How It Works

The platform uses a two-tier configuration system:

• System settings (hardcoded) - Infrastructure like domain names, blob storage prefixes, responsive breakpoints, and performance tuning. These require a code deployment to change.
• Site settings (database) - Everything else. Editable by Super admins in the Manager. Changes apply immediately after saving.

When a setting is not yet configured in the database, the platform falls back to sensible defaults. This means your site works out of the box — you only need to configure what you want to customize.

Multi-Site Support

The platform supports multiple site configurations in the database. One site is marked as the main site — this is the active configuration used across the platform. You can create additional site configs (e.g., for staging, seasonal branding, or A/B testing) and swap which one is main at any time.

The Site Config page shows the main site's inline edit form at the top, with a full DataManager table below for managing all site records.

Basic Info

• Site name - Appears in the browser tab, emails, footer, and SEO tags. Combined with the tagline for the homepage title.
• Tagline - A short phrase shown alongside the site name in SEO (e.g., "Build Better Websites").
• Description - The SEO meta description, limited to 160 characters for optimal search engine display.

Theme

The theme section controls the entire visual identity of the site.

Colors (Light & Dark Modes)

Each theme mode has its own full color palette. You can configure both independently:

• Primary - Buttons, links, sidebar accents, and interactive elements.
• Secondary - Active states, highlights, and hover accents.
• Tertiary - Supplementary accent color for special UI elements.
• Red / Green / Yellow / Blue - Semantic colors used for errors, success, warnings, and info throughout the UI.
• Grey / Light grey - Used for borders, muted text, and subtle backgrounds. These swap between light and dark modes.
• Background - The main page background color.
• Font colors - Separate colors for headings, subheadings, body text, links, and text on solid-color buttons.

Typography

Fonts are fully configurable per text type — headings, subheadings, and paragraphs each have independent settings:

• Font file - Upload a custom font file (WOFF, WOFF2, TTF, OTF) or use a CDN URL.
• Font name - The font family name used in CSS.
• Fallback - Comma-separated fallback font stack (e.g., "Arial, sans-serif").
• Scale - A proportional multiplier (0.75 - 1.5) applied to all sizes of that text type. A scale of 1.0 uses the base sizes; 0.9 makes everything slightly smaller.
• Letter spacing - Fine-tune spacing between characters (in em units).
• Line height - Vertical spacing between lines of text.
• Label scale - Controls form label size as a multiplier of paragraph size.

Borders

Three tiers of border radius and stroke width, each used consistently across the UI:

• Radius (sm / md / lg) - Controls corner roundness. Small applies to form fields and badges, medium to buttons and cards, large to hero sections and modals.
• Stroke (sm / md / lg) - Controls border thickness. Small for dividers and form fields, medium for buttons and focus rings, large for accent highlights.

Buttons

• Padding scale (vertical / horizontal) - Multipliers (0.5 - 2.0) that proportionally adjust all button padding across the site.
• Border stroke - Which stroke tier (sm/md/lg) buttons use.
• Border radius - Which radius tier (sm/md/lg) buttons use.

Theme Settings

• Use device theme - When enabled, the site detects the user's system preference (light/dark) and applies it automatically on first visit.
• Show theme switch - Show or hide the light/dark mode toggle in the footer.

Logo

• Light mode logo - The logo displayed when the site is in light mode.
• Dark mode logo - A separate logo for dark mode, or use the same as light mode.
• Favicon - The browser tab icon (.ico, .png, or .svg).
• Header scale (0.5 - 2.0) - Controls the logo size in the header. 1.0 is the base size.
• Footer scale (0.3 - 1.5) - Footer logo size as a percentage of the header size.
• Margin scale (0 - 1.5) - Spacing around the logo. 0 removes extra margin.
• Show site title - Display the site name text next to the logo.
• Show in footer - Display the logo in the footer area.
• Hover effects - Enable or disable logo hover animations.

Navigation

The navigation menu is fully configurable from Site Config without code changes.

Menu Links

Each menu item has these properties:

• Name - The display label.
• URL - Where the link goes.
• Type - Controls how the link renders:
  • normal - Standard text link.
  • button - Rendered as a button (e.g., "Sign In").
  • avatar - Shows the user's avatar when logged in (e.g., "Dashboard").
  • nested - A dropdown with child links.
  • category - Auto-generates sub-links from a table's categories (articles, products, or pages).
• Menu location - Choose where each link appears: header, footer, or both.
• Permission - Restrict visibility by role: visitor (public), user, admin, or super. Empty means visible to everyone.
• External - Mark as external link (opens in new tab).
• Grouping only - Acts as a label/section header without being a clickable link.

Social Links

A flat list of social media URLs displayed as icons in the footer.

