NGINX Ingress Controller Documentation

This directory contains all of the user documentation for NGINX Ingress Controller, as well as the requirements for building and publishing the documentation.

We write our documentation in Markdown. We build it with Hugo and our custom NGINX Hugo theme. We set up previews and deployments using our docs-actions workflow.

Setup

Hugo is the only requirement for building documentation, but the repository's integration tooling uses markdownlint-cli.

Note: We currently use Hugo v0.115.3 in production.

Although not a strict requirement, markdown-link-check is also used in documentation development.

If you have Docker installed, there are fallbacks for all in the Makefile, meaning you do need to install them.

The configuration files are as follows:

Hugo: config/_default/config.toml
markdownlint-cli: .markdownlint.json
markdown-link-check md-linkcheck-config.json

Repository guidelines

To work on documentation, create a feature branch in a forked repository then target main with your pull requests, which is the default repository branch.

The documentation is published from the latest public release branch. If your changes require immediate publication, create a pull request to cherry-pick changes from main to the public release branch.

Developing documentation locally

To build the documentation locally, run the make command inside this /site/ directory:

make docs            - Builds the documentation set with the output as the '/public' directory
make clean           - Removes the local '/public/' directory
make watch           - Starts a local Hugo server for live previews
make watch-drafts    - Starts a local Hugo server for live previews, including documentation marked with 'draft: true'
make link-check      - Check for any broken links in the documentation
make lint-markdown   - Runs markdownlint to identify possible markdown formatting issues

The watch options automatically reload the Hugo server, allowing you to view updates as you work.

Note: The documentation uses build environments to control the baseURL used for things like internal references and static resources. The configuration for each environment can be found in the config directory. When running Hugo you can specify the environment and baseURL, but it's unnecessary.

Adding new documentation

Using Hugo to generate a new documentation file

To create a new documentation file with the pre-configured Hugo front-matter for the task template, run the following command inside this /site directory:

hugo new <SECTIONNAME>/<FILENAME>.md

For example:

hugo new getting-started/install.md

The default template (task) should be used for most pages. For other content templates, you can use the --kind flag:

hugo new tutorials/deploy.md --kind tutorial

The available content templates (kind) are:

concept: Help a user learn about a specific feature or feature set.
tutorial: Walk a user through an example use case scenario.
reference: Describes an API, command line tool, configuration options, etc.
troubleshooting: Guide a user towards solving a specific problem.
openapi: A template with the requirements to render an openapi.yaml specification.

Documentation formatting

Basic markdown formatting

There are multiple ways to format text: for consistency and clarity, these are our conventions:

Bold: Two asterisks on each side - **Bolded text**.
Italic: One underscore on each side - _Italicized text_.
Unordered lists: One dash - - Unordered list item.
Ordered lists: The 1 character followed by a stop - 1. Ordered list item.

Note: The ordered notation automatically enumerates lists when built by Hugo.

Close every section with a horizontal line by using three dashes: ---.

How to format internal links

Internal links should use Hugo ref and relref shortcodes.

Although file extensions are optional for Hugo, we include them as best practice for page anchors.
Relative paths are preferred, but just the filename is permissible.
Paths without a leading forward slash (/) are first resolved relative to the current page, then the remainder of the website.

Here are two examples:

To install <software>, refer to the [installation instructions]({{< ref "install.md" >}}).
To install <integation>, refer to the [integration instructions]({{< relref "/integration/thing.md#section" >}}).

How to add images

Use the img shortcode to add images into your documentation.

Add the image to the /static/img directory.
Add the img shortcode: {{< img src="<img-file.png>" >}}
- Do not include a forward slash at the beginning of the file path.
- This will break the image when it's rendered: read about the Hugo relURL Function to learn more.

Note: The img shortcode accepts all of the same parameters as the Hugo figure shortcode.

Using Hugo shortcodes

Hugo shortcodes are used to format callouts, add images, and reuse content across different pages.

For example, to use the note callout:

{{< note >}}Provide the text of the note here.{{< /note >}}

The callout shortcodes support multi-line blocks:

{{< caution >}}
You should probably never do this specific thing in a production environment.

If you do, and things break, don't say we didn't warn you.
{{< /caution >}}

Supported callouts:

caution
important
note
see-also
tip
warning

Here are some other shortcodes:

fa: Inserts a Font Awesome icon
collapse: Make a section collapsible
tab: Create mutually exclusive tabbed window panes, useful for parallel instructions
table: Add scrollbars to wide tables for browsers with smaller viewports
link: Link to a file, prepending its path with the Hugo baseUrl
openapi: Loads an OpenAPI specifcation and render it as HTML using ReDoc
include: Include the content of a file in another file; the included file must be present in the '/content/includes/' directory
raw-html: Include a block of raw HTML
readfile: Include the content of another file in the current file, which can be in an arbitrary location.