Last Reviewed: 2023-11-29

Style Guide

Formatting rules and guidelines for Pantheon's open-source documentation.

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All documentation repositories should adhere to a style guide. This document serves to define and detail the style conventions used in Pantheon's documentation.

You can also reference the Pantheon Documentation Template to see the common structure of our docs, or copy it to begin a new content piece.

Detailed style guidelines can be found in the Google Developers Documentation Style Guide. However, the guidelines in this document supersede the Google guidelines.

Bold

Bold is used for navigational elements within a given interface:

Callouts

There are several types of callouts commonly used in our docs:

Notes

Warnings

Success

Success callouts are used infrequently, usually in guides with specific end results expected. Use success callouts to differentiate between two binary results.

Cards

Use cards to visually display a list of items, with links to more information.

Check

Simple green checkmark. Replaces <span style="color:green">✔</span>

Before You Begin Sections

This section should outline any steps or services required before starting those in the doc. If there are other docs that should be completed first, list them here.

Of particular note, any documentation that uses Terminus should reference it in this section, and link to the Terminus Guide .

Export Local Environment Variables

Be kind. If you're writing a guide that will use one or more example variables the reader must replace when following along, you should walk them through exporting them to local environment variables. See the Variables section below for more details.

Code Samples

Inline

Used for file names, variables, commands, and output, inline within paragraphs:

Blocks

Shell Prompts

You can also define a single line code block as a command:

Or define which lines are output:

Line Highlighting

You can highlight a specific line in a code block the reader should focus on with //highlight-line, or a group with //highlight-start and //highlight-end:

Content Types

The site features two distinct content types; docs and guides. We define docs as reference materials used to explain the behavior and intended use of Pantheon's platform features and service offerings. Guides are paginated and designed to walk the reader through a complex feature/product or to provide a collected resource of related topics in one location.

DNS

Creates a bulleted list of links to all DNS Provider docs stored in source/content/dns-providers, which do not have draft: true frontmatter.

File Downloads

Creates a link to a downloadable file. Files must be stored in source/scripts.

Definitions

Error Messages

Last reviewed: Jun 05 2022

When referencing error messages in the body of an article, format them as monospace, and either place them inline (if short) or as a new paragraph (if long).

When providing solutions to error messages, document them verbatim as H3s within a Troubleshooting section. Use the exact copy of the error message to help improve search result findability. Making the header an H3 makes the section linkable within the table of contents for easy sharing.

File Excerpts

File excerpts are code blocks with a file name specified after the syntax as :title=FILENAME:

Frontmatter

Meta data for a doc or guide is created in a section referred to as frontmatter. It lives at the very top of the file and is wrapped in three dashes.

To see the values currently used in our documentation, install our repository locally, then run one of the following reports:

• Docs: List of all docs and tags; Searchable list of all docs and tags.

• Partials: List of all partials and tags; Searchable list of all partials and tags.

Hyperlinks

Do not specify a target tab or window for external, or any other links, leaving the viewer the option to open in a new tab.

Internal Links

Use relative paths when linking to other pages of the docs site.

External Links

Icons

List of available icons

Italics

Headings

Give heading levels a meaningful hierarchy to ensure accessible navigation and structure.

Line Breaks and Spaces

• Line breaks between components including between

  • the YAML and the content

  • headings and content

  • list items (sometimes - check the preview to see if more space would help)

• No trailing spaces.

• Each MD file ends with a blank line

• Spaces, not tabs! Each tab is two spaces or four sometimes

More Resources Section

This is the optimal place to provide links to external resources on the subject, or internal docs on common processes to follow after completing those above.

Panels/Accordions

Use panels for extraneous but useful information such as troubleshooting sections or pro tips that would be distracting or can be skipped over by a large portion of readers. This is primarily used in an effort to promote readability of a page.

Placeholder Text

Documentation IP set: specifically reserved for documentation (Reserved IP addresses):

Pantheon

• Organization: Anita Agency

• Site name: Anita Drupal

Redirects

Redirects are required whenever you change an existing URL or when a doc or guide is deprecated and removed from the Docs site. Deprecated pages should always be redirected to related content so users to do not receive a 404. Always add the Redirect label to the PR that includes a redirect. This allows us to find these changes later if we need to reference why a page was moved or deleted.