Emails

• Admin - Receives critical alerts, new order notifications, and contact form submissions.
• Dev - Receives error reports and technical notifications.
• Support - The public-facing support email shown to users and used as the reply-to address.
• No-reply - The sender address for automated emails (order confirmations, password resets, etc.).
• Inventory - Receives low-stock and inventory-related alerts.

Locale

• Language / Region - Used for localization and SEO (e.g., "en" / "US").
• Currency - The store currency (USD, EUR, GBP, JPY, CAD, AUD, and others).
• Timezone - Affects how timestamps are displayed across the platform.
• Date format - Choose from MM/dd/yyyy, dd/MM/yyyy, yyyy-MM-dd, or dd.MM.yyyy.
• Business address - City, state/region, country, and postal code. Used for tax calculations and legal display.
• Area served - List of country codes your business serves. Affects shipping availability.

Hero / Slider

Controls the homepage hero carousel behavior:

• Slide speed - Milliseconds between automatic slide transitions (default: 5000ms).
• Pagination icon - Shape of the navigation dots (circle, square, or triangle).
• Show arrows - Left/right navigation arrows.
• Show dot nav - Pagination dots below the slider.
• Show bottom shadow - Gradient overlay at the bottom of slides for text readability.

Notices

Three independent site-wide banner notices, each targeting a different audience:

• System notice - Shown to all visitors (e.g., maintenance announcements).
• User notice - Shown only to logged-in users.
• Admin notice - Shown only to admin and super users.

Each notice has: active toggle, dismissable toggle, title, message, icon, background color, font color, and background opacity.

Checkout

• Require login - When enabled, guests must create an account before completing checkout.
• Condensed checkout - Skips the cart review step and goes straight to the checkout flow.
• Order queue - Queues orders during traffic spikes to prevent overselling. Options: auto (activates at 10+ orders/2min or 20+/5min), on (always queue), or off.
• Zero state - How free items are displayed: hidden (no price shown), zero (shows $0.00), or free (shows "Free").
• Payment disclaimer - Optional text shown during checkout (e.g., refund policies, legal notices).

Shipping

• Service all markets - When enabled, accepts orders from any country. When disabled, only countries in your domestic and international lists are accepted.
• Domestic rate - Flat shipping rate for domestic orders.
• Domestic countries - Country codes considered domestic (e.g., ["US"]).
• International rate - Flat shipping rate for international orders.
• International countries - Allowed international shipping destinations (only used when "service all markets" is off).
• Free shipping - Enable free shipping above a configurable order threshold.

Tax

• Enabled - Master toggle for tax calculation.
• Provider - Choose the tax calculation method:
  • static - Uses estimated rates based on location. No API required. Good for simple setups.
  • taxjar - Integrates with TaxJar for accurate, real-time tax rates. Requires an API key.
  • avalara - Integrates with Avalara AvaTax for enterprise tax compliance. Requires account credentials.
• Business type - Affects tax categorization: physical goods, digital services, or mixed.
• Enable fallback - If a TaxJar or Avalara API call fails, fall back to static rates instead of blocking checkout.

Purchase Limits

Configurable rules that restrict purchasing behavior. Useful for limited-edition drops, preventing abuse, or enforcing compliance.

• Enabled - Master toggle for all limit rules.
• Guest identification - How to identify guests for limit enforcement: by email, by session, or both.
• Enforce during cart - Check limits when items are added to cart (session-based).
• Enforce during checkout - Check limits at checkout (email-based, more reliable).

Limit Rules

Up to 10 rules, each with:

• Threshold - A max or min value that triggers the limit.
• Factor - What's being measured: number of orders, total quantity, or currency amount. Scoped per-user or per-order.
• Period - Time window: forever, day, week, month, or year. Can be rolling (last 30 days) or calendar-based (this month).

Example: "Max 2 orders per user per month" or "Max $500 per order."

Security

• Allow sign up - Toggle whether new users can register accounts.
• Password protection - Gate the entire site behind a password. Configurable title, message, and button text for the access page. Super-only setting.
• Blocked IPs - A list of IP addresses or CIDR ranges to block from accessing the site. Super-only setting.

Content

Controls for recommendation sections that appear on product and article pages:

• Other products - Show/hide, title text, number of items (1-12), sort field, and sort direction.
• Other articles - Same options for article recommendations.

Placeholders

Default fallback values used across the platform when no data exists:

• Form fields - Default placeholder text for name, email, address, phone, city, state, and zip fields.
• Images - Fallback images for missing avatars, product images, and hero banners.

Custom CSS

A free-form CSS textarea (up to 50,000 characters) that is injected globally. Use this for one-off visual tweaks that don't warrant a code change. Styles here override the theme system.

Who Can Edit

Only Super admins can access Site Config. Regular Admins cannot view or edit these settings. Certain fields (password protection, blocked IPs) are further restricted to Super-only visibility even within the form.