URL (e.g. /fr/authoring/code-blocks) and injects a <FallbackNotice> banner above the content.

The notice says:

This page hasn’t been translated yet. You’re viewing the English version.

It links to the English URL so readers can bookmark the canonical source.

What the sidebar shows on fallback pages

For fallback pages, the sidebar is still fully populated — it uses English entries with locale-prefixed slugs so navigation works even for sparsely-translated locales. Every page is reachable even before the translation exists.

How the language switcher behaves

The language switcher only shows locales that have a real translation of the current page. It does not offer locales that would show a fallback, preventing users from accidentally switching to a page they can’t read.

Opting out of fallback for a page

There is no frontmatter flag to disable fallback. If you don’t want a page to appear at a given locale URL at all, the correct approach is to use sidebar.hidden: true on the English page — this suppresses it from the sidebar but the fallback route still exists. For a true no-show, the page itself would need to be excluded from navigation, which is a use case not yet supported.

How it’s implemented

• src/pages/[...slug].astro — getStaticPaths generates the fallback routes; each gets isFallback: true and fallbackEnglishSlug in props
• src/components/FallbackNotice.astro — the notice banner rendered above content on fallback pages
• src/layouts/DocsLayout.astro — accepts isFallback and fallbackEnglishSlug props; renders <FallbackNotice> when needed