# Writing your docs

How to write and layout your markdown source files.

## Configure Pages and Navigation

The pages configuration in your `mkdocs.yml` defines which pages are built by MkDocs and how they appear in the documentation navigation. If not provided, the pages configuration will be automatically created by discovering all the Markdown files in the documentation directory. An automatically created pages configuration will always be sorted alphanumerically by file name. You will need to manually define your pages configuration if you would like your pages sorted differently.

A simple pages configuration looks like this:

    pages:
    - 'index.md'
    - 'about.md'

With this example we will build two pages at the top level and they will automatically have their titles inferred from the filename. Assuming `docs_dir` has the default value, `docs`, the source files for this documentation would be `docs/index.md` and `docs/about.md`. To provide a custom name for these pages, they can be added before the filename.

    pages:
    - Home: 'index.md'
    - About: 'about.md'

### Multilevel documentation

Subsections can be created by listing related pages together under a section title. For example:

    pages:
    - Home: 'index.md'
    - User Guide:
        - 'Writing your docs': 'user-guide/writing-your-docs.md'
        - 'Styling your docs': 'user-guide/styling-your-docs.md'
    - About:
        - 'License': 'about/license.md'
        - 'Release Notes': 'about/release-notes.md'

With the above configuration we have three top level sections: Home, User Guide and About. Then under User Guide we have two pages, Writing your docs and Styling your docs. Under the About section we also have two pages, License and Release Notes.

## File layout

Your documentation source should be written as regular Markdown files, and placed in a directory somewhere in your project. Normally this directory will be named `docs` and will exist at the top level of your project, alongside the `mkdocs.yml` configuration file.

The simplest project you can create will look something like this:

    mkdocs.yml
    docs/
        index.md

By convention your project homepage should always be named `index`. Any of the following extensions may be used for your Markdown source files: `markdown`, `mdown`, `mkdn`, `mkd`, `md`.

You can also create multi-page documentation, by creating several markdown files:

    mkdocs.yml
    docs/
        index.md
        about.md
        license.md

The file layout you use determines the URLs that are used for the generated pages. Given the above layout, pages would be generated for the following URLs:

    /
    /about/
    /license/

You can also include your Markdown files in nested directories if that better suits your documentation layout.

    docs/
        index.md
        user-guide/getting-started.md
        user-guide/configuration-options.md
        license.md

Source files inside nested directories will cause pages to be generated with nested URLs, like so:

    /
    /user-guide/getting-started/
    /user-guide/configuration-options/
    /license/

## Linking documents

MkDocs allows you to interlink your documentation by using regular Markdown hyperlinks.

### Internal hyperlinks

When linking between pages in the documentation you can simply use the regular Markdown hyperlinking syntax, including the relative path to the Markdown document you wish to link to.

    Please see the [project license](license.md) for further details.

When the MkDocs build runs, these hyperlinks will automatically be transformed into a hyperlink to the appropriate HTML page.

When working on your documentation you should be able to open the linked Markdown document in a new editor window simply by clicking on the link.

If the target documentation file is in another directory you'll need to make sure to include any relative directory path in the hyperlink.

    Please see the [project license](../about/license.md) for further details.

You can also link to a section within a target documentation page by using an anchor link. The generated HTML will correctly transform the path portion of the hyperlink, and leave the anchor portion intact.

    Please see the [project license](about.md#license) for further details.

## Images and media

As well as the Markdown source files, you can also include other file types in your documentation, which will be copied across when generating your documentation site. These might include images and other media.

For example, if your project documentation needed to include a GitHub pages CNAME file and a PNG formatted screenshot image then your file layout might look as follows:

    mkdocs.yml
    docs/
        CNAME
        index.md
        about.md
        license.md
        img/
            screenshot.png

To include images in your documentation source files, simply use any of the regular Markdown image syntaxes:

    Cupcake indexer is a snazzy new project for indexing small cakes.

    ![Screenshot](img/screenshot.png)

    *Above: Cupcake indexer in progress*

You image will now be embedded when you build the documentation, and should also be previewed if you're working on the documentation with a Markdown editor.

## Markdown extensions

MkDocs supports the following Markdown extensions.

### Tables

A simple table looks like this:

    First Header | Second Header | Third Header
    ------------ | ------------- | ------------
    Content Cell | Content Cell  | Content Cell
    Content Cell | Content Cell  | Content Cell

If you wish, you can add a leading and tailing pipe to each line of the table:

    | First Header | Second Header | Third Header |
    | ------------ | ------------- | ------------ |
    | Content Cell | Content Cell  | Content Cell |
    | Content Cell | Content Cell  | Content Cell |

Specify alignment for each column by adding colons to separator lines:

    First Header | Second Header | Third Header
    :----------- |:-------------:| -----------:
    Left         | Center        | Right
    Left         | Center        | Right

### Fenced code blocks

The first line should contain 3 or more backtick (```) characters, and the last line should contain the same number of backtick characters (```):

    ```
    Fenced code blocks are like Standard
    Markdown’s regular code blocks, except that
    they’re not indented and instead rely on
    start and end fence lines to delimit the
    code block.
    ```

With this approach, the language can optionally be specified on the first line after the backticks:

    ```python
    def fn():
        pass
    ```

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