How to: Announcements
System-wide announcements allow you to display important messages at the top of the status page. These can be used to inform users about planned maintenance, ongoing issues, or general information. You can use markdown to format your announcements.

This is essentially what some status page calls "incident communications".

| Parameter                   | Description                                                                                                              | Default  |
|:----------------------------|:-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|:---------|
| `announcements`             | List of announcements to display                                                                                         | `[]`     |
| `announcements[].timestamp` | UTC timestamp when the announcement was made (RFC3339 format)                                                            | Required |
| `announcements[].type`      | Type of announcement. Valid values: `outage`, `warning`, `information`, `operational`, `none`                            | `"none"` |
| `announcements[].message`   | The message to display to users                                                                                          | Required |
| `announcements[].archived`  | Whether to archive the announcement. Archived announcements show at the bottom of the status page instead of at the top. | `false`  |

Types:
- **outage**: Indicates service disruptions or critical issues (red theme)
- **warning**: Indicates potential issues or important notices (yellow theme)
- **information**: General information or updates (blue theme)
- **operational**: Indicates resolved issues or normal operations (green theme)
- **none**: Neutral announcements with no specific severity (gray theme, default if none are specified)

Example Configuration:
```yaml
announcements:
  - timestamp: 2025-11-07T14:00:00Z
    type: outage
    message: "Scheduled maintenance on database servers from 14:00 to 16:00 UTC"
  - timestamp: 2025-11-07T16:15:00Z
    type: operational
    message: "Database maintenance completed successfully. All systems operational."
  - timestamp: 2025-11-07T12:00:00Z
    type: information
    message: "New monitoring dashboard features will be deployed next week"
  - timestamp: 2025-11-06T09:00:00Z
    type: warning
    message: "Elevated API response times observed for US customers"
    archived: true
```

If at least one announcement is archived, a **Past Announcements** section will be rendered at the bottom of the status page:
![Gatus past announcements section](.github/assets/past-announcements.jpg)