Discourse Docs

[Discourse]

This plugin is being retired in favour of the experimental Doc Categories plugin. We will still support Docs until the new plugin is no longer considered experimental.

	Summary	Discourse Docs provides the ability to find and filter knowledge base topics
	Repository Link	https://github.com/discourse/discourse-docs
	Install Guide	How to install plugins in Discourse

As this is an official plugin maintained by the Discourse team, support, bug, ux, and feature requests can be made in the respective categories here on Meta, and tagged with the appropriate plugin tag. Click on a link below to get one started.

 Support  Bug  UX  Feature

Features

The Discourse Docs plugin is a powerful tool that transforms your Discourse forum into a community-powered knowledge base. It provides a dedicated Docs section where users can create, update, and curate documentation. This plugin features a Docs button that allows easy access to this section. It’s a great way to leverage the collective knowledge of your community and provide a centralized resource for important information.

In essence, Docs allows for easier surfacing of knowledge-base style topics across a defined set of categories and/or tags.

Filter the list down by tags, search via the search bar, and click on topics to see the first post – all without leaving the context of the knowledge explorer.

Need to find a knowledge base topic from somewhere else in Discourse? Use the new search helper: in:kb.

Configuration

1. Enable the plugin by turning on the docs enabled setting.

2. Add categories and tags to the docs categories and docs tags settings.

3. Find the Docs link in the navigation menu.

4. Profit with easier access to knowledge!

Settings

Name	Description
docs enabled	Enable the Docs Plugin
docs categories	A list of category slugs to include in docs
show tags by group	Organize tags using Tag Groups. Create groups to categorize related tags.
docs tag groups	The Tag Groups used to show tags by group
docs tags	A list of tags to include in docs
docs add solved filter	Adds a filter for solved topics – requires Discourse Solved to be installed and enabled
docs add to top menu	Adds a link to the top menu to navigate to the Docs view
docs add search menu tip	Adds the tip “in:docs” to the search menu random tips

Helpful Pairings

Discourse Docs Card Filter

Summary Discourse Docs Card Filter is to be used with the Discourse Docs Plugin and allows you to place “Cards” that act as a clickable filter for quicker filter results upon entering the /docs page by your users. Preview Preview on Discourse Theme Creator Repository Link https://github.com/discourse/discourse-docs-card-filter New to Discourse Themes? Beginner’s guide to using Discourse Themes Install this theme comp…

Renaming the /docs path

If you have access to your server you can change the path of your /docs link by adding a DISCOURSE_DOCS_PATH: environment variable to your app.yml:

For the change to take effect you can either ./launcher rebuild app or, as it’s an environment variable, you can ./launcher destroy app && ./launcher start app to minimise downtime. There’s a little more info on that here - Set Environmental Variables

You may also want to change the site display text as well to match. You can search for all instances of ‘docs’ from your /admin/customize/site_texts page, but the main ones would be:

• js.docs.title
• js.sidebar.docs_link_text

Hosted by us? Renaming the /docs path is only available on our Enterprise plan. Please contact us if you’d like to learn more.

Development History

The Docs plugin was a continuation from the Knowledge Explorer Theme Component.

Hosted by us? This plugin is available on all of our hosting plans. Docs | Discourse - Civilized Discussion

Last edited by @hugh 2024-08-27T21:19:54Z

Last checked by @hugh 2024-08-27T04:23:36Z

Check document

Perform check on document:

[Hyan]

Hi Discourse community,

I got below error when executing the spec. I didn’t change any files. Can I ignore this error?

➜  discourse git:(main) ✗ LOAD_PLUGINS=1 bundle exec rspec plugins/discourse-docs/spec

Randomized with seed 57815
...................................F

Failures:

  1) Discourse Docs | Index topic excerpts when the theme modifier serialize_topic_excerpts is true shows the excerpts
     Failure/Error: expect(page).to have_css(".topic-excerpt", text: topic_1.excerpt)
       expected to find css ".topic-excerpt" but there were no matches

     [Screenshot Image]: /xxxx/discourse/discourse/tmp/capybara/failures_r_spec_example_groups_discourse_docs_index_topic_excerpts_when_the_theme_modifier_serialize_topic_excerpts_is_true_shows_the_excerpts_460.png

     ~~~~~~~ JS LOGS ~~~~~~~
     ~~~~~ END JS LOGS ~~~~~

     # ./plugins/discourse-docs/spec/system/docs_index_spec.rb:52:in `block (4 levels) in <main>'
     # ./spec/rails_helper.rb:469:in `block (2 levels) in <top (required)>'

Finished in 13.16 seconds (files took 2.79 seconds to load)
36 examples, 1 failure

Failed examples:

rspec ./plugins/discourse-docs/spec/system/docs_index_spec.rb:50 # Discourse Docs | Index topic excerpts when the theme modifier serialize_topic_excerpts is true shows the excerpts

Randomized with seed 57815

[JammyDodger]

Did you manage to resolve this @Hyan?

