The guide gives earlier the following example of a simple project creation : mvn archetype:create -DgroupId=com.mycompany.app -DartifactId=my-app Afterwards it gives the following example under "How do I create documentation?": "To get you jump started with Maven's documentation system you can use the archetype mechanism to generate a site for you without your existing project using the following command: mvn archetype:create -DgroupId=com.mycompany.app -DartifactId=my-app -DarchetypeGroupId=org.apache.maven.archetypes -DarchetypeArtifactId=maven-archetype-site " When executed on the same top level where the first project is created, Maven 2 complains my-app already exists - please run from a clean directory When executed in the my-app directory the generated directory is different from the one presented. A possible solution could be to replace the text under "How do I create documentation?" with (other artifactId and some other changes): "" To get you jump started with Maven's documentation system you can use the archetype mechanism to generate a site for you without your existing project using the following command : mvn archetype:create -DgroupId=com.mycompany.app -DartifactId=my-app-site -DarchetypeGroupId=org.apache.maven.archetypes -DarchetypeArtifactId=maven-archetype-site If you take a look in your directory structure it should look like the following: my-app-site

– pom.xml `-- src `-- site
– apt
	– format.apt
`-- index.apt
– fml
`-- faq.fml
– fr
	– apt
		– format.apt
	`-- index.apt
	– fml
	`-- faq.fml
`-- xdoc
`-- xdoc.xml
– site.xml
– site_fr.xml `-- xdoc `-- xdoc.xml

"" Br, Timo Westkämper.