Overview

Description

Docs Manager is a full knowledge-base and documentation application for Invision Community Suite v5. It lets you write, organize, publish, and maintain documentation directly inside your community, complete with 13 selectable front-end designs, automatic tables of contents (sticky by design), revision history, reader feedback, member contributions, and deep IPS framework integration including native search, profiles, notifications, reactions, and sitemap support.

A demo can be found here:
https://administrata.net/docs/

Choose Your Look: 13 Front-End Layouts

The biggest thing that sets Docs Manager apart is choice. Pick the entire reading experience from the AdminCP with one setting:

documentation (default · sidebar + sticky TOC) · explorer (VS Code / IDE) · finder · notion · split · terminal · blueprint · notebook · accordion · apiref · readme · tui · mindmap

Every layout applies across the whole app - index, collections, categories, and document pages. Each one is fully responsive, and is built entirely around your theme’s variables.

Your docs don’t look like a forum add-on.
They look like a product.

Structure & Organization

• Collections → nested categories → documents

• Drag-and-drop ordering for documents and categories in the ACP

• SEO-friendly nested URLs

• Per-collection navigation trees with subcategory nesting

• index page with Featured, Popular, and Recently Updated sections

Organize a 5-page guide or a 500-article knowledge base with the same clean structure.

The Document Page

Each document includes:

• Automatic table of contents generated from headings, with a configurable minimum

• Previous / Next navigation within a category

• Related Documents, either hand-picked or using smart category fallback

• “Was this helpful?” feedback with accurate up/down counters

• Optional guest voting

• Reactions and Follow

• Full revision history with configurable retention

• Permission-gated Actions menu: edit, feature, hide, move, change author, delete

Deep IPS Framework Integration

Docs Manager is built on \IPS\Content\Item, so it behaves like first-class IPS content:

• Indexed in native IPS Search and the Activity / Discover stream

• A “Documentation” tab on member profiles, plus entries in /profile/X/content/

• Automatic XML sitemap inclusion

• Notifications for new documents, updates to followed docs, and reader feedback

• Reactions, Follow, and moderation states handled the IPS-native way

Member Contributions

Let your community help write the docs safely:

• Front-end submit and edit forms

• Draft → Published workflow, with optional auto-publish per group

• Granular group permissions: create, edit own / any, delete own / any

• Per-group daily submission rate limits

• Every edit automatically snapshots a revision

Reader Engagement

• Helpful / Not helpful feedback, unique per member and guest IP

• Reactions on documents

• Follow documents and categories for update notifications

Comments are deliberately not part of Docs Manager. Documentation thrives on structured feedback and revisions, not threaded replies.

Software Marketplace Bridge

If you also run Software Marketplace, link the two together:

• Attach a documentation article to any software item, where it appears as a button in the item sidebar

• Show a “Related Software” card on the document, above related docs

• One-to-one linking, kept in sync both ways

• The setting only appears when both apps are installed

Built-in Widgets

Docs Manager includes 5 layout-aware widgets:

• Featured Documents

• Popular Documents

• Recently Updated

• Category Navigation

• Documentation Search

Each widget is styled to match the active design.

Powerful Admin Control Panel

A full IPS-native ACP experience:

• Node-based Collections and Categories with permissions

• Document management: approve, feature, hide, move, change author, delete

• Drag-and-drop reordering

• Configurable layout, TOC, feedback, index, and revision settings

• Document-count recount task to keep totals exact

Perfect For

• Product and app documentation

• Help centers and knowledge bases

• Developer docs and API references

• Internal team wikis

• Guides, tutorials, and onboarding

• Release notes and changelogs