Getting started
Using BooshCMS
The guide for the person running the website. Nothing technical, and nothing that asks you to write code.
A guide for the person running the website. There is nothing technical in here, and nothing in the app will ask you to write code.
Signing in
BooshCMS asks you to sign in to GitHub, where your website lives. You get a short code to type into GitHub’s own page in your browser — the app never sees your password.
You are signing in as yourself, and you only ever get access to the websites your developer has already shared with you.
If you lose the computer, tell your developer, and remove access at GitHub → Settings → Applications → Authorized OAuth Apps → BooshCMS → Revoke. Signing out in the app removes it from that computer but does not do this.
Opening your website
After signing in you are shown the websites you can edit. Choose one and Boosh CMS fetches it — the first time takes a moment, after that it just opens. You never have to find a folder or know where anything is kept.
After the first time, it opens straight into the site you used last.
If you do not see your website, your developer needs to give your GitHub account access to it, and add a small settings file that marks it as yours to edit. Show everything else I have access to lists the rest, in case they have not added that file yet.
Under the list, Kept in names the folder your websites are downloaded to. You do not need to do anything with it — it is there so your developer can see where their copy is, and Change… moves where future downloads go. Websites already downloaded stay where they are.
Open a website folder on this computer is for your developer, for a website that has not been downloaded through the list above.
The screen
| The narrow bar on the left | Writing assistant, publishing, and the button that shows or hides the content list. Settings sit at the bottom. |
| Content | Your pages, your posts and your images. Tabs across the top switch between them. |
| The middle | Your website, live. It updates as you type. |
| The right | What you are editing. On a page this splits into Structure (the blocks) and Content (the fields). |
Both dividers can be dragged. Pull the right-hand edge of the preview across to give yourself more room to write; double-click the divider to put it back. The app remembers where you left it.
Writing a post
Choose the post type in the content list — Blog, or whatever your developer has set up — and either pick an existing one or press + to start a new one.
The fields on the right are the ones your developer defined. A star means the field has to be filled in before it can be saved.
Words is where the writing goes. It works like any word processor — you never need to type symbols to get formatting.
The buttons along the top cover bold, italic, headings, bullets and links. The ＋ button holds everything else.
Or just type /. A menu appears where you are writing, and typing filters
it: /h3 for a smaller heading, /image for a picture, /vid for a video,
/quote, /code. Arrow keys to move, Enter to choose, Escape to dismiss.
Everything available:
| Headings | Levels 2 to 6 |
| Lists | Bullet and numbered |
| Quote, Divider | |
| Picture | Choose from your library, or add a new one |
| Video | Paste a YouTube, Vimeo or video file address |
| HTML | For anything your developer gives you to paste in |
| Code block |
For anything longer than a paragraph or two, press Write for the big editor.
Saving
Your work saves itself. A moment after you stop typing it is written down, and the preview catches up about a second later. There is nothing to press.
At the foot of the panel you will see Saving… while that happens, then Saved. Alongside it:
- History — every published version, and a way back to any of them
- Save as draft — save it, and keep it off the live website
Saving keeps your work safe on this computer. It does not put it on the live website — that is a separate step, so you can work on something over several days without half-finished writing appearing publicly.
If you would rather decide when things are written, turn on Save changes myself in Settings → Functionality. A Save button appears, along with Cancel for throwing away changes since your last save.
Earlier versions
Every time you publish, a copy is kept. History at the foot of the panel shows them: when, and who. Choose one to read it, then Put this version back if you want it.
Putting a version back does not throw anything away — the version you had is kept in the list too, so you can undo it. If you have unpublished changes, you are told before they are replaced.
Changing the web address
At the top of the panel, under Web address. Click it to edit. Changing it changes where the page lives, so anyone who bookmarked the old address will not find it — worth avoiding once something has been published a while.
Building a page
Pages are built from blocks — the pieces your developer made for your site, like a hero banner or a row of cards.
- Add one with the + in the Structure panel.
- Reorder by dragging. Drop on the top or bottom half of a block to put yours above or below it; drop on the right-hand side of a block that holds other blocks to put yours inside.
- Rename a block by double-clicking it, so “Hero” can read “Opening banner”. This is only a label for you; it changes nothing on the website.
- Copy or remove with the buttons that appear when you hover over a block.
Click a block to edit it. With no block selected you get Page settings — the page’s title, its description for search engines, and anything else your developer added.
Pages made of sections
Some pages are a list of sections you arrange yourself — an introduction, a picture beside some words, a row of points, a quote, an invitation to get in touch. You will find them in the Content list, alongside your posts.
- Add a section opens a menu of the sections your developer built for that page. Pick one and it appears at the bottom, ready to fill in.
- Each section shows its own name and only the fields that belong to it.
- ↑ and ↓ move a section up and down the page. The order here is the order visitors see.
- ✕ removes one.
The page’s own fields — its title, its introduction, its search-engine settings — sit above and below the sections, in the same form.
If a section ever says the website does not have that kind any more, your developer has changed something. Nothing is lost; ask them about it.
