Template Documentation Site

Use this repository template to create a documentation website using the GOV.UK Technical Documentation Template and its source code.

This is recommended for MOJ's technical documentation because:

• The template uses the GOV.UK Design System and makes it also consistent with many tech docs sites such as MOJ MOJ Technical Guidance, MOJ Security Guidance, and Cloud Platform User Guide.

• This is a list of other sites that use the govuk_tech_docs gem.

• Both engineers and non-technical people can write your documentation using the ‘docs as code’ approach.

Publishing is done by the Github Action publish.yml that makes use of tech-docs-github-pages-publisher docker container.

To create a site

1. Create a repository from this template.

2. Make the "normal" changes:

   • Edit the copy of this README.md file, deleting everything up to the ---
   • Grant permission/s to the appropriate MoJ team/s with at least one team having Admin permissions.
   • Try not to add individual users to the repository, instead use a team.
   • To add an Outside Collaborator to the repository follow the guidelines on the GitHub-collaborator repository.
   • Ensure branch protection is set up on the main branch.
   • [Optional] Modify the CODEOWNERS file and state the team or users that can authorise PR's.
   • Modify the Dependabot file to suit the dependency manager you plan to use and for automated pull requests for package updates. Dependabot is enabled in the settings by default.
   • Modify the short description found on the right side of the README.md file.
   • Ensure as many of the GitHub Standards rules are maintained as possibly can.
   • Modify the MoJ Compliant Badge url using these instructions.

3. In your repository settings, in the Pages section for 'Build and deployment' 'Source' change to the option 'GitHubs Actions' after your first push/merge to main, the Github Action will create the the gh-pages. The link will be in repository settings Pages section.

4. Edit config/tech-docs.yml to set appropriate values for the template configuration.

5. Edit your content.

The docs folder is used by gh-pages to host the website. Do not delete.

Example XYZ Documentation

Editing

The documentation is created by editing *.html.md.erb files, found in the source folder.

The syntax is Markdown, more details can be found here.

For guidance see the Tech Docs Template Write your content.

The Markdown syntax may use kramdown TBC.

While editing the files locally, you can start a Docker container that will use Middleman to act as a server hosting the webpages. See preview docs.

Every change should be reviewed in a pull request, no matter how minor. PR request reviewer/s should be enabled within the main branch protection settings.

Merging the changes to the main branch automatically publishes the changes via GH Action. See publishing.

Preview docs

You can preview how your changes will look, if you've cloned this repo to your local machine, and run this command:

make preview

This will run a preview web server on http://localhost:4567 which you can open in your browser.

Use make check to compile the site to html and check the URLs are valid.

This is only accessible on your computer, and won't be accessible to anyone else.

For more details see the tech-docs-github-pages-publisher repository.

Publishing

Any changes you push/merge into the main branch should be published to GitHub Pages site automatically.

Template configuration

The webpage layout is configured using the config/tech-docs.yml file.

The template can be configured in config/tech-docs.yml

Key config settings:

• host: - This should be the URL of your published GitHub Pages site, e.g:

  https://ministryofjustice.github.io/modernisation-platform
  

  Do not include a / at the end of this URL

• service_link: - This should be the docpath to your site. This is usually /[repo name], so if your repository is ministryofjustice/awesome-docs service_link will be /awesome-docs

Further configuration options are described on the Tech Docs Template website: Global Configuration.