# Documentation Tips - General Guidelines, patterns, and practical examples for writing clear, consistent documentation across projects. This book focuses on documentation principles that apply to any tech stack, helping teams create docs that are easy to understand, maintain, and trust over time. # How to Use This Platform (BookStack) We’ve deployed **BookStack** as our central documentation system. Its value is simple: it forces structure, so information stays findable instead of drifting into random pages and tribal memory. BookStack follows a fixed hierarchy. If you understand this, you can use the platform properly. --- ## The Core Structure
`Shelf → Book → Chapter → Page `
Each level has a clear role. --- #### Shelves **What they are:** Top-level categories **Why they matter:** Help people browse by domain Examples: - Engineering - Documentation Tips - Operations - Onboarding --- #### Books **What they are:** Documentation for one topic or system **Why they matter:** Keep related content together Examples: - Python Project Documentation - Authentication Service - CI/CD Pipeline --- #### Chapters **What they are:** Logical groupings inside a book **Why they matter:** Prevent long, unstructured content Examples: - Principles - Setup - Architecture - Deployment --- #### Pages **What they are:** The actual documentation **Why they matter:** One page should answer one question Examples: - Why Documentation Matters - Local Setup Steps - Production Deployment --- ##### Example 1: Documentation Tips
`Documentation Tips (Shelf) ── Python Project Documentation (Book) ── Documentation Principles (Chapter) ── Why Documentation Matters (Page) ── Recommended Structure (Chapter) ── Project Layout Overview (Page)`
--- ##### Example 2: Engineering
`Engineering (Shelf) ── Authentication Service (Book) ── Architecture (Chapter) ── System Overview (Page) ── Data Flow (Page) ── Deployment (Chapter) ── Prod Deployment Steps (Page)`
--- #### How to Use BookStack Correctly - Choose the **shelf** based on domain - Create a **book** per system or topic - Use **chapters** to group related content - Keep **pages** small, focused, and actionable If something is hard to find, the structure is wrong. If people still ask questions the docs should answer, the page is missing or unclear. That’s it. BookStack is boring on purpose. That’s why it works.