Better customization to help users get started on new projects

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Why

Allow organizations to communicate how new users can get started, especially if there are additional steps that need to take place outside of GitLab.

It is possible to customize the sign in page, but users often won't try navigating there. E.g. when issues are disabled and the user is looking for the bug tracker they won't want to sign in to GitLab.
It is possible to add a header/footer with https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/customization/system_header_and_footer_messages.html, but this dominates a large amount of screen space and is EE only.

Possibly allow customization of the "Explore GitLab" header and text. Users who click the branded header logo will end up on the explore page so this is a good place to help users get started and link to external documentation. Optionally this customized text might also need to appear when signed in.
Introduce new customizable markdown field to be displayed below each project description. This might be a more appropriate place to display universal information on how to get started or contribute. This might be instance wide or possibly per group.
Getting started link that can be added to the site header
Better document customization options such as home_page_url and help_page_support_url so these can be used for this.

Edited Sep 28, 2025 by 🤖 GitLab Bot 🤖