Table of Contents
Managing content for two similar products
Avoid duplicating docs for similar products. Use Clips for shared content. Write once, reuse everywhere. Structure categories by customer perspective, handle differences inline or with separate articles.
If you have two products that share most of their documentation but differ in a few places, you don't have to choose between duplicating everything or merging it into one confusing mess. This guide covers the cleanest way to handle it.
The trap to avoid: duplicating shared content
The tempting first instinct is to create one category per product and copy the shared articles into both. Avoid this. Duplicated content means:
- Every edit has to be made twice (and it's easy to forget the second copy).
- The two versions slowly drift apart and contradict each other.
- Customers can land on the wrong or outdated version.
- Search and AI answers get muddied by near-identical pages.
The principle: write once, reuse everywhere
The goal is a single source of truth for shared content. Write the common material once, then reuse it wherever it's needed. When you update the original, every place it appears updates automatically.
In HelpDocs, this is what Clips are for. A Clip is a reusable block of content you create once and drop into multiple articles. Insert the dynamic version and any edit to the Clip flows through to every article that uses it.
To insert one, type /clip in the block editor and choose the Clip you want.
How to set it up
- Identify the chunks of content that are identical (or nearly identical) across both products.
- Turn each of those chunks into a Clip.
- Build your product articles by combining the shared Clips with the product-specific content.
- When something shared changes, edit the Clip once. Both products stay in sync.
Structuring your categories
Once shared content is handled by Clips, the "one category or two?" question gets easier. Base the decision on how your customers think about the two products.
Option A: Two product categories
Choose this when customers clearly identify with one product or the other ("I'm a Product A user").
Each product gets its own category, but the articles inside are built mostly from shared Clips plus the unique 20%. You get clean, product-specific navigation without maintaining duplicate content.
Option B: One unified set of articles
Choose this when A and B are really variants, tiers, or editions of the same product. Keep a single set of articles and handle the differences inline rather than splitting everything in two.
A quick test: if a customer often isn't sure which "product" they have, a unified structure with clear in-article labels will serve them better than two parallel categories.
Handling the 20% that differs
How you handle the differences depends on how big they are.
- Small differences (a different button name, an extra step): keep them inline in the shared article with a clear callout or an extra numbered list item. For example, "👉 On Product B, this setting lives under Advanced." A toggle or accordion works well here too.
- Substantial differences (a genuinely different workflow or screenshots): split that piece into a product-specific article, and link to it from the shared content.
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