User guide · Dashboard

Edit in the dashboard

The dashboard is where you change the words on your site. You pick the text on the page, type the new wording, see it in place, and commit. It runs on your own machine and works on every site you've added to it.

You need stet installed in the site (the quickstart gets you there) and the site in git. This page covers snapshot-only sites, where your commit is the publish.

01Start it

Run stet dev in the site and the dashboard opens in your browser. It listens on 127.0.0.1 only, so nobody else on your network can reach it.

The sites you've opened before are listed on the left. Add another by pasting its folder path, or start with --add. --port picks a different port and --no-open skips the browser.

$ npx stet dev
dashboard: http://127.0.0.1:4400/?t=…

02Find the words

Pick a page and the key list shows the text on it. Each key says what it is on the page: a headline, a paragraph, link text, image alt text. Search finds a key by its name or its words.

Pick a key and the preview scrolls to its text and outlines it.

Keys · home — page6
home_headlineheadlineRoasted this week.
home_introparagraphPosted the day we roast.
home_shop_linklink textShop beans
home_roaster_altimage alt textOur roaster

03Type the new wording

The page changes as you type, in its own fonts and layout. A counter shows the length, and a key with a limit won't save past it.

Check it at Desktop, Tablet and Mobile widths, or type a route to see any other page.

home_headline · headline1 unsaved edit
Roasted Tuesday, with you by Friday.
36

04Save, commit, push

Save to repo writes the new words to content/defaults.json and to the pages that show them. The header then counts the files waiting, and Commit commits exactly those, with the changed keys named in the message.

Push sends your commits to the site's remote. It appears once everything stet wrote is committed. On a snapshot-only site the commit is the publish, so your usual deploy puts the words live.

After Save to repo
Wrote content/defaults.json, index.html
2 stet files not yet committedCommit
Committed aada224 — stet: 1 key updated — home_headline

05Titles and descriptions

Page titles and meta descriptions sit together in the SEO group. Open one and you see it the way people will: as a search result and as a share card, drawn from what you're typing.

Search result
/about.html
About us
Two people, one roaster. Roasting since 2019.

06Text built from other text

A description that repeats text from the page follows that text. Its template holds the fixed words, with {v} standing for the text it follows. Change that text and the description changes with it.

Open the description to edit its template. The text it follows is outlined with a dashed line on the page.

derived from: headline (about_headline)
Template
{v} Roasting since 2019.
Reads as
Two people, one roaster. Roasting since 2019.

07Sites with a dev server

A plain HTML site previews straight away. A Next.js, React or Astro site previews through its own dev server: click Start the dev server and your site appears in the preview, ready to edit.

PreviewStart the dev server