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Create your first help site in 10 minutes

By the end of this tutorial, you'll have a live documentation site with three topics, a navigation sidebar, and a search bar — published and shareable.

Before you begin

  • Sign up for a Topicary account at topicary.com

  • No prior CCMS experience is needed — this tutorial starts from scratch

Sign up and create a project

  1. Visit topicary.com and click Get started.

  2. Create an account with your email and password.

  3. On first login, an onboarding dialog asks if you'd like a sample project. Click Skip — we'll build everything from scratch.

  4. Click New Project and name it "Product Docs."

You're now in the project dashboard. The sidebar shows all sections: Topics, Components, Maps, Filters, Variables, Tags, Analytics, and Settings.

Write your first topic

  1. Click Topics in the sidebar.

  2. Click New Topic.

  3. Replace the "Untitled" title with "Getting Started."

  4. In the editor, type a short paragraph: "Welcome to our product. This guide walks you through setup and first steps."

  5. Press Enter and type / to open the Editor slash commands. Select Heading 2 and type "Installation."

  6. Add a few bullet points below the heading describing installation steps.

The editor auto-saves one second after you stop typing. Watch for the "Saved" indicator in the header — you never need to manually save.

Add two more topics

  1. Go back to Topics and click New Topic again.

  2. Name this one "Configuration" and add a short paragraph about configuration options. Try inserting a Work with tables with the / menu — select Table and fill in a few rows with setting names and descriptions.

  3. Create a third topic called "API Reference." Add a heading, a paragraph, and a code block (type / and select Code Block). Pick a language and paste a sample request.

You now have three Create and manage topics.

Organize topics into a map

  1. Click Maps in the sidebar.

  2. Click New Map and name it "User Guide."

  3. Click Add Topic and select "Getting Started." Repeat for "Configuration" and "API Reference."

  4. Drag the grip handle on "Configuration" to reorder it between the other two if needed.

  5. Try clicking the indent button on "API Reference" to nest it under "Configuration" — then outdent it back to the top level.

The Create and organize a map defines the sidebar navigation your readers will see. The hierarchy you create here with indentation becomes the navigation structure on your published site.

Publish to the web

  1. Scroll down to Publication Targets below the map editor.

  2. Click New Target. Name it "Public Docs" and select Web as the output format.

  3. Click Publish.

The The publishing pipeline resolves your content and generates a live site. Click the site URL to open it.

Publishing creates a live, publicly accessible URL. If your content isn't ready for readers yet, use the Unpublish action to take the site offline.

Explore your published site

Your site has:

  • A homepage with a search bar and page cards

  • A sidebar matching your map's topic order

  • A table of contents on each page tracking headings as you scroll

  • Previous/next links between pages

  • Full-text search — press Cmd+K to try it

  • A dark mode toggle in the header

What you learned

You created a project, wrote three topics with different content types, organized them in a map, and published a live documentation site. The entire authoring-to-publishing workflow works through these three steps: write topics, organize in a map, publish a target.

Next, try the Reuse content with components tutorial to learn how to write once and reference everywhere.

See also

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