Quickstart Guide

This guide will walk you through everything you need to start using Contextium. From creating your account to inviting your first team member, you'll be up and running in less than 10 minutes.

Create Your Account

Getting started with Contextium begins with creating your account. Head over to contextium.io and click the Sign Up button in the top right corner. You can sign up using your email and password, or use one of our social login options for faster access—we support Google, GitHub, and GitLab.

After signing up, check your email for a verification link. Click it to confirm your email address and activate your account. You'll then be prompted to choose a subscription plan. Don't worry if you're not ready to commit—you can start with our free Starter plan and upgrade later when you need more features.

Set Up Your Workspace

Every Contextium account comes with a default workspace, but you'll want to personalize it to match your team or project. Think of workspaces as containers for all your documentation—each workspace has its own projects, files, and team members.

To customize your workspace, navigate to Settings in the sidebar and select Workspace. Here you can update your workspace name to something meaningful like "Engineering Docs" or your company name. You can also set a custom workspace slug, which appears in your URLs. For example, if you set your slug to acme-docs, your workspace URL will be app.contextium.io/acme-docs.

This slug is permanent once set, so choose something that makes sense for your team and that you won't want to change later.

Create Your First Project

Projects are how you organize related documentation files in Contextium. You might create separate projects for your API documentation, user guides, internal wikis, or any other category that makes sense for your workflow.

From your dashboard, click the Create Project button. Give your project a descriptive name like "API Documentation" or "Product Specifications." You can add an optional description to help team members understand what the project contains. Once you're happy with the details, click Create and your project will appear in your workspace.

Add Your First File

Now comes the fun part—creating your first piece of documentation. You can add a file from two places: either click Add File from your dashboard, or select a project first and then click New File to add the file directly to that project.

When creating a file, you'll need to give it a name like "Getting Started" or "API Overview." Then you're free to start writing. Contextium uses Markdown for formatting, which makes it easy to add headings, lists, links, code blocks, and more without leaving your keyboard.

As you write, your changes are automatically saved every 10 seconds. You can also manually save anytime by pressing Cmd + S on Mac or Ctrl + S on Windows. Every save creates a new version in your file's history, so you can always go back if you need to.

Invite Your Team

Documentation is better when it's a team effort. To invite colleagues to your workspace, navigate to the Team section in your sidebar. Click Invite Member and enter their email address.

You'll need to select a role for each person you invite:

• Owner — Full access to everything, including billing and workspace deletion
• Admin — Can manage team members, projects, and workspace settings
• Editor — Can create and edit files but can't change workspace settings
• Viewer — Read-only access to all documentation

After selecting the appropriate role, click Send Invitation. Your team member will receive an email with instructions to join your workspace. If they don't have a Contextium account yet, they'll be prompted to create one as part of accepting the invitation.

What's Next?

You've created your account, set up your workspace, and added your first documentation. Here are some recommended next steps to get the most out of Contextium:

Learn about version control — Every change in Contextium is tracked automatically. Visit our Version Control guide to understand how to view history, compare versions, and restore previous content.

Understand roles and permissions — Make sure you're giving team members the right level of access. Our Roles and Permissions guide explains each role in detail and helps you decide who should have what access.