Documentation Preview

Documentation preview provides temporary environments for reviewing documentation changes before they merge and publish. Preview enables stakeholders to see exactly how changes will appear without affecting production documentation. This capability improves review quality and catch issues early.

What Is Documentation Preview

Documentation preview creates deployments of documentation with proposed changes. When contributors submit documentation updates, CI/CD pipelines build and deploy previews to unique URLs. Reviewers access these URLs to see changes in context, exactly as they will appear after publication.

Preview differs from local development by being accessible to anyone with the link. Contributors can share preview links with reviewers, stakeholders, or subject matter experts who may not have local development environments. This accessibility expands who can participate in documentation review.

How Documentation Preview Works

Preview typically integrates with pull request workflows. When a pull request opens or updates, CI/CD pipelines build documentation including the proposed changes. The built documentation deploys to a preview URL, often based on branch name or pull request number. The preview URL posts as a comment on the pull request.

Hosting platforms like Netlify and Vercel provide built-in preview deployment features. These platforms detect pull requests, build previews automatically, and manage preview lifecycle. Preview URLs remain accessible while pull requests are open and clean up after merge or close.

Preview scope may be full documentation or just changed sections depending on build configuration. Full documentation previews enable testing navigation and cross-references. Incremental previews build faster but may miss integration issues.

Key Considerations

• Preview URLs should be shared automatically on pull requests
• Preview environments should match production for accurate review
• Preview cleanup should happen automatically when pull requests close
• Access control may be needed for sensitive or unreleased documentation

Common Questions

How do teams handle preview for documentation with authentication?

Authenticated documentation requires preview access control. Some platforms support preview authentication matching production. Others generate signed URLs with expiring access. Teams may accept that previews are temporarily more accessible than production during review. For highly sensitive documentation, review may require local builds rather than deployed previews. The approach depends on sensitivity level and platform capabilities.

What is the relationship between preview and staging environments?

Preview environments are ephemeral and branch-specific while staging environments are persistent and represent pre-production state. Preview shows a specific change in isolation. Staging shows all merged changes before production promotion. Some teams use both, with preview for individual change review and staging for integration testing before release. Others rely on preview alone, deploying to production directly after merge.

Summary

Documentation preview provides temporary environments for reviewing changes before publication. Automatic deployment to unique URLs enables broad review participation. Integration with pull request workflows and automatic cleanup makes preview practical for routine documentation changes.