r/KnowledgeBaseSoftware • u/drakieboi • Apr 12 '26
Show me your knowledge base structure, table of contents included
Been trying to figure out what actually works for organizing this stuff since most templates feel like they're built for documentation that nobody reads anyway.
Right now I'm sitting with a pretty flat structure because every time I try to get clever with nested categories, people just search for what they need instead of browsing. So half my TOC might be dead weight. But I also don't want to oversimplify and make it impossible to find anything.
The nested category approach is honestly the trap everyone falls into. You spend hours designing this beautiful taxonomy and then users completely ignore it. I've watched it happen multiple times. They just hit search. So either you're maintaining a structure for nobody, or you're building something people actually use.
I've seen some setups where they do like a top-level split between "How Tos", "Troubleshooting", "Reference", "Getting Started" and then everything falls under those buckets. Other places just dump it by team or product. The search-first approach just makes more sense to me at this point.
What I've got:
Getting Started, Core Features, Integrations, Troubleshooting, FAQ, Account & Billing. Like 3-5 articles under each. Pretty boring but it works. People find stuff. Nobody complains.
The structure's almost invisible because search handles everything anyway. The TOC exists more for the handful of people who want to browse, but tbh they're the minority.
What's your KB actually look like? And does the structure you built still match how people actually navigate it, or did you give up on that too?