As the lead front-end engineer at EasyPost, I spearheaded a transformative project to overhaul our documentation system. Recognizing the critical role documentation plays in shaping developers' first impressions, we set out to create a streamlined, scalable, and user-friendly platform. This case study outlines the challenges we faced, the strategic decisions we made, and the technical solutions we implemented to deliver a best-in-class documentation experience.
Challenge
Our existing documentation system struggled to keep pace with the growing complexity of our API and user base. The primary issues included:
- Performance Bottlenecks:
- A monolithic codebase shared with our main website resulted in slow build times, exceeding 30 minutes for minor updates.
- A single-page documentation layout caused crashes on mobile devices and sluggish performance on desktop browsers.
- User Experience Pain Points:
- Navigation difficulties due to walls of text and limited search functionality.
- Lack of scalability with nearly 150 unique endpoints to document.
- Maintenance Challenges:
- Reliance on JSX with embedded HTML made updates cumbersome for non-technical contributors.
- Cross-team dependencies slowed down the deployment process.
Solution
To address these issues, we implemented a ground-up redesign with the following key components:
Dedicated Subdomain
We migrated our documentation to a standalone subdomain, docs.easypost.com. This separation:
- Reduced build times by isolating the documentation from the main website.
- Streamlined deployment processes and improved system stability.
- Enabled faster and more frequent updates to keep users informed.
Modernized Framework
After evaluating several frameworks, we selected Nextra (a Next.js-based framework) with MDX (Markdown + JSX) for its flexibility and performance. This allowed us to:
- Combine the simplicity of Markdown for content creation with React’s power for custom components.
- Implement built-in features like syntax highlighting and customizable routing.
- Integrate FlexSearch for efficient full-text search, drastically improving discoverability.
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