Site Owner Guide

DesertCMS has two admin experiences that use the same engine.

Experience	Purpose
MasterCMS	Platform and operator control plane for the main site, contributor sites, service plans, provisioning, governance, review, operations, upgrades, and provider settings.
SubCMS	Hosted site builder for a contributor or customer site. The contributor manages their site content, media, design, enabled plan features, billing, and account help.

If you are signed into a hosted contributor site, the admin should feel like a site builder. It should not ask you to manage platform operations, provider credentials, fleet state, upgrades, or contributor lifecycle tools.

Contributor Product Mode

A DesertCMS instance becomes a contributor product experience when its config has contributor_site_id or contributor_domain set.

Contributor product mode changes the admin shell, navigation, labels, dashboard, feature catalog, and route policy. The contributor navigation is:

• Home
• Site Builder
• Pages
• Posts
• Media
• Design
• Features
• Billing
• Account / Help

The master operator navigation stays separate and includes platform surfaces such as Master Control, Operations, Contributor Sites, Blueprints, Service Plans, Governance, Federated Review, Provider Readiness, and Upgrade.

Home

The contributor Home page is a site dashboard, not an analytics console. It is meant to answer:

• Is my site active?
• What plan am I on?
• How much media storage am I using?
• What should I edit next?
• Are there locked features I can upgrade for?
• Do I need to finish onboarding?

Use the quick actions for common work:

• Edit the site builder pages.
• Create or update pages.
• Create or update posts.
• Upload media.
• Open Design.
• Open Billing.

Site Builder

Site Builder is the editing center for the public site. It is for building pages with visual blocks and reusable structure.

Common blocks include:

• Text
• Image
• Resource
• Quote
• Link
• Content reference
• Module sections such as Showcase, Forms, Shop, Map, and Documentation when enabled

Images use public optimized derivatives. Resource blocks are for files that have been explicitly published as public Resource Downloads. Private source files are never exposed just because they were uploaded.

Pages And Posts

Pages are stable site sections such as About, Services, Portfolio, Contact, or Documentation.

Posts are dated updates, articles, notes, announcements, or stories.

Use Pages and Posts to:

• Draft new content.
• Edit existing content.
• Publish or unpublish content.
• Set title, slug, excerpt, meta title, and meta description.
• Add tags, collections, location data, or media when those features are available.
• Rebuild the public site after changes.

Publishing writes static public pages into the public webroot. The admin remains dynamic, but the public side is static-first.

Media

Media is a private-first asset library.

DesertCMS stores the uploaded source file outside the public webroot. Public pages use separate public output:

• Images get optimized public derivatives and responsive sizes.
• Documents, data files, audio, and video stay private until explicitly published as Resource Downloads.
• Private previews, such as PDF thumbnails or video posters, are for authenticated admin use.

The Media Library includes filters for:

• Images
• Documents
• Audio
• Video
• Resources
• Unused
• Published
• Private Source Only

You can organize media with titles, descriptions, alt text, categories, tags, and collections. Search covers names, titles, descriptions, snippets, file type labels, tags, categories, collections, and public paths.

Design

Design controls the public look and discovery settings for the site.

Use it for:

• Site name and identity.
• Logo and header choices.
• Theme mode and color presets.
• Typography and layout.
• Footer content.
• Basic SEO defaults.
• Sitemap, robots, Search Console, and IndexNow settings when allowed.

Contributor sites inherit platform-managed provider defaults unless the assigned plan allows a specific override.

Features

Features is the contributor-facing module catalog.

Each feature can be:

• Available and enabled.
• Available but disabled.
• Locked by plan.
• Requiring upgrade.
• Managed by the master platform.

Current first-party features include:

Feature	What it adds
Map	Public map page and location pin data for published content.
Shop	Public /shop storefront, catalog pricing, orders, and Stripe Checkout.
Showcase	Public /showcase/ page for portfolios, case studies, collections, products, archives, artwork, venues, samples, and public resource downloads.
Forms	Public /forms/ contact, quote request, application, intake, RSVP, private upload, and Postmark notification workflows.
Documentation	Public /docs/ documentation area generated from Markdown files.
Resource Downloads	Public downloads for selected private source files.
Contributor Requests	Master-managed public contributor application workflow.

On contributor sites, Contributor Requests is managed by the master platform and is not a contributor-owned feature.

Forms

The Forms feature can act as more than a contact page. Site managers can enable these public request types:

• Contact.
• Quote Request.
• Application.
• Intake Form.
• RSVP.

Submissions are stored in the local inbox with structured details such as phone, organization, preferred date, event date, guest count, budget, and message text.

Supporting file uploads stay private. Uploaded files are not copied into the public site; signed-in admins download them from the Forms inbox.

Postmark notifications can be enabled for new submissions. The module uses the configured Forms recipient, or falls back to the contributor request recipient when one is available.

Billing

Billing is central for hosted contributor sites.

It shows:

• Current plan.
• Billing status.
• Current period.
• Media quota.
• Per-file upload limit.
• Page and post limits.
• Enabled and locked features.
• Upgrade or cancellation actions.
• Stripe-hosted plan management when configured.

Some features are paid plan options. Examples include Resource Downloads, custom Postmark sender signatures, Stripe Connect payouts for site payments, indexing overrides, and higher media limits.

Account / Help

Account / Help is for the signed-in user, plan help, support contact, billing help, docs links, and platform status.

Use it to:

• Review account and plan details.
• Find the site owner support contact.
• Open Site Owner docs.
• Open design or billing docs.
• Check whether Postmark, Stripe, indexing, and maintenance are platform-managed or plan-customizable.

What Contributors Do Not Manage

Contributor site managers should not need to manage:

• Platform upgrades.
• Root workers.
• Server packages.
• OpenBSD pf, httpd, slowcgi, or TLS files.
• Postmark platform credentials.
• Stripe service billing credentials.
• Provisioning queue internals.
• Fleet health.
• Contributor lifecycle tools.
• Governance and federated review.

Those remain MasterCMS responsibilities.