About this plugin
DevDocs is a WordPress plugin for publishing clear, organised developer documentation on your site. It gives you a documentation page with a collapsible sidebar for browsing sections and a main content area for reading articles.
Key Features
- Documentation articles and updates — Publish help articles and version updates in one place.
- Organised sections — Group your content into folders and sub-folders for easier browsing.
- Sidebar navigation — Visitors can move between the overview, sections, articles, and changelog from one menu.
- Instant search — Quickly find articles from the sidebar as you type.
- Mobile-friendly layout — The documentation view works cleanly on smaller screens.
- Welcome screen — Show an introduction, helpful topic cards, and your latest update before a visitor opens an article.
- Changelog timeline — Display product updates in a clear version-by-version timeline.
- Custom colours — Match the documentation area to your brand with built-in colour settings.
- Full-page layout option — Display your documentation in a distraction-free full-browser view.
- Article guidance — Help readers stay oriented with breadcrumbs, last updated dates, and previous/next article links.
- Manual ordering — Choose the order in which articles appear inside each section.
- Shortcode support — Embed documentation with [devdocs] as an alternative to selecting a page.
- Translation-ready — Includes a translation template in the languages folder for other languages.
Usage
Documents
Add your documentation articles in DevDocs and assign them to one or more Topics so they appear in the right place in the sidebar. Use Order if you want to control which articles appear first.
Topics
Use Topics to build your sidebar structure. You can create main sections and place sub-sections inside them, then use Order to control how they are listed.
Changelog
Each changelog entry supports:
* A Version Number and Release Date.
* A summary description.
* Update items grouped as Added, Changed, Fixed, Removed, Deprecated, or Security.
Settings
Navigate to DevDocs → Settings to configure:
- Documentation Page — Optional WordPress page that renders the docs layout automatically. You can use the [devdocs] shortcode instead.
- Documentation Name — Label shown in the sidebar header.
- Welcome Heading / Message — Text displayed on the overview screen.
- Show Topic Cards — Toggle topic card grid on the welcome screen.
- Show Latest Update — Toggle the latest changelog snippet on the welcome screen.
- Full Page Mode — Expand the documentation into a full-browser layout (applies to the selected Documentation Page).
- Color Scheme — Choose the colours used across the documentation area.
Shortcode
Add [devdocs] to any page or post content to embed the documentation layout. Navigation links stay on that page. You do not need to select a Documentation Page in settings when using the shortcode.
In page builders such as Breakdance, use the dedicated Shortcode element (not only a rich text field). The builder canvas may need a refresh after saving; the front end is the source of truth if preview still looks incomplete.