Pages marked “View only”
Not every page is yours to change. Some are built in a way the app cannot safely edit — a blog listing that assembles itself from your posts, for instance — some your developer has simply not opened up, and on some websites pages are not edited here at all, by design. All are shown so you can see them and check them in the preview, and marked View only, with the reason in plain words when you click one.
On a website set up that way you will still do most of your work in the same place: the pages you build up from sections live under Content, alongside your posts.
Neither is a fault, and neither is something you can fix from here. If a page you need is View only, ask your developer to open it.
Fields marked “Set by your developer”
Some fields are filled in automatically — a list of reviews that keeps itself up to date, say. Those are shown but not editable, because the value comes from somewhere else.
Images and files
The Images tab is your library. It has two parts, and the difference matters:
- Images — photographs and pictures for your pages.
- Files — things people download or you link to: a brochure, a price list, a menu.
Drag things in, or use Add images / Add files.
Every image is made web-ready as it arrives: resized and re-saved so the page loads quickly. A photograph straight off a phone usually arrives around six megabytes and lands at a few hundred kilobytes. You do not have to do anything.
Files are left exactly as they are, on purpose. A brochure keeps a fixed web address, so a link you have already given somebody carries on working.
Folders
Both parts can have folders, so a few years of photographs stay findable.
- New folder makes one where you are standing. Names are tidied up as you
type — Team Photos becomes
team-photos— and you are shown what it will be called before you commit. - Click a folder to go in. The trail along the top takes you back.
- Anything you drop goes into the folder you are looking at, not the top. The drop area says which one.
- Delete folder removes an empty one. If there is anything inside, it says so rather than taking it with it.
To use an image, click Choose image on any image field, then browse to it.
Removing something puts it in your computer’s Trash, so it can be recovered. Anything still using it will show a gap.
Publishing
Before anything goes out you are asked What did you change? The box already has a summary of what the app can see — “Updated 2 posts in Journal and 1 image” — and you should replace it with what you actually did.
It matters more than it looks. That note is the only record of why something changed, and it is the first thing your developer reads if a change ever has to be put back. “Added the September timetable” is worth a great deal in six months; “Website update” is worth nothing.
Publish stays greyed out while the box is empty.
Some websites are set up so your developer checks changes first. If yours is, the button reads Send for review and you are told what happens next.
Publishing is deliberately separate from saving. The bar along the bottom tells you where things stand; to actually send your changes to the live website, use the publish button on the left-hand bar — the one with the small branching icon. A dot appears on it when you have something unpublished.
That opens a panel with Publish now.
You will see Published — live in a few minutes. That is honest: the website rebuilds itself after you publish, which takes a little while. Nothing is wrong.
If a setting no longer fits
Occasionally your developer changes what a block accepts, and something you wrote no longer has a home. The block shows it with the choice of moving it to the new field or discarding it. Nothing is lost — the value is held until you decide.
If someone else changed the same thing
If a colleague published a change at the same time as you, what happens depends on what it was.
A page is a set of separate fields, so almost everything sorts itself out. Anything you each changed separately is simply kept — both of you get your work. You are only asked about a field you both changed, and shown the two versions side by side to pick from.
A post is one piece of writing, so it is a single choice: Keep mine or Take theirs.
You are never shown a merge, and nothing is thrown away without you choosing it.
If something has gone wrong
Start again from the published website throws away everything on this computer that has not been published and takes a clean copy of the live site. It asks first. Use it only when something is genuinely stuck.
While your developer is working
If your developer changes something while you have the site open, the app keeps up:
- Something you are not looking at — the list quietly refreshes
- Something you are looking at but have not edited — it updates itself
- Something you are looking at and have edited — a bar appears asking whether to use theirs or keep yours. Your work is never discarded silently.
- A change to the blocks themselves — a bar offers Update
Settings
Reached from the bottom of the left-hand bar. There is no Save button: everything applies the moment you change it.
- Functionality — whether you save your own work or it saves itself, whether deleting asks first, whether the preview starts automatically, how images are processed, and where downloaded websites are kept
- Layout — which side the panels sit on
- Interface — text size, contrast, the five colours the whole app is built from, and the optional Smooth interface polish
- Panels — whether the block being edited is outlined in the preview
Setting up the live preview
The preview is optional. Everything else — writing, pages, images, publishing — works without it, and plenty of tools have no preview at all.
If it is not set up, Settings → Functionality offers to do it. Before it starts, you are told exactly what will happen: what will be downloaded, from where, roughly how long and how much space, and that it only affects this website’s folder on this computer. Nothing is installed until you say so, and you can stop it at any time.
Before anything downloads, the app checks how long each piece of software has been publicly available. Newly published software is where supply-chain problems show up, so anything released in the last week is listed by name and you are asked to confirm separately — it is worth checking with your developer first.
Where your developer has not pinned exact versions, only software that has been public for at least a week is used at all.
When it finishes, you are told whether any known security problems were reported in that software. If any are serious, mention it to your developer.
If your computer cannot do the setup — some work laptops are locked down — the app says so and carries on without a preview. Your developer can set it up for you.
Keyboard
Cmd/Ctrl + S |
Save now — you rarely need it, since work saves itself |
/ while writing |
Insert menu |
Esc |
Close whatever is open |
| Double-click a block | Rename it |
| Double-click a divider | Reset its position |