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This template will help you create a new docs page to provide conceptual information about a feature or task in CircleCI. Content templates help you to:

  • Develop new content quickly

  • Ensure your page conforms to the style guide

To use this template make a copy and place it in the _cci2 directory. The filename should match the page title. Look at the source file for this page template here. There is additional detail in the comments.

The opening paragraph should be used to succinctly explain to the reader what value the feature/task provides and what use cases it supports. If possible display the use cases in a bullet list.

Contributors from within CircleCI can also consider setting up a local development environment to preview changes before pushing. Ping one of the Developer Resources and Engineering team (DRE) for more information.

Introduction

Use the introduction to explain more about the feature/task, what it is for, why it is useful, and the wider context. Try to answer the following questions for the reader:

  • What’s in it for me?

  • How does this feature / task help me create more value?

You might want to include an image or diagram here to help illustrate the concept. The docs team can work with you to help create helpful image to support explanatory information:

Diagram that includes flow from Repository and Apps to CircleCI API

Quickstart

Some readers will want to read through a full overview page to get a deep understanding of how a feature works, the full set of options available to them, any gotchas or limitations that might apply to them, and to find troubleshooting information. Other readers will want to get started with the feature or task right away and then return to the docs as needed. For the latter it is a good idea to provide a quickstart section to help get the reader up and running with the basics in just a few steps.

Point readers to a how-to guide or tutorial in this quickstart section.

Alternatively, if a separate guide doesn’t exist yet, provide some numbered steps here to get set up:

  1. Provide some steps here

  2. To get started with this feature

  3. Inlcude a step for every action

  4. Try not to skip steps or assume readers will know, for example, which button to click

How the feature works

Consider providing some detail on how the feature works 'under the hood' so readers can better conceptualise what they are doing. You might want to break this down into subsections.

This is a subsection title

Break up large blocks of text where possible to help make it easier to consume. You can use bullet lists:

  • Item 1

  • Item 2

  • Item 3

Using tables

This is the syntax for creating a table. This example has one heading row and one normal row. The table has three columns

Header text column 1Header text column 2Header text column 3

Text for row 1 column 1

Text for row 1 column 2

Text for row 1 column 3

For a full description of the options available, including merging cells, and cell formatting, see the Asciidoctor docs.

To link out to content outside of the docs use a link:

To link to another page within the docs use a cross reference:

Notice the # at the end of the filename. You can place the subsection anchor there if you want to link to a subsection:

Code examples

Use asciidoc source blocks for code:

version: 2.1
jobs:
  build:
    docker:
      - image: cimg/base:2021.04
    steps:
      - checkout
      - run:
          name: The First Step
          command: |
            echo 'Hello World!'
            echo 'This is the delivery pipeline'
      - run:
          name: The Second Step
          command: |
            ls -al
            echo '^^^The files in your repo^^^'

Banners

In technical writing we use admonitions to create blocks of content that stand out from the main flow of text. Outside the docs team we usually refer to these as banners. Currently we have the option to include notes, cautions, and warnings, as follows:

We try to use a short section in bold at the start of the admonition to try to attract the readers attention.

For more information, see the CircleCI style guide.


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