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Quickstart: your first hour with Raytha

Updated

By the end of this walkthrough you will have a new Events section on your site with two published events, and a changed headline on your home page. You will touch every main part of the admin once.

What you need

  • A running Raytha site and an administrator account. If you have not installed Raytha yet, start with the developer quickstart; deploying on Railway is the fastest route.
  • About an hour. Nothing here is destructive, and you can delete everything you create.

1. Log in

  1. Open /raytha on your site's address, for example https://example.com/raytha.
  2. Enter your Email and Password and click Sign in. If your site uses one-time codes, enter the email address, then the One-time code you receive.

You land on the Dashboard, which greets you by name and shows totals and quick actions. If you just installed Raytha, the first screen you see is Create administrator instead; fill it in once to create the first account.

2. Create a content type

A content type is a blueprint. You are making one for events.

  1. In the sidebar, click Content types, then New content type.
  2. On the Create tab, enter Singular label Event and Plural label Events. The Developer name fills in as events. It is used in web addresses and templates and cannot be changed later.
  3. Leave Default route template as it is. It decides the address of each event, for example events/spring-open-house.
  4. Click Create content type.

Raytha creates the type with a Title field, a Content field and a view named All events. Events now appears in the sidebar under Content types.

3. Add a field

  1. On the Events items page, open the Settings menu and choose Fields.
  2. Click New field.
  3. Enter Label Event date, choose Field type Date, and click Create.

The field list now shows Title, Content and Event date. Field types are explained in Content types and fields explained.

4. Add two events

  1. Click Events in the sidebar, then New Event.
  2. Fill in Title (for example Spring open house), Content and Event date. Pick a Template; the default is fine.
  3. Click Publish.
  4. Repeat for a second event.

Use Save draft instead of Publish when you want to keep working privately. Only published items appear on the public site. See Create or edit a page, post or custom content item.

5. Show the event date in the list

  1. On the Events items page, open the View menu and choose Edit view.
  2. On the Columns tab, find Event date under Hidden columns and click Show.
  3. Open the Public tab. The All events view is already public: Published is ticked and Route path is events.

Views are covered in Modify, create and publish a list view.

6. Look at your site

  1. Click the globe icon labelled View live site in the top bar, or visit /events.
  2. You should see a list with your two published events. Click one to open its detail page.

Tip If /events shows no items, check that the items are published, not drafts. A Draft badge in the status panel means the item has unpublished changes.

The events are not in the site menu yet. Adding them is a two-minute job in Manage navigation menus.

7. Edit the home page

On a new installation the home page is a site page named Home, built from widgets.

  1. Click Site pages in the sidebar. The Home row has a Home badge.
  2. Click Layout on that row.
  3. In the hero section, click the pencil (Edit widget) on the Hero widget.
  4. Change Headline to your own text and click Save.
  5. Back on the layout page, wait for Draft saved to appear. Your change is saved as a draft and visitors cannot see it yet.
  6. Click Publish.
  7. Open your site's home page and check the new headline.

The full page builder is described in Site pages and the page builder, and every built-in widget is listed in the widgets reference.

Common mistakes

  • Choosing the wrong developer name. It cannot be edited after you create a content type. Use Content types and create a new type if you need a different one, and delete the mistaken type if it has no content.
  • Forgetting to publish. Saving a draft never changes the live site.
  • Expecting new fields to show everywhere. A new field appears in the item editor immediately, but you add it to a view's columns yourself, and your templates must print it. See Overview of the built-in templates.

Next steps

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