A Step-by-Step Guide to Creating a Beautiful Documentation Site with Mintlify

Great documentation is more than just a nice-to-have it’s essential. Whether you're building a developer-facing API or a fast-growing internal tool, your docs can make or break the user experience. Thankfully, platforms like Mintlify make it easier than ever to create, manage, and scale clean, professional documentation without needing to babysit a markdown file or build a static site generator from scratch.

In this guide, I’ll walk you through exactly how to set up your own documentation site using Mintlify, from connecting your GitHub repo to customizing your domain. Whether you're a developer or a non-technical team member, you'll find workflows that suit your style.

What is Mintlify?

Mintlify is a modern documentation platform designed to help developers and teams create clean, interactive, and visually appealing documentation sites with minimal setup. Built with a developer-first mindset, Mintlify connects directly to your GitHub repository and automatically builds and deploys your documentation with every update.

Whether you're building public docs for your open-source project or internal docs for your product, Mintlify offers both a powerful web editor and support for local development using Markdown/MDX. It also comes with features like:

• Live deployment previews
• Git-based version control
• Custom domain support
• SEO optimization
• Analytics and reader engagement tools

Mintlify aims to remove the friction from the documentation process by making it seamless to write, update, and deploy docs all from your browser or code editor.

Why Use Mintlify?

Mintlify is an AI-powered documentation platform tailored for modern development teams. Here's what makes it stand out:

• Automatic Deployments: Push changes to GitHub and Mintlify takes care of the rest no manual build steps.
• Visual Web Editor: Non-technical users can edit docs in a browser with WYSIWYG tools.
• GitHub Integration: Keep your docs version-controlled and collaborate via pull requests.
• Custom Domains: Brand your documentation with a subdomain like docs.yoursite.com.
• Modern UI & SEO: Your docs look great out of the box and are optimized for search engines.

Whether you’re building a public knowledge base or internal technical docs, Mintlify can handle both with ease.

Step 1: Connect Your GitHub Repository

The first step is to connect your GitHub repository to Mintlify. This is where Mintlify will pull your documentation source files (typically in Markdown or MDX).

Here’s how to do it:

1. Sign up at Mintlify and log into your dashboard.
2. Create a new documentation project.
3. When prompted, install the Mintlify GitHub App.
4. Choose the repository where your docs live (or where you want them to live).
5. Mintlify will now watch that repo and auto-deploy every time you push updates.

Step 2: Choose Your Workflow

Mintlify supports two main workflows depending on how you like to work: the Web Editor and the Code-Based (local) workflow.

Option 1: The Web Editor (WYSIWYG)

Perfect for teams that want to skip local development or don’t want to write Markdown.

1. Go to your Mintlify dashboard.
2. Select Editor from the sidebar.

1. If you haven’t installed the GitHub app yet, Mintlify will guide you through it.

1. Browse your documentation files in the sidebar like index.mdx, getting-started.mdx, etc.

1. Click on a file and start editing using the visual interface.

Publish Changes

• When you're ready, click the Publish button at the top right.
• Mintlify will instantly deploy the changes to your live site at <your-project>.mintlify.app.

Pro Tip: Use Branches

You can also create branches and preview changes before pushing to production. This is useful for larger teams or reviewing major content changes.

Option 2: The Local Developer Workflow

If you're more comfortable using your code editor and Git, this one’s for you.

Clone your documentation repo locally.

Install Mintlify’s CLI:

Launch the dev server:

Edit your .mdx or .md files locally. When done, commit and push to GitHub.

Mintlify will detect the push, build the site, and deploy automatically.

This is ideal for developers who want tight control over formatting, components, or need to collaborate via GitHub pull requests.

Step 3: Deploying Your Site

Mintlify automatically deploys your documentation whenever you push updates to GitHub. You can view deployment status directly from:

• The GitHub commit history
• Your Mintlify project dashboard

Once deployed, your documentation is live on:

Step 4: Adding a Custom Domain

Using your Mintlify subdomain works fine, but for a production-ready feel, a custom domain like docs.myproject.com is a better choice.

To set this up:

1. In your Mintlify dashboard, go to the Domain Setup page.
2. Enter your desired custom domain (e.g., docs.yourcompany.com).
3. Follow the DNS instructions Mintlify provides to update your domain’s DNS records.
4. Wait for the DNS to propagate (usually under 24 hours).

Once done, your documentation will be accessible under your branded domain.

Step 5: Collaborating with Your Team

One of Mintlify’s underrated superpowers is how seamlessly it integrates with your existing collaboration workflow. Whether you’re a two-person startup or a team of 50 developers, documentation changes often need review and Mintlify respects that process.

