Edit your website with your assistant

If you have connected Drry to Claude or ChatGPT, it can build and edit your website with your own permissions: whole sites from a template, single pages, the look, the menu, photos, redirects from an old site and code. The website is a beta, so the list below can grow. See Connect Claude or ChatGPT and Your website (beta).

A good order for building a site

Your assistant is told to work in this order, and you can ask for it step by step:

1. Read the site as it stands: what visitors see at your address, every page, the header and footer, and how many popups, lists, code boxes and restore points it has.

2. Start from a whole-site template, or make pages one at a time.

3. Set the look.

4. Set the menu, footer and header.

5. Set search and sharing for each page, and for the whole site.

6. Check each page with a preview and Score.

7. Publish the pages, one at a time or up to 50 in one go. Each page is checked on its own, and you are told which went live and which did not, with the reason. Then choose the home page.

8. Run the launch check on the whole site.

What it can do

• Build from a template. Lay a whole site down from a template, or one single page, such as About, Services, Contact, Team, Pricing, FAQ, Testimonials, Work with me, Start here, Class schedule, Free resource, Speaking, Press and media kit, Portfolio, Podcast or Retreat. New pages are drafts at the end of the menu. A template's look goes on every page, published ones too, unless your own look is kept, which is the default once your site has pages. A restore point is saved first.

• Write pages. Every section type the editor has, on a website page: text, images, forms, booking sections, live sections for your courses, events and products, one of your lists, Latest posts from your blog, link lists, announcement bars, pricing tables and freeform layouts, with each section's style, spacing, colors and when it shows (every screen, desktop only or phones only). It can change one section at a time, move, copy or remove it, and save a section to reuse.

• Set the look. A tested color palette or one built from your brand color, a font pair, a label font, corners and buttons, on every page at once. It sends only what you ask to change. It can also put your community's own colors and fonts back on every page.

• Logo and tab icon. Set your logo, or the small icon on the browser tab, from a public address or from the picture itself. It counts against your storage, and it can change them 10 times an hour.

• Launch check. A read-only check of the whole site, on top of each page's Score. It fails if nothing is published, if every published page is kept off search engines, or if fill-in text is left in the header, footer, menu or the site's search description. It warns if only the home page is hidden, if a search title reads like a working name, if several pages share one title, or if the menu names drafts. The site is ready when nothing fails and every live page grades Strong. Stand-in copy such as a placeholder name or photo caption counts as fill-in text.

• Set the menu, header and footer. The menu, the footer's links, the header's layout and style, its button, an announcement bar, the footer's signup form, tagline and social icons, and the site's default search description and social picture.

• Search, sharing and who can see a page. A search title and description, a shared-link picture, hiding a page from search, and who can see it: everyone, members only, members on a tier and up, or anyone with a password. The password is written once and never shown back. The home page stays public.

• Photos. Photos from Drry's stock library, ones the page already holds, and photos in your page photos. It can add new ones: from a public address Drry fetches (up to 20 addresses in one call), from the picture itself, or through a one-time link, good for 30 minutes, where you drop one photo from your device. JPEG, PNG, WebP or GIF, counted against your storage. A photo no page shows is removed after an hour, unless your assistant asked to keep it for 30 days. A video you uploaded to a page can take a thumbnail the same way, from stock, a photo the page holds or a new one; your assistant cannot upload the video itself.

• Custom code. A custom section's HTML, CSS and JavaScript, and shared styles and a script for every custom section. With no script a block can be drawn into the page so search engines read it, and it can show a real form or booking picker from your forms and booking types. For a form, your assistant should stack a form section between custom sections, or use a form slot in a block drawn into the page, never draw a fake form in HTML. It can also fix a form's hidden values for one page, such as source=brokerages, on a form section or in a form slot, and it refuses a name the form has no hidden field for. Its answer names any block with words or photos written straight into its HTML instead of a slot, and says what the sanitizer removed from a block drawn into the page. See Custom code sections. Code that runs on every page (the three boxes, a page's own head code, Google Tag Manager) is for the owner and admins, goes live at once, and every save is kept.

• Lists. Make a list from a preset (portfolio, team, testimonials, press, case studies, services, or a blank one), change its name, address word, card style, fields and whether items get pages, add 1 to 50 items at a time as drafts or live, edit, reorder, publish, unpublish and copy items, and design the page every item gets, filled from each item's fields. At most 30 lists, 500 items each. Building needs Creator or Growth. It deletes only a list none of whose items was ever live. See Lists and item pages.

• Popups. Make a popup (a form, offer or freeform section) and set what opens it, on which pages and screens, how often a visitor meets it, its size, place and backdrop, and a date window. A new popup is always a draft. Putting one live reaches visitors at once, so your assistant should confirm with you first, and a popup with a form needs that form published. Taking one down works on every plan. At most 20 popups. Needs Creator or Growth. See Popups.

• Languages. Set the main language, add up to five more, word the menu and footer labels in each, and make a draft translation of a page to rewrite and publish. Adding a language puts nothing on the site until a page is translated and published, and removing one hides its pages and deletes nothing. Needs Creator or Growth. See Languages.

• Move from an old site. Read an old site's addresses, match each to a page, and save redirects, up to 100 at a time, live at once, permanently (308), so old links and search ranking follow. An address ending in .html, .htm or .php, like /about.html, is accepted, and an old index page counts as its folder. Any other file name, like /logo.png, is refused. A community holds up to 500. Changing a page's own address records no redirect, so ask your assistant to add one from the old address if links were shared.

• Check. Screenshots of a page as a visitor sees it, desktop, phone or both, a draft too. Score against the checklist. Custom code with no script is drawn from its HTML and CSS in the screenshot. Code with a script shows as a placeholder.

• Undo. List a page's earlier versions and put one back, and list the site's restore points, save one and restore the site, which keeps the current site first.

• Home, duplicate, delete. Make a page the home, copy a page, and delete a page that is unpublished, is not the home page, and that no published page or live popup links to. Deleting cannot be undone.

What stays with you

• Putting a new background video behind a section. Your assistant can echo or remove one a section already holds.

• Buying or connecting a domain, which is yours as owner. It can point your website at a domain Drry holds for you. See Connect your own domain.

• Going past your plan: five website pages on Free, and lists, popups and languages on Creator or Growth. The refusal names the limit.

• Reaching anything your own seat could not.

Tips for asking

• Give it your old site's address to match its colors and fonts, or to move its pages and keep the old links working.

• Ask for editable fields. A custom section can hold text, markdown, image and link fields that show as ordinary form fields in the editor, so you can change words and photos later without touching code. Ask your assistant to use them for anything you may want to change.

• Ask it to preview and score each page before you publish.

• Ask it to save a restore point before a big change to a live site.

• Look at History afterwards. Each earlier version of a page shows who made the change, an assistant included.

For everything an assistant can do across your community, and the permission screen you approve, see What an assistant can do and Assistant permissions and safety. For your blog, see Manage your blog with your assistant.