How to Create Documentation Websites with Mintlify
Documentation for Coders
Mintlify is an increasingly popular open source generator for building elegant documentation sites. With its streamlined workflows and built-in search, analytics, and multi-language support, Mintlify makes it easy to publish great-looking docs.
This guide will walk through the end-to-end process of setting up a documentation site using Mintlify. Let’s get started!
Getting Started with Mintlify
First, install the Mintlify CLI globally on your machine using npm:
```
npm install -g @mintlify/cli
```
Next, initialize a new Mintlify project by running:
```
mintlify init
```
This will prompt you to enter a project name and set up an initial documentation skeleton. Mintlify utilizes a straightforward file structure — docs contain Markdown files for pages, public holds assets, and src stores any React components.
You can configure settings like site metadata, themes, and plugins in mintlify.config.js. Overall, Mintlify makes it simple to spin up a new docs site.
Creating Your Documentation
Mintlify uses Markdown for authoring documentation content. Just add .md files in the docs folder to start writing pages.
For formatting, Markdown offers headings, lists, emphasis, links, images, and code blocks. Mintlify supports Markdown extensions like tables and syntax highlighting too.
You can also use Mintlify’s Markdown components for elements like alerts, tabs, buttons, and more. And seamlessly integrate React components alongside Markdown for advanced customization.
Be sure to organize your Markdown files into a logical documentation hierarchy using folders and naming. Now let’s look at customizing the design.
Customizing the Look and Feel
A key benefit of Mintlify is customizing themes without coding. Inside src/theme, template files like Layout.js control the markup. And global styles are defined in styles.css.
Mintlify has a theming system where you can create and switch themes. Customize colors, fonts, spacing, and other styles in CSS without touching React. You can also build custom React components for buttons, headers, sidebars, etc.
With Markdown for content and theming for design, your documentation site is starting to take shape!
Extras: Search, Analytics, and More
Mintlify includes a few extras that make documentation sites more usable:
- Integrated full-text search powered by FlexSearch
- Built-in analytics with PostHog
- Support for multiple languages and translations
- Importing external content through MDX
- Plugin system for adding features
Mintlify handles the complexities of these features for you so they work out of the box.
Publishing and Hosting Documentation
When ready to go live, run:
```
mintlify build
```
This generates a static HTML site for production in build/. You can host the docs on Mintlify Cloud or services like Vercel, Netlify, GitHub Pages, etc.
For automating deployments, set up continuous integration workflows to build and publish on pushes. Now your documentation site will update automatically!
Creating Documentation Sites with Ease
Mintlify streamlines the entire process from writing Markdown content to theming, publishing, and hosting documentation sites. With its excellent defaults and customizable options, Mintlify is a top choice for creating beautiful maintained docs.
