Getting Started

Stand up your own Seedly Sites instance - a free local sandbox first, then a guided go-live on Railway and Cloudflare.

You bought Seedly Sites and downloaded the code. This page is the plain-English overview of getting from a ZIP file to a live client site. The detailed, step-by-step chapters live in the full install walkthrough and the go-live guide.

The Shape of Setup

Setup happens in two stages, in this order:

Local sandbox first. You run the whole platform on your own computer - the admin, the visual builder, and a rendered site. It uses a small built-in file database, so there are no accounts, no keys, and no cost. This proves everything works before you touch any hosting.
Then go live. You provision the real infrastructure: Railway (the app, its Postgres database, and the builder service), Cloudflare (Pages hosting plus R2 media storage), and a private GitHub repository that runs the publish pipeline, plus SendGrid for the platform's emails and an Anthropic API key for the AI features. Then you create your operator login and your first client site, and hand the platform's scheduled jobs from GitHub to your CMS with npx pnpm run setup:scheduler.

The Setup and Readiness page in a local Seedly Sites sample lists required integrations and marks them Not set before live configuration.

Estimated time: 15 to 30 minutes for the local sandbox, then a few hours of hands-on work, spread across a day or two, for the live setup, plus waiting on DNS and email-domain verification. You can stop anywhere and resume.

The Fastest Way: Let Pixl Lead

Illustrated setup path: run the setup command with Pixl, check the local sandbox, then prepare live hosting and provider accounts.

Staged terminal example of Pixl's welcome, the setup command, and the eight setup sections. The text follows the delivered setup companion; this is an illustration, not a terminal recording.

From the project folder in a terminal, run:

Code example

npx pnpm run setup

That launches Pixl, the setup companion, who walks you through the whole thing one small step at a time. It is the recommended path for everyone, technical or not.

Pixl uses a few commands you can also run yourself at any point:

Command	What it does
`npx pnpm run setup:check`	The "doctor" - checks your setup and names anything missing or misconfigured, in plain English
`npx pnpm run gen:secrets`	Generates the platform's own secret values
`npx pnpm run provision`	Sets up your local sandbox, then guides the live provisioning

Three Paths, Same Destination

Pick whichever suits you (or mix them):

Pixl, the companion. Run npx pnpm run setup and follow along. Best if you want to be led step by step.
Claude Code drives. If you use Claude Code, open the project folder and ask it to read the setup guide and walk you through it one chapter at a time. The download includes a start file that tells it how to guide you safely.
The handbook, by hand. The download ships with a numbered chapter manual (welcome, installing Claude Code (optional), prerequisites, run locally, GitHub, Railway, Cloudflare, domain and DNS, secrets, first operator and tenant, integrations, optional billing, pre-launch checklist, launch, day-2 operations, and an optional dashboard tour). Follow it in order.

What You Will Have at the End

A local sandbox where the platform, the builder, and a rendered site all work on your machine.
A live instance: the CMS and builder on Railway, media on R2, and a publish pipeline in your own private GitHub repository.
Your operator login, your first client site (tenant), and a real published site on its own domain.

From there, the working loop is simple: build pages in the visual builder, publish your changes in the CMS, and press Deploy to push the site live. Publishing and deploying are two different steps - publishing saves content, and nothing changes on the live site until you deploy. That rule is worth internalizing early; see Core Concepts.

If You Get Stuck

Run the doctor: npx pnpm run setup:check. It names what is wrong.
Check Troubleshooting.
Look up any confusing term in the Glossary.
Ask in the Seedly community group on Facebook.

Next: the full install walkthrough, then go live.

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Use the handbook and release notes included with your download for version-specific instructions.

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