Monday, January 14, 2013

How to Design Awesome API Documentation?


I wish someone or Google has a clear answer to that.

There isn't. Hence I went on to research on the topic. Here are some things that I learnt.

There isn't a CMS that is suitable for API documentation (if there is, please answer here).

Who has the best API Documentation? There is a lot of contenders. For me, it is Parse, Stripe and Google.

Parse has wrote a great article. The best advise for API Docs.

These components are needed:

  • Getting Started (short & quick)
  • Full reference (the API details)
  • Guides (like telling a story)
  • SDK
  • Sample Applications using the SDK
And Parse do what they preach.

Some Technologies Parse seems to use:
  • Marketo - for marketing, web visitor tracking and engagement (>$1,000/mth)
  • Hello Bar - ($29 for solo self hosted, or $4.95 per 100 clicks)
  • Kiss Metric - analytics and feedbacks
  • Google Analytics - website analytics
  • Adroll - ads
  • mixpanel - analytics
  • jquery
  • sizzlejs
  • jquery-waypoints

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