3. Locate and Edit Documentation

Owned by Sylvia Pearce (Deactivated)
Last updated: Apr 03, 2023 by Feanil Patel

Locate Documentation

Files are usually in the <username>/edx-documentation/en_us/<guide>/source/ folder. The following table lists the folders for each specific guide.

Note: Because there are partner and Open edX versions of both the Building and Running guides and the learner's guides, many of the files for these guides are in the edx-documentation/en-us/shared folder. The files in the course_authors, open_edx_course_authors, students, and open_edx_students folders contain .. include directives that reference the files in the shared folder. If you have trouble finding a file, check with the documentation team. 

Guide NameSource Files
Building and Running an edX Courseedx-documentation/en-us/course_authors
Building and Running an Open edX Courseedx-documentation/en-us/open_edx_course_authors
EdX Learner's Guideedx-documentation/en-us/students
Open edX Learner's Guideedx-documentation/en-us/open_edx_students
Installing, Configuring, and Running the Open edX Platformedx-documentation/en-us/install_operations
EdX Research Guideedx-documentation/en-us/data
EdX Developer's Guideedx-documentation/en-us/developers
Insights Guideedx-analytics-dashboard repo
API docsedx-platform/docs, edx-platform/djangoapps, other locations
IDA documentationmultiple - these documents live “with the code"
XBlock Tutorialedx-documentation/en-us/xblock-tutorial
OLX Guideedx-documentation/en-us/olx 

Edit Documentation

Edit documentation .rst files in Sublime. Use markup to format the text. An example .rst file with the most common formatting in the docs is available online in the EdX Style Guide or locally at edx-documentation/en-us/edx_style_guide/source/ExampleRSTFile.rst (after you clone the edx-documentation repo).

  1. In Sublime, open the file that you want to change.  You can also open Finder and navigate to the file.
  2. Edit and save the files that you want to update.
    In Github Desktop, you see the changed file, which is visible in the right hand pane, and is represented as an uncommitted change in the header. This denotes that you have changed the file on your desktop, but the file has not been committed to the project, nor has it been published to the online guide.

For more information about Sublime, see Documentation Tools.

Optional: Add Image Files (Finder)

You can use Preview or Grab (pre-installed on Macs), Snag-It, or another application to take screen shots, and then use Snag-It or Adobe Photoshop to manipulate them.

For step-by-step instructions for adding images to a topic, as well as image conventions such as size and call-out colors, see the edX Style Guide.