diff --git a/.gitignore b/.gitignore
index bcfd36db1..be52e6447 100644
--- a/.gitignore
+++ b/.gitignore
@@ -18,6 +18,7 @@ docs/tools
 *.log
 abci-cli
 abci/types/types.pb.go
+docs/node_modules/
 
 scripts/wal2json/wal2json
 scripts/cutWALUntil/cutWALUntil
diff --git a/docs/DOCS_README.md b/docs/DOCS_README.md
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..162fc1acd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/docs/DOCS_README.md
@@ -0,0 +1,19 @@
+# Documentation Maintenance Overview
+
+The documentation found in this directory is hosted at:
+
+- https://tendermint.com/docs/
+
+and built using [VuePress](https://vuepress.vuejs.org/) from the tendermint website repo:
+
+- https://github.com/tendermint/tendermint.com
+
+which has a [configuration file](https://github.com/tendermint/tendermint.com/blob/develop/docs/.vuepress/config.js) for displaying
+the Table of Contents that lists all the documentation.
+
+The `README.md` in this directory is the landing page for
+website documentation and the following folders are intentionally
+ommitted:
+
+- `architecture/` ==> contains Architecture Design Records
+- `spec/` ==> contains the detailed specification