Let clients edit their site

"But I can't update it myself" is the most common objection a bespoke site meets next to Wix or WordPress, and the editor answers it. The owner clicks their own text and photos to change them, and nothing goes live until they press Publish.

Add it to a site

When a client converts, or is wavering on exactly this point, pick Make site editable (CMS) under Client add-ons on the Runs page, choose the client and press Start. Klaudius adds the editor, checks every page still reads exactly as before, and tests the sign-in on the live site. You get the owner's setup password and a ready-to-forward note in the owner's language.

What the owner gets

The editor is at the site's address plus /admin. The owner edits their pages in a live preview: click a headline and type over it, or tap a photo to replace it, from a phone or a computer.

• Publish puts changes live, and Save draft keeps unfinished ones private.
• Undo takes a change back, and Earlier versions restores any of the last 20 published versions, or the site as first built.
• Photos are resized automatically, multi-page sites are covered, and edits survive every redeploy.

The owner can change contact details and opening hours, headlines and section text, services, reviews (real ones only), price lists, and every photo and caption. Menu labels, the logo and the layout stay as built, so an edit can't break the page.

Accounts and roles

The owner signs in once with the setup password and creates their own account, and the setup password then stops working. From their Team page they can give anyone who helps a sign-in of their own, as an Owner, an Editor, or Bookings staff who only see the bookings. Vercel's firewall turns away a connection that tries more than 10 passwords in 10 minutes. The accounts are stored with the site on Vercel, so there's nothing extra to run.

• Your own access. Ask the owner to invite you from their Team page.
• A forgotten password. "Forgot your password?" on the sign-in page works if the site can send email; otherwise an owner makes a reset link on the Team page. If no owner can sign in, Klaudius can make a link for you to pass on. It works once, for 3 days.
• Invite and reset emails. By default, the editor shows these links on screen to pass on. Ask Klaudius to set up the editor's emails to send them by email instead.

Before you pitch it

What it costs. No monthly platform fee for you or the owner. Content and photos are stored on your Vercel account; a small site's saved versions and a few dozen photos come to around 40 MB. Site visitors use almost none of your account's allowances; the owner's editing does.

If Vercel emails you about storage usage on your account, ask Klaudius to reduce the editor's storage use. It checks every editor site reads its content through the cache, and fixes any that doesn't.

Price it as a feature. "You can edit everything yourself, no WordPress, no plugins, no monthly platform fee" supports a higher one-off price or a maintenance fee; see Pricing.

Never rebuild it. Klaudius changes an editor site in place, because a rebuild would remove the editor.

Brand colours and fonts

If a client wants to restyle the site themselves, ask Klaudius to add brand colours and fonts to their editor. The owner then picks an accent colour from a set of swatches and a heading font from a short list chosen for the business. Every choice keeps text readable. Page backgrounds and body text colours stay as built.

Sites with an older editor

• A single shared password: ask Klaudius to "upgrade the sign-in on Acme Bakery to personal accounts". You get a new setup password for the owner, and only the owner: whoever uses it first owns the site.
• The section-by-section editor: ask Klaudius to "upgrade the CMS on Acme Bakery to the visual editor". The owner's content carries across, but edits now go live only when they press Publish, so Klaudius gives you a new handover note.

Read more on the blog: Give every client their own CMS.