Configure MkDocs to Ignore Certain Files or Paths under doc_dir

Context

MkDocs by default does not allow files to be ignored (ref: https://github.com/mkdocs/mkdocs/issues/1152#issuecomment-285091364). However, when the documentation site is big, the dev-server created with command mkdocs serve takes a long time to update. For users who want to only make local changes, the long waiting time for the site to update is an impact to the productivity.

Problem

How to make MkDocs ignore parsing/building some documents that user is not interested in seeing?

Solution

Use the plugin https://github.com/apenwarr/mkdocs-exclude