When information needs to be written down immediately two questions arise.

1. Where do I put this new document?
2. How do I structure the information in this document?

Authors should not need to think hard to answer these two questions. They should focus on the content, the information that needs to be published and be made available to stakeholders.

A document type (doctype) defines the properties and section for document instances. It also provides homepages and index pages. In Confluence these doctypes are implemented as page blueprints, usually with one single template. This template is used to create new pages in Confluence.