“Good documentation is not only about what you write. It's also about how people find it.”
Recently I spent some time reorganizing the DebugProbe documentation.
The goal wasn't to add more content.
The goal was to make existing content easier to find and navigate.
As the project grew, the documentation naturally grew as well.
New features appeared.
New configuration options were added.
More examples became necessary.
Over time, I started asking myself a simple question:
If I were a new user, would I immediately know where to find what I need?
That question led me to completely rethink the documentation structure.
Instead of organizing information as features were added, I reorganized everything into five main sections:
- Getting Started
- User Guide
- Technical Guide
- Examples
- Reference
The idea is simple.
A new user should be able to install the package and get started within minutes.
Someone trying to configure security should know exactly where to look.
And users searching for a specific option should not have to read through multiple unrelated pages first.
My goal:
Help users spend less time searching and more time building.
One thing I also realized is that documentation rarely exists in a single place.
For DebugProbe, I currently maintain:
- the GitHub README
- the NuGet package README
- the project website documentation
Keeping all of those sources organized and consistent takes effort.
That's one of the reasons I wanted a cleaner documentation structure.
The easier information is to find, the easier it becomes to maintain over time.
I think many projects slowly accumulate documentation over months or years without ever stepping back and asking whether the structure still makes sense.
Sometimes the content is already there.
It just needs better organization.
Final Thought
Documentation is often viewed as something you write after building a feature.
But structure and navigation are just as important as the content itself.
If users cannot find the information they need, even great documentation becomes less useful.
How do you organize documentation for your projects?
Documentation: