editable-website

A SvelteKit template for coding completely custom websites, while allowing non-technical people to make edits to the content by simply logging in with a secure admin password.

Check out the demo at editable.website.

See it out in the wild at sonjastojanovic.com, nisse.tech, michaelaufreiter.com, postowl.com, and trails-shop.at.

Read the discussion on Hackernews.

Editable Website won the 2nd price in the SvelteHack 2023. 🥳 We still can't believe it. Big thanks to the Svelte Society and congrats to the other winners, and everyone who participated. 🙏 So many inspiring projects!

But why?

It's a dynamic website but light as a feather compared to building on top of a CMS. It makes editing content self-explanatory for end-users.

Step 0 - Requirements

Node.js 18+
SQLite3

These are needed to run the example as is, but you can choose any other database and file storage solution.

Step 1 - Development setup

This is a full-fledged web app you want to adjust to your own needs. So please create a copy or fork of the source code and rename the project accordingly.

First clone the repository.

$ git clone https://github.com/michael/editable-website.git
cd editable-website

Install the dependencies.

npm install

Copy the contents of .env.example into .env and adjust to your needs.

DB_PATH=./data/db.sqlite3
ADMIN_PASSWORD=xxxxxxxxxxxx
ORIGIN=http://localhost:5173

Seed the database:

sqlite3 data/db.sqlite3 < sql/schema.sql

Once you've created a project and installed dependencies with npm install (or pnpm install or yarn), start a development server:

npm run dev

To create and test a production version of your app:

npm run build

You can preview the production build with npm run preview.

Making changes to your website

You can literally do everything that SvelteKit allows you to do. Below is the source code for the /imprint page, which has a <PlainText> title and <RichText> content.

<svelte:head>
  <title>Imprint</title>
</svelte:head>

{#if showUserMenu}
  <Modal on:close={() => (showUserMenu = false)}>
    <div class="w-full flex flex-col space-y-4 p-4 sm:p-6">
      <PrimaryButton on:click={toggleEdit}>Edit page</PrimaryButton>
      <LoginMenu {currentUser} />
    </div>
  </Modal>
{/if}

{#if editable}
  <EditorToolbar on:cancel={initOrReset} on:save={savePage} />
{/if}

<WebsiteNav bind:showUserMenu {currentUser} bind:editable />

<div class="py-12 sm:py-24">
  <div class="max-w-screen-md mx-auto px-6 md:text-xl">
    <h1 class="text-4xl md:text-7xl font-bold pb-8">
      <PlainText {editable} bind:content={title} />
    </h1>
    <div class="prose md:prose-xl pb-12 sm:pb-24">
      <RichText multiLine {editable} bind:content={imprint} />
    </div>
  </div>
</div>

<Footer counter="/imprint" />

To see the full picture, open src/routes/imprint/+page.svelte and src/routes/imprint/+page.server.js.

Please use this as a starting point for new pages you want to add to your website. editable-website is not a widget-library on purpose. Instead you are encouraged to inspect and adjust all source code, including the schema for the editors. I want you to be in control of everything. No behind-the-scene magic.

Making changes to the content

Just navigate to http://127.0.0.1:5173/login and enter your secure admin password (ADMIN_PASSWORD). Now you see an additional ellipsis menu, which will provide you an "Edit page" or "Edit post" option for all pages that you have set up as "editable".

Deployment to Fly.io

This repo contains the files you need to deploy your site to fly.io.

Create an account with fly.io. (Fly require an active, valid credit / bank card to prevent abuse, but the site runs well on their free tier. Unless you have a very busy site, hosting will be free.)
Install fly and sign in with fly auth login
Clone this repo to a directory on your computer
Enter the directory you cloned the repo to: cd myapp
Run fly apps create
1. Enter a name for your application at the prompt (e.g. myapp)
2. Choose a Fly organization to deploy to
Copy the contents from fly.toml.example to fly.toml and adjust to your needs. You have to change app = "myapp" and source = "myapp_data" to the app name you provided earlier.
Run fly deploy as shown below. Substitute your own values for the secrets and make sure to replace all instances of myapp with the name you chose when creating the application above:

fly deploy \
    --build-secret DB_PATH="./data/db.sqlite3" \
    --build-secret ADMIN_PASSWORD="your-super-secret-admin-password" \
    --build-secret ORIGIN="https://myapp.fly.dev"

The -a option in fly deploy lets you override the app name specified in fly.toml.

Fly will let you know when the app is deployed. Visit the URL shown in your terminal and sign in at /login with the ADMIN_PASSWORD you set above.

Connect a domain to your Fly.io app

Run fly ips list -a myapp to get the IPv4 and IPv6 addresses.
Head over to your DNS provider and add A and AAAA records for myapp.com with the IPv4 and IPv6 values.
Run fly certs create -a myapp myapp.com
Run fly certs show -a myapp myapp.com to watch your certificates being issued.

Fly.io Backups

You can pull a backup locally and run it to check if it is valid. That's also quite useful for developing/testing against the latest production data. For the best experience, keep your database small. ;)

Make a snapshot remotely
- fly ssh console
- sqlite3 data/db.sqlite3 ".backup data/backup-db.sqlite3"
- sqlite3 data/backup-db.sqlite3 "PRAGMA integrity_check;" (optional integrity check)
- Exit the remote console (CTRL+D)
Download the database and test it with your local instance
- rm -rf data/db.* (careful, this wipe the database files locally)
- fly sftp get data/backup-db.sqlite3 data/db.sqlite3 (and puts the downloaded backup in place)

To restore a backup in production, you need to be a bit careful and follow these steps (your site could be down for a few minutes during the restore).

Make sure nobody writes to the app
Make a backup remotely (in case something goes wrong)
- fly ssh console
- sqlite3 data/db.sqlite3 ".backup data/backup-db.sqlite3"
- sqlite3 data/backup-db.sqlite3 "PRAGMA integrity_check;" (optional integrity check)
- rm -rf data/db.* (this removes the current database files, not the backup)
- Exit the remote console (CTRL+D)
Copy your local db.sqlite3 file to production using SFTP
- sqlite3 data/db.sqlite3 ".backup data/backup-db.sqlite3"
- rm -rf data/db*
- mv data/backup-db.sqlite3 data/db.sqlite3 (the first 3 commands make sure db.sqlite3 has the very latest state)
- fly sftp shell
- cd app/data
- put data/db.sqlite3
- Exit SFTP client (CTRL+D)
Restart the app (so that the new DB gets picked up)
- fly apps restart

Get in touch

If you have questions or need help (with development or deployment), please email me at michael@letsken.com.

Examples

Community provided examples of additional features you can add to your editable website:

ChatGPT completion tool