Gaurav Nelson

Learn about the missing ingredient from your Docs-as-Code recipe, a headless CMS (Content Management System). Let's understand the problems writers face and how adding a CMS to your Docs toolchain helps solve (some of) them. We'll look at a sample docs-as-code repository and then add a CMS to the mix. We'll then go through authoring new topics and editing existing docs with our CMS (Look ma, no Git).

There's no doubt that the docs-as-code approach for documentation provides a robust workflow, offers immediate product evaluation, and allows you to easily track and revert changes along with many other benefits. However, it also involves other meta tasks such as dealing with Git workflow and managing repositories. There might be times when you need inputs from folks from different departments who don't know Git or don't have access to the platform on which you're hosting your docs repository. For such cases, extending your docs-as-code project by adding a Content Management System (CMS) is surprisingly helpful.

Having a CMS allows you to create and edit your documentation right from the browser. It's like WordPress for your documentation project. There are many open-source CMS's available, but this talk focuses on a particular CMS that fits best for managing documentation projects. You begin by installing the CMS in your documentation project (or using the pre-baked starter template). Afterward, you configure the CMS and creates forms that map to your content structure. People can then create new content from the browser, which automatically gets converted to a new pull request in your docs repository.