When you're moving a doc or heading to a new location, include a formatted table with your redirect request in the Pull Request comments.

Reusable Content/Partials

Create reusable content in a separate Markdown file that can be included within sections of other docs. These are called partials.

Place the Markdown file within the source/partials/ directory, in its own directory if it is feature-specific.

Partials use all of the same Markdown, style, and HTML as needed and outlined on this page, but do not require frontmatter. They can be included as their own paragraphs and sections as well as in lists as a step or bullet point.

After you create the file, include it in the doc:

To find partials to reuse, run this report (requires a local build of gatsby). The report can be filtered by metadata tags, and includes an excerpt of each partial.

Review Dates

Review dates indicate the last time a member of the Documentation team reviewed a document. There are two ways to indicate review dates.

The most common is by using the frontmatter reviewed: "YYYY-MM-DD" . The other is at the section level, using the ReviewDate component:

Screenshots

Submit screenshots without additional markup. For example, don't use Skitch to add an arrow. This helps the Docs team make edits as needed later.

Do not include any personal information like a name, email address, or UUID in the screenshot.

GUI

Screenshots are used to reference GUI instructions:

Terminal

Terminal screenshots should be described in the text as much as possible, and should only be used to demonstrate intended output:

Tables

You can use markdown tables to describe availability based on service levels before providing instructions on how to enable or use a given feature. For example:

Use ✓ to indicate yes and ❌ to indicate no.

Visit the Markdown Tables Generator for help with creating nice-looking and well-formatted tables.

Advanced Tables

Standard markdown tables don't allow for cells to span multiple rows or columns, but by using the gatsby-remark-grid-tables plugin, we can overcome this limitation:

Tabs

When working on a document that will cover steps for multiple CMSs, use tabs when possible to condense instructions that need duplication for the different applications.

Table of Contents

You can add a TOC to the right side of a document using the following frontmatter: showtoc: true.

Terminology

• Personal Workspace: a user's personal work area, containing sites/settings specific to that user.
• Professional Workspace: (formerly Organization) a feature set for a collection of users or sites.
• Site Dashboard: the page the user gets when selecting a site from the Sites tab in a Workspace
• Supporting Workspace: (formerly Supporting Organization): a Professional Workspace that's been added to a specific site's Team.

Tooltips

Tooltips are a great way to add additional information without cluttering up a section. For example, you can define jargon and even link out to an external resource without being distracting to the reader:

Variables

When writing multi-step processes, repeated variables and constants should be defined before providing the first set of commands. If the doc has a "Before You Begin" section, define varables here. Provide them using the callout below, and follow common conventions (lowercase for variables, uppercase for constants).

Videos

Use the Wistia and YouTube components to embed videos across the docs site.

Landing pages (e.g., Get Started, Develop, Go Live, etc.) can set a video_id attribute to embed a YouTube sourced video to the top of the page. Embedding Wistia videos is not supported on landing pages at this time, however Wistia videos can be embedded elsewhere across the docs using the Wistia component as described below.

YouTube

Use the YouTube component to embed YouTube videos. Set both title and src, for example:

Wistia

Use the Wistia component to embed Wistia videos. Set only the src without title, for example:

Voice, Style, and Flow

Some General Rules:

• Only assume as much knowledge from the reader as specified in the Before You Begin section. Otherwise explain everything.
• Avoid be verbs.
• Avoid personal opinions, feelings, or anecdotes. Use an informal but succinct tone.
• Use Inclusive Language, avoid colloquialisms and hyperbole.
• Use title case for section headings.

Where's the User?

It is important to direct the user to the area in which an activity is taking place. For example:

This instruction does not tell the user where the Backup tab is - is it in a Workspace? If so, which one? Is it on a Site Dashboard?

Instead, start by placing the user in the correct location:

Here are code snippets you can use to direct users to the correct location:

Dashboard

Personal Workspace

Professional Workspace