Edit your site like a document, with CraftPages

One question we hear a lot: "I built my client a site in plain HTML. How do they change the opening hours without calling me?"

CraftPages is a good answer. It's a free, open-source desktop app for Mac, Windows and Linux, made by Vitalii Kiiko at MooMoo Web Studio. It opens a plain HTML site from a folder and lets you edit it like a document: click a heading and type. The layout and the code stay exactly as you wrote them.

We tried it from start to finish with a Pagehaus site, and it works as it is.

Publishing to Pagehaus

CraftPages publishes over SFTP, which every Pagehaus site has. In App settings, add a server connection:

• Server: sftp.pagehaus.app
• Port: 2022 (not the 22 it suggests)
• User name: your site's name
• Password: your Pagehaus password

Then, in Project settings → Deploy, choose that connection and leave Folder on the server empty. Press Publish site and your pages go up. After that, each publish uploads only the files that changed.

Our step-by-step guide has screenshots of each screen.

Handing a site to a client

This is what CraftPages is made for. Build the site your way, then install CraftPages on your client's computer with the same folder. They can change text, images and blog posts, and the code editor stays hidden unless you turn it on.

On a Personal or Pro plan, give them an SFTP login of their own, which can be limited to one folder, so you can take it away later without changing yours.

Two safety nets

CraftPages keeps a history of every publish, and Pagehaus keeps its own version history of your files. A mistake can be undone from either side.

If you change the address of a blog post in CraftPages, it writes the move to a _redirects file, which Pagehaus follows, so old links to the post keep working.

Thanks to Vitalii for making it, and for making it free.

— Ademar