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

#1

Post by mudge » Mon, Oct 20, 2025, 12:31 AM UTC

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?

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

#2

Post by djdjsjejb » Mon, Oct 20, 2025, 1:30 AM UTC

imo gitbook.com seems to be the easiest for nondevs

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

#3

Post by nacozarina » Mon, Oct 20, 2025, 1:39 AM UTC

spin up a mediawiki container

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

#4

Post by moomoo11 » Mon, Oct 20, 2025, 2:35 AM UTC

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

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

#5

Post by prxtl » Mon, Oct 20, 2025, 8:07 AM UTC

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.

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

#6

Post by zlacker » Mon, Oct 20, 2025, 10:59 AM UTC

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.

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

#7

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Oct 20, 2025, 11:01 AM UTC

[deleted]

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

#8

Post by bogomil » Wed, Oct 22, 2025, 12:19 PM UTC

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

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

#9

Post by aborsy » Wed, Oct 22, 2025, 2:10 PM UTC

Sphinx, MkDocs, Docusaurus.