Documentation site generators (DSG) are very similar to static site generators (SSG) but focus heavily on managing technical documentation. SSG is capable of doing what DSG does, but it’s designed for building applications.
DSG is focused on content-centric static sites and provides features tailored for technical documentation out of the box:
- Everything is written in Markdown
- Write code samples in multiple languages
- Automatic scrolling table of contents
- Smart full-text search plugin
- Ready for Translations
- Pre-rendered static HTM
This list left out those commercial products like GitBook and some other unpopular open-source solutions.
- Docusaurus - Makes it easy to maintain open source documentation websites, powered by Markdown, built using React, ready for translations, document versioning, and document search.
- VuePress - Composed of two parts: a minimalistic static site generator with a Vue-powered theming system and Plugin API, and a default theme optimized for writing technical documentation. It was created to support the documentation needs of Vue’s own sub projects.
- Docsify - Generates your documentation website on the fly, smartly loads and parses your Markdown files and displays them as a website.
- MkDocs - A fast, simple and downright gorgeous static site generator that’s geared towards building project documentation. Documentation source files are written in Markdown, and configured with a single YAML configuration file.
- Slate - Helps you create beautiful, intelligent, responsive API documentation. Just markdown, write code samples in multiple languages, out-of-the-box syntax highlighting.
- Docz - Makes it easy to write and publish beautiful interactive documentation for your code. Create MDX files showcasing your code and Docz turns them into a live-reloading, production-ready site.