[tpetrov (Toni Petrov)]

Hey Sam, wouldn’t it make sense from SEO perspective the rel=canonical of topics to point to the original topic? E.g. Dark/Light Mode Toggle - theme-component - Docs - Discourse Meta → Dark/Light Mode Toggle - theme-component - Discourse Meta? I wonder if the two versions of the page don’t cannibalize each other in google’s algorithms.

[sam (Sam Saffron)]

Yes, absolutely we should do something there

[Hyan]

Sorry @JammyDodger I haven’t got a chance to run the Spec these days. I don’t focus on the work related to Discourse Docs but other stuff these days. But will let you know when I get any chance.

[martyn_thomas]

Is there a way to change the icon next to the Docs in the Hamburger Menu from the link/chain to something else?

[martyn_thomas]

This plugin is great for having all our document categories all in one place - removing the need for them to also be listed in the Categories list (thanks Discourse Category Hider). However we have noticed an issue:

Within the Docs Plugin/screen you cannot edit existing documents or create new ones - meaning you have to go to the original category, to find the topic/document to edit it…meaning you have to have the document accessible in more than one place.

Is there a way to enable topic/document editing (if the user is in the right User Group) within the Docs plugin?

[Moin]

@martyn_thomas

you have to go to the original category, to find the topic/document to edit it

Does it work to use the “view the discussion on this topic” link at the bottom to navigate to that topic and edit it?

[digitaldominica]

Hi, I have an issue that’s real annoying and I do not know why it’s happening.

When i create a doc it goes to the document area and works as its suppose to, however if the document is edited in anyway the docs listing topic document layout switches back to the default discourse topic layout upon click and not show the actual document layout.

I’ve noticed after a few minutes it reverts back to the topic document layout and looks as its supposed to, is there anything that could be causing this?

Note i also use the theme component “Topic Thumbnails” and set to docs thumbnail mode “list”

[digitaldominica]

Found the issue, apparently if I use Topic List Excerpts or Topic lists Thumbnails theme component the clickable href is for the discourse topic page and not the KB docs?topic=xxx so I’m being redirected to discourse topics.

Is there a way to maintain the url path on the docs to docs @sam or should reach out to @david ?

[civitas_john (John Chen)]

Hi,

Our users recently noticed a minor stylish issue: when the browser has less viewport width, the content of each docs post will overflow, such as in the following screenshot:

I wonder if it would be better to automatically collapse the sidebar, if the viewport is less than ideal; however, even if I collapsed the sidebar, the content would still overflow.

[Nebthtet]

Thanks for the wonderful addon. One question though: is there an option to remove the link from the context hamburger menu? I added it manually in the always-visible section (as we want to use this functionality to showcase longform user-created content like articles etc) and now ended up with it showing up twice:

Both options with lighter background lead to /docs

[Arkshine]

I think you can hide it with some CSS here:

.sidebar-section-link-wrapper[data-list-item-name="docs"] {
    display: none;
}

[Nebthtet]

Worked perfectly! Thank you very much!

[rly]

any chance we can have an option to integrate the comments on a docs page instead of linking to the post and then being able to comment?

[wsxiaolin]

@civitas_john

即使我折叠了侧边栏，内容仍然会溢出。

I revisited the same link on a device with the same viewport width. While there was still overflow before collapsing the sidebar, I found that after collapsing it, there is no overflow, and the display is normal and aesthetically pleasing.

[supermathie (Michael Brown)]

I’m surprised that the default search order in Docs is not “Relevance” but “Activity Date”.

Is it possible to search by relevance?

[huynhthai824 (Sora &\)]

Today i post some topic on Docs Category, but those topic not Display in Docs page. I turn off docs plugin and turn theme back on again But those topics untill Not display.
Thank you!