How to structure the docs of a one-person business

You know you need a set of docs for your business, but when you sit down to do it, you do not know where to start. Everyone makes a blog and a website. Few people make docs pages. So people who run a business alone often get stuck in two places: the technology for the docs site, and its structure. This post solves the second one.

You only need three levels and four parts, and you will know right away where each docs page goes. Go through the three steps below, and you will have a docs tree on your plan and your first overview page published. This frame is simple enough for one person to do alone, and it is so consistent that every page you add later already has a place.

Prepare the plan and the list

Before you split the tree, you need a place to draw it and a list to put into it. The tree looks like this:

Make the plan in a separate place

The plan is the map of your docs: the areas, the groups, the pages you will have. Draw it in a separate place, like your digital brain, not straight on the website. With the map, you know the exact direction to finish your docs. You add to them bit by bit and publish bit by bit.

Filter your blog posts and notes that are still true

The list is everything you already know about your business. It comes from two sources:

1. Filter the blog posts that are still true. If you already have blog posts, pick the ones that are still the truth today and are not out of date. Those posts are almost docs already. You only need to pull the truth out of them.
2. Filter the notes you have verified. Take only notes that are really detailed and really long, that you have already applied to your product or process and that have a result. A note of one or two lines is only the start of an idea, a thought you are not sure about, so leave it.
3. Put everything in one list. The posts and notes you filtered go in one list, one item per line. The next step puts them into the tree.

Notes that are not verified do not go in the list, because notes differ from docs in that they have not been done for real.

Choose a website for your docs

Entity docs depend on a website, not on a note-taking tool. You have a few choices for a docs website, and this is the technology part where many people get stuck. Once you have chosen a website, what is left is structure.

Step 1: Split areas and groups

The first two levels of the three-level docs tree split your business from wide to narrow. When this step is done, you know which area and which group every later page will sit in.

Make one area for each product

The area is the biggest level, and areas sit side by side. A one-person business usually has two kinds of areas:

1. Make a product area. Each product is one area. When you have a second product, you open a second area and do not fold it into the first, so the tree never gets messy.
2. Make a brand asset area. These are the things your brand owns besides products: formulas, processes, libraries, your own AI and software.

Choose at most three components

The second level splits each area into component groups. In one group, I give priority to at most three big components. The other components are smaller and only support those three.

The number three is my suggestion for a component group. At the area level, a big product can have more groups. But when a fourth component shows up in a group, see first whether it can fold into one of the others before you open another.

Name groups short, in your customer’s words

A group name shows in the left navigation, so it must be very short. If a name is too long, the navigation cannot be used. Name groups the way your customer understands them, not the way you understand them. A group name is not a blog post title.

Page names are more flexible. A concept page is usually a noun, and in a collection of frequently asked questions, every page is a question.

Step 2: Put four parts in each group

Every level uses the same four-part formula, so you do not have to rethink the structure for each group. Once you have this formula, you can structure very fast.

Set overview, concepts, components and guides

Under each area and each component group, put four parts in this order:

1. Set the opening page. For an area, it is the introduction page. For a component group, it is the overview page. This page shows the whole picture, including the reason.
2. Set the concepts. Keep only the key concepts within the group’s scope. Too many concepts make the reader lose their way before they reach the doing.
3. Set the components. One explanation page for each component. Concepts and components are both explanations, but a component explains one part that makes up the group.
4. Set the guides. This part shows how to do things, and it is always split into two collections, covered in the next section.

The first time I structured my docs, I started with the introduction page, and at times I split the “why” off into its own page. Later I saw that was a mistake: when you split it off, the reader loses the big picture. Now the reason sits right inside the overview page.

Split getting-started and hands-on guides

The guides part always has two collections:

1. Getting-started guides are for newcomers: hold their hand, with every step in detail, so they can use that component right away.
2. Hands-on guides are do-it-yourself guides for people who are already used to it, at an advanced level.

A collection is a set of pages that look alike: the same type, almost the same structure, and only the subject or situation differs. That way the reader knows how to read from the first page.

From my experience with the docs of a one-person business, guides take up most of the space: about 60% guides, 20% explanation, 20% reference. Nobody has verified this number, and bigger businesses have a different mix.

Put each page in its right place

For each line in your list, ask three questions, from wide to narrow:

1. Choose the area. Is this about a product, or about a brand asset?
2. Choose the component group. In that area, which component does it belong to? Sales is sales and marketing is marketing: a page does not sit between two components.
3. Choose the page type. If it explains, it goes in a concept or a component. If it shows the customer how to do something, it goes in a guide collection.

With only four parts, you know the place of a page right away. A page that belongs to two groups at once means the structure is wrong: merge the two groups into one, or split the shared part out into its own group.

A page must not mix content types. I once put an explanation where a guide should be, and I let a guide explain too much. Explanation is explanation, and reference is reference.

Step 3: Publish the overview page first

The tree on your plan is done, and now it is time to put it on the website. You do not have to publish the whole set of docs in one day.

Publish the overview in the first week

If you want a result in the first week, make the overview page first. The overview page anchors everything below it: concepts, components, guides. It is usually very long, because it is the touch point where the customer sees the whole picture, the reason, the point of view and the path of the components.

After the overview page, the other pages have no order of priority. Publish whichever page is complete, then build it up bit by bit. You also do not have to work from the top down: working from the bottom up is fine, as long as each page already has a place on your plan.

Some pages do not need to be made while the tree is small. Without customers yet, a page of frequently asked questions has no meaning: wait until customers ask about the same thing again and again. Other pages that are not needed, you look at yourself and drop, because when you work alone, the decision is yours.

Check that a page is long enough before you publish

Entity docs are public pages, and the algorithm looks at them like any other page. Before you publish a page:

1. Check the length. I look again at every page under about 500 to 600 words. A page that is too short is not published yet.
2. Merge a page that cannot get longer. If there is nothing more to write, fold it into a collection of the same type, because pages in a collection already look alike.
3. Drop what is not verified. Work that is still in the plan or still being tested does not go in the tree. Entity docs are the Truth vault, and it takes only what has been verified.

Add new pages, restructure as little as you can

You can add as many new pages to a collection as you like: when there is something new, add it. Restructuring the tree is something to limit. Moving a page changes its URL, and Google says rankings may fluctuate while it recrawls the new URLs (Site moves and migrations).

I made this mistake myself. In the early days of testing my structure, I put a whole group in the wrong place, and I had to change it back and set up 301 redirects for the pages that were already indexed. Change once and you redirect once, change again and you redirect again, which takes a lot of work and long-term tracking.

That is why the hardest part of making docs is the structure, and it should be right on the plan.

Build your first docs tree

With a docs tree, you have a clear foundation that holds up your product. A collaborator who writes blog posts or makes videos for you only has to make sure of one thing: what they say does not contradict the docs.

Every time you update your docs, you get another chance for a derivative blog post, and for an update email to your customers. The more your docs are updated, the more your emails have to talk about.

I keep my docs public because they bring SEO and put a stamp on my brand, while internal docs stay in my digital brain. Start with one area, three groups and an overview page, and let your Truth vault grow with the work you do.