Welcome to Diplodocus

Diplodocus hero

Diplodocus is a markdown-first, zero-build documentation site. Drop a folder of .md files into your project, point your browser at index.php, and you have a clean, searchable spaces site — sidebar, TOC, dark mode, code highlighting, and image galleries included.

No Node. No npm. No database. No build step. Just PHP and markdown files.

The one-sentence pitch

Rename a file on disk. Refresh the browser. The sidebar has changed.

That's the whole product.

How it compares

Diplodocus Mintlify Docusaurus Plain GitHub
Language PHP React/Node React/Node —
Build step ❌ none ✅ required ✅ required ❌ none
Database ❌ none ❌ none ❌ none ❌ none
Hosting Any PHP host SaaS / Vercel Vercel / Netlify github.com
Works offline in one folder ✅ ❌ ❌ ⚠️ partial
Renders on GitHub if Diplodocus is removed ✅ ❌ ❌ ✅
Search ✅ client-side ✅ ✅ (Algolia) ❌
Image gallery ✅ ⚠️ ⚠️ ❌
Open source ✅ MIT ❌ SaaS ✅ MIT —

What you get out of the box

  • Automatic sidebar from your folder structure
  • Multi-project — host many spaces under one install
  • Table of contents generated from ## headings with scroll-spy
  • Syntax highlighting via highlight.js (PHP, JS, Python, Go, Rust, + 180 more)
  • Attachment gallery — images, PDFs, CSVs, JSON, all previewable
  • Dark mode — flip a CSS variable, whole site repaints
  • Security scan — catches API keys, passwords, secrets in your markdown
  • Markdown lint — heading hierarchy, link validity, code block completeness

You are here

This getting-started/ folder you're reading is a Diplodocus project. Every feature the engine supports is demonstrated in one of the 13 pages in the sidebar. Click through them in order and you'll have seen the whole product.

Tip — The sidebar on the left lists every page in this guide. The "On this page" panel on the right (desktop only) is the table of contents for the current page.

Where next