Documentation — Anysite

Getting started

Anysite edits real files. A site is a folder of HTML, CSS, images and PHP; the editor changes those files in place, so what you see is what a normal web server will serve. Nothing is compiled and nothing is stored in a page builder's database.

Create an account, or ask the operator of this install for one.
Create a site. It starts private and gets a folder on disk.
Paste HTML, upload a ZIP, drop in files, or pull a live URL.
Edit visually or in code, then publish it when it is ready.

The first sign-in lands on your Overview: your sites, your plan, and activity on the sites you own or help with. Nobody else sees that feed.

Accounts, privacy and plans

Every new site is private. A private site answers 404 — the same 404 as a URL that does not exist — unless the visitor is its owner, an invited member, or an administrator. No title, no hint that a site lives there. The same rule applies on custom domains.

Publish — Site → Settings → Public. Anyone with the link can then read it.
Promote — a second switch. Only promoted, public sites appear on the front page. Publishing never promotes by itself.
Team — Site → Settings → Team. Invite the email of an existing account. Collaborators can edit pages and files; they cannot rename or delete the site, change visibility, invite others, or open admin screens.
Plans — your account has a plan with a site count and a storage allowance. Your Overview shows both; the operator can change them per account. New uploads are refused once the storage allowance is full.
Email confirmation — when this install sends mail, new accounts confirm their address before the editor opens. The link is in the message; it can be resent from the confirmation screen.

Importing a site

Four ways in, all producing real files under the site's folder.

Paste HTML — becomes index.html.
Upload files — folder names are kept; about/index.html becomes /about/.
ZIP — the archive is unpacked; unsafe paths and obvious webshells are rejected.
URL — the page is fetched and saved with a <base> tag. Its images and stylesheets stay on the original server unless you import them too.

Upload limits are set by the operator. PHP's own upload_max_filesize also applies.

Editing a page

Open a site → Open editor. The live page runs in a frame; click any element to select it. The right panel shows what you selected and the operations that fit it.

Design mode works on HTML pages only. PHP pages run on the server, so edit those as code.
Devices — Desktop, Tablet or Phone, or drag the frame handles to any width.
Save writes the file and a revision. Ctrl/⌘ + S does the same.
Undo / redo — the toolbar arrows, Ctrl/⌘ + Z, and Ctrl/⌘ + Shift + Z. They cover text, styles, effects, inserts, moves and deletes for the session.
History — each entry says what changed, shows a line diff against the current file, and restores in one click. The replaced version is kept.

Changes are batched: text, classes, attributes and styles are written on save. Structural changes are written immediately because the preview has to be rebuilt to stay accurate — undo covers them too.

Text without markup

The Text box is a rich editor, not a raw HTML field: bold is bold, links are links, line breaks are breaks. Typing over words keeps the surrounding markup. Press HTML when you want the source. The server still sanitises on save — inline tags, links and safe styles survive; scripts, event handlers and javascript: URLs do not.

Double-clicking text on the page types in place, with the site's real fonts and colours.

Drag, drop, rearrange

Drag any element. A line shows whether it lands above or below the element under the cursor. Hold Alt while dropping to swap the two elements. The Arrange row has Up, Down, Duplicate and Delete for precise moves, and blocks can be dropped in from the Blocks panel.

Every move is checked on the server: an element can never be moved inside itself, and the result is re-parsed before it is written.

CSS by clicking

Select an element and open Styles. Pick a property, type a value, apply. Simple changes become inline styles; the selector at the top can be copied into the site stylesheet when a rule should apply to more than one element.

Site-wide CSS lives at Site → CSS. It is injected into every page's <head> after the page's own styles, so it overrides without editing the file. Presets for glass, hover lift, gradient text and dark mode are one click away.

Fonts, effects, animations

The FX panel applies a named class and makes sure the CSS behind it exists once — in a single <style id="as-style-lib"> block in the page head. Nothing is hidden: the rule is in your file and can be edited or removed later.

Hover an effect to preview it. With an element selected, moving the pointer over any item applies it in the preview only; click to commit.

Fonts — 12 Google families, plus a site-wide base font in Site → Settings.
Effects — 30 surface, depth, texture, type and shape effects.
Animations — 28 entrances and loops, with a reduced-motion guard.
Gradients — 12 text gradients.
Yours — custom effects: write declarations once, name them, and they appear for every page and editor of that site.
Cursor — Site → Settings → Custom cursor changes the pointer for the whole site (crosshair, dot, ring, grab), or leaves the visitor's own.

Files, code and PHP

Code mode is a plain text editor over the same file, with line numbers and tab indentation. PHP files run with include inside their own folder, so $_SERVER, __DIR__ and relative includes behave normally. PHP pages cannot be edited visually; you get code only, on purpose.

Uploads go to uploads/, with extension and MIME checks. Windows executables, PHP and .htaccess are refused. Every save keeps a revision.

Export produces a ZIP of the folder — a normal static site any web server can serve.

Your own domain

Site → Settings → Custom domains walks through it. Add the name, then copy two records at your registrar:

a TXT at _anysite.<domain> with the token shown — this proves you control the name;
an A record to the server's IP shown in the wizard, or a CNAME for www.

Check DNS now reads the live records and reports exactly what is missing. It also asks the web server who answered, so a server that has not been told about the domain is never mistaken for bad DNS. Once verified, the site answers at that hostname's root; a private site still answers 404 to visitors who are not its people.

You never need server access for this: the operator sets up the install once to accept any hostname, and every domain added here is routed by the app itself. If the check reports a bare nginx/Apache 404, copy that message to the operator — it is a server setting, not your DNS.

Anysite does not register domains, create DNS records or issue certificates. HTTPS comes from the host: a wildcard certificate, Cloudflare, or Caddy.

Messages and announcements

The operator can message you directly; messages land in your Inbox with an unread count in the sidebar. Announcements are one-way notices in every inbox, and an announcement marked public also appears on this install's front page.