Here’s how teams collaborate effectively using Mintlify:

• Branch Previews: When someone creates a new branch for docs, Mintlify automatically deploys a live preview of that branch. This means reviewers can check formatting, links, and components visually before approving the pull request.
• Review-First Flow: All updates to docs can go through pull requests, just like code. So your engineering team can keep the same review standards for documentation.
• Edit Permissions: Mintlify allows you to manage who can write or publish changes helpful for larger teams with a mix of engineers, product managers, and support staff.

This GitHub-first workflow ensures your documentation doesn't become a chaotic mess of out-of-sync edits and conflicting updates.

Step 6: Working with Components and Interactivity

Mintlify supports MDX, which means your documentation isn't limited to static Markdown. You can build highly interactive documentation by embedding components like:

• Tabs (to show different code examples per language)
• Callout Boxes (for tips, warnings, or notes)
• API Reference Blocks
• Live Code Editors using React components

This is especially useful for complex SDK documentation, onboarding flows, or internal tools that need a bit more visual clarity than plain text can offer.

Here’s a small MDX snippet to add a React component in Mintlify:

This creates a dynamic, tabbed code block that your users can toggle between  all without any additional plugin or devops work.

Step 7: Performance, SEO & Analytics

Often ignored in doc tools is performance  but Mintlify nails this too. Your site is pre-rendered and blazing fast, meaning users never face a slow-loading doc page.

Key SEO & analytics features:

• Metadata support for all pages (you can configure page titles, descriptions, etc.).
• Built-in analytics to understand what users search for, what they miss, and which pages get the most engagement.
• Search index optimizations to make your docs more Google-friendly.

The analytics alone can reveal massive blind spots in your documentation like features users search for but don’t find, helping you prioritize future updates.

Step 8: Migrating from Other Platforms

Already using another docs tool like Docusaurus, ReadMe, or GitBook? Migration to Mintlify is relatively painless.

Here are a few quick notes:

• Docusaurus: Mintlify supports MDX, so you can copy your content directly though custom plugins/components might need slight rewrites.
• GitBook: Use GitBook’s export feature and convert to Markdown, then sync to your GitHub repo.
• ReadMe: You’ll need to move your files into a new Git repo, but Markdown content generally transfers cleanly.

Mintlify’s support team can also guide you if you're migrating a larger, more complex setup. Most projects migrate over a weekend with minimal downtime.

Quick Fixes for Common Issues

Even though Mintlify is super intuitive, here are a few things to watch for:

• Overusing Components: While tabs and callouts are useful, too many can overwhelm users. Use sparingly.
• Neglecting Mobile Users: Test your docs on phones and tablets especially custom components.
• Inconsistent File Naming: Keep a predictable structure (e.g., getting-started.mdx, api-reference.mdx) so new contributors don’t get lost.
• Forgetting Custom 404 Pages: A polished 404 page goes a long way in user experience.

Final Touches and Best Practices

Once you’re live, you can take your Mintlify documentation to the next level by:

• Customizing the theme via docs.json
• Adding components like tabs, callouts, and API playgrounds
• Tracking engagement with built-in analytics
• Enabling full-text search and AI-powered indexing

You can also extend MDX to include React components, which is great for embedding dynamic UI elements directly into your docs.

While it is one thing to have a beautiful documentation site, it is absolutely critical to keep your docs updated with your changing codebase. I know it is hard keep docs updated from personal experience, it is just a boring and mundane task, but cannot be avoided.

That is where a tool like DeepDocs comes in. It is a GitHub native AI agent that helps engineering teams automate the mundane task of keeping docs, like READMEs, API references, SDK guides, tutorials etc. up-to-date with your changing codebase. The best part, it is completely free to try.

Final Thoughts

At the end of the day, great documentation is not just about how it looks it’s about how fast users can find answers. With Mintlify, you strike the perfect balance between performance, aesthetics, and ease of contribution.

From startups to open-source maintainers, Mintlify offers a no-fuss way to ship beautiful, searchable, and versioned documentation without babysitting static site generators or markdown jungle.

Pair it with tools like Deepdocs, and you’ve got a bulletproof docs system that scales as your product grows.

Ready to Try It?

You can get started today for free at mintlify.com. Set up a repo, make a few changes, and enjoy a fully hosted, deploy-on-push documentation site in minutes.

Comments

[Anik Sikder]

Mintlify makes maintaining clean, fast, and versioned docs way less painful. The Git-based workflow + MDX flexibility hits the sweet spot for dev teams. Bookmarking this.