Ask HN: Best way to make a documentation website for an open-source project?

6•mudge•3mo ago

I am looking for some good options to create a documentation website for an open source project. I am looking for something that is free or very inexpensive and that is very easy to use and setup. It could be a tool, service or hosting platform. I am not a web developer but I know markdown.

Do you know of some good options?

Comments

djdjsjejb•3mo ago

imo gitbook.com seems to be the easiest for nondevs

nacozarina•3mo ago

spin up a mediawiki container

moomoo11•3mo ago

What’s the complexity of your project? If you’re not a developer and it’s a simple project, I’d say do notion pages.

If devs like it I’m sure they will contribute to make a legit docs site for it.

Good way to start imo that has zero friction (for you) and I wouldn’t personally mind it since you get public URL’s.

Or use Codex or CC to make a markdown site hosted on GitHub io

prxtl•3mo ago

The two most popular options are Docusaurus and Material MkDocs:

- https://docusaurus.io

- https://squidfunk.github.io/mkdocs-material/

They're both used by hundreds of open source projects, are pretty easy to set up, and use markdown for content so you shouldn't have any trouble.

zlacker•3mo ago

A lot of static site generators support rendering markdown to HTML, can't give any specifics since you probably have your own preferred stack/language to use.

bogomil•3mo ago

Can you tell more about the project? For a small one launching a complicated docs system could be overhead.

aborsy•3mo ago

Sphinx, MkDocs, Docusaurus.

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