The Best Online Documentation Tool On The Horizon

By doing custom software development at Arkbauer, we often face situations where we need to document various things:

• our internal development guidelines
• the tools we use throughout our daily routine
• the internals of a software product that we build
• software distribution/deployment guidelines
• administration manuals
• user manuals
• etc.

During the course, we tried various tools, starting from simple “MS Word” type documents, moving on to Markdown-based documentation stored in GIT that later can be transformed into online documentation with the help of Read the Docs. Tried Confluence provided by Atlassian as well as other options.

However, we always found one or the other problem with mentioned tools. For example:

1. “Word” type of documents are inconvenient to write and share online
2. Writing markdown with some sort of markdown editors offline, then pushing them to GIT is also inconvenient
3. Confluence is slow and hard to maintain

Creation of Docwriter

We then came to the conclusion that the best would be to create our own documentation tool with a light and easy-to-use administration panel. First of all, to cover all of our own needs:

• the possibility to create a new Project quickly
• the possibility to create multiple Documentations within each project (internal documentation for us, admin manuals, user manuals, …)
• the possibility to manage content structure easily and move things around as the projects evolve
• the possibility to write markdown content directly in the tool with an instant preview of the results
• the possibility to publish the contents online with one click of the button
• the possibility to manage the team of content editors
• in addition, features like uploading files and inserting links to them in the content, adjusting the appearance according to the visual guidelines of the project, and more
• and of course the result – we had to get to online documentation that features a simple, non-distracting, responsive UI with auto-generated, navigable tables of contents throughout each and every page

During the course of Docwriter project development, we realized it might become handy not only for us but for other companies or individuals being in need of documenting things.

Would it be a software project, a civil engineering project, a tool, a machine, a process, virtually anything that requires documenting – Docwriter might be the best choice.

Thus at the beginning of 2022, we shaped it in order to be offered to the public.

Examples of the supported Markdown elements

The easiest is to show: Markdown syntax – docwriter.io

(the “documentation” under the link above itself has been created with Docwriter)

How to start writing your own content using Docwriter?

Simply go to the landing page of Docwriter and sign up!

Why is Markdown used as the base for content creation?

If you are not familiar with Markdown at this point, don’t get scared away and reveal its power by browsing this resource: Getting Started | Markdown Guide

The short answer is – once you learn the basics of writing content in Markdown syntax, you will be able to produce the documentation a lot faster, as various elements can be created just by wrapping or prefixing your text with a couple of symbols, instead of stumbling upon multi-level toolbars of the editor providing various text formatting options.

Just give it a try and you will discover how quickly you can get to the desired results!

The future of Docwriter

The journey is not over, of course. We see there are more features to add to the platform in order to make it even easier to use and serve various needs.

However, we are going to stick to the initial concept due to which the project was started:

the user interface must be simple and light so that everyone can work on content editing regardless of the technological skills
the input of the information must be easy and rapid
the publishing process must be easy
the produced online documentation has to be easy-to-read and easy-to-navigate without any clutter distracting the readers