Lazysite

Manager

Web-based admin and content manager for lazysite.

Overview

The lazysite manager is a web-based admin UI built into lazysite itself. It lets you configure the site, manage users, install themes, enable plugins, edit pages, and clear the cache - all from the browser.

Manager pages are ordinary lazysite .md pages served through the normal pipeline, using a dedicated manager theme for consistent chrome.

Enabling the manager

Add to lazysite/lazysite.conf:

manager: enabled
manager_path: /manager

The manager is disabled by default. Access is the ui capability, granted through a group on the Groups page (the seeded lazysite-admins group carries it). Bootstrap in one command:

perl tools/lazysite-users.pl --docroot /path/to/public_html setup-manager

or add a user to the admin group:

perl tools/lazysite-users.pl --docroot /path/to/public_html \
  group-add alice lazysite-admins

(Capabilities on groups are the mechanism of record; the legacy manager_groups: conf key is retired and migrates itself away on upgrade.)

Accessing the manager

Navigate to /manager (or the configured manager_path). You must be authenticated and in a group carrying the ui capability. Unauthenticated visitors are redirected to /login.

Pages

Site settings

/manager/ (or /manager/config) - the Site settings item. Edit site identity and review the plugin registry.

  • Site settings - site_name, site_url, navigation file path, search_default, manager state, and manager path (manager access is granted on the Groups page, via the ui capability). The active layout and theme are shown read-only here with a link to Appearance, where they are changed. Saves to lazysite/lazysite.conf.
  • Plugin Manager (/manager/plugins) - lists all discovered plugins (every plugins/*.pl that answers --describe); tick to enable, untick to disable.
  • Plugin Config (/manager/plugin-config) - the per-plugin configuration UI for the plugins that are enabled.

Files

/manager/files. File browser for the docroot. You can:

  • Navigate directories
  • Open a page for editing (/manager/edit?path=...)
  • Create new .md, .url, and directory entries
  • Delete files (with confirmation)
  • Review the site's alias redirects in the read-only Aliases card (alias → target, with a 301/302 badge; aliases are authored in each page's front matter via aliases: / aliases_temp:)
  • Step through a file's version history (when the Content history plugin is enabled): each file's expand card gains a History panel listing every recorded version (when, who, what) with View (that version's raw content, read-only), Diff (against the current file) and Restore. A restore is written back as a normal save, so it becomes the newest version itself - always reversible.

The editor at /manager/edit shows:

  • Front matter form (title, subtitle, date) plus raw YAML toggle
  • Monospace editor for the page body
  • Live preview pane
  • Save button (writes file and invalidates cache)
  • Collaborative edit lock - only one user can edit a file at a time

Locks expire after 5 minutes and are renewed automatically while the editor is open. Leaving with unsaved changes prompts a browser warning first; cancelling the warning keeps your edit lock, confirming releases it.

/manager/nav. Visual editor for lazysite/nav.conf:

  • Drag and drop to reorder items
  • Indent and outdent to change nesting
  • Edit labels and URLs inline
  • Toggle between link items and group headings

Saves back to lazysite/nav.conf as YAML. Changes apply only on Save: an "Unsaved changes" note appears next to the Save button as soon as you modify anything, and the browser warns before you leave the page with unsaved changes.

Plugin Manager and Plugin Config

Plugins are split across two pages: Plugin Manager (/manager/plugins) enables and disables them, and Plugin Config (/manager/plugin-config) configures the enabled ones.

On Plugin Config, each enabled plugin appears with a form generated from its config_schema. Save writes the plugin's config file (e.g. lazysite/forms/smtp.conf for the SMTP plugin).

Plugins that declare actions (e.g. Run audit) show action buttons that invoke the plugin and display the result. An action can also come back asking for a decision - the Remote sync plugin's Pull does this when the same page changed both here and on the remote copy: the pages are listed and you choose Keep mine or Take theirs (a safety snapshot is taken first either way).

The Content history plugin (content-history) turns on per-file version history for the site content. Ticking the plugin on Plugin Manager is all it takes: an initial snapshot of the current site is recorded, then every save (manager, WebDAV, or AI connector) becomes a recorded version, browsable per file on the Files page (History / Diff / Restore). Unticking the plugin pauses recording and keeps every recorded version. On Plugin Config, Status reports whether it is recording, how many versions are recorded, and whether the host has the git package it needs (with Enable / Pause recording there for recovery). The history covers the content plus lazysite.conf / nav.conf and never includes secrets or personal data (accounts, form submissions, logs), so it is safe to sync to a private remote; full-system backups (see Backups) remain the disaster-recovery mechanism for exactly what the history excludes.

The Remote sync plugin (git-sync) keeps a copy of the site content on a remote server. It needs the Content history plugin to be enabled; configure the remote address, branch and access token here, then use Test connection, Push - send changes and Pull - fetch changes. Push never overwrites changes on the remote that you don't have - Pull them first.

Appearance

/manager/appearance (formerly "Themes"; /manager/themes redirects here). Manage layouts and themes and switch the active pair.

  • Active layout & theme - the switcher (moved here from Config); activating clears the HTML cache.
  • Layouts repo - the layouts_repo setting (and layouts_ref for the branch the catalogue is read from).
  • Browse the repo - the repo's manifest.json catalogue: install a single layout and its theme(s) on demand, with version info.
  • Installed layouts & themes - activate a layout; delete a layout (which removes its themes too, behind a confirm, and only when it is not active); per-theme activate / preview / rename / delete. Preview now works across layouts. A collapsed Backups panel collects the theme/layout snapshots taken automatically when a layout or theme is switched or deleted - safe to remove, individually or all at once (the active layout is never touched). A full-system backup (Backups page) also carries the current themes and layouts.
  • Upload a theme zip (must contain theme.json at the root with a non-empty layouts[] array naming installed layouts).

The same per-layout operations are available to partners over the control API and the MCP connector (layout-install / layout-delete / layouts-manifest; install_layout(update:true) redeploys a changed layout).

Users

/manager/users. User accounts (the same data files as tools/lazysite-users.pl):

  • Add, remove, and rename users
  • Set or clear passwords
  • Assign each user to groups from its card
  • A read-only capability grid (channel x action, derived from groups - capabilities are edited on the Groups page), sub-users, credentials, and onboarding

Selecting an account is separate from configuring it. The account list is a tree browser: opening a row selects the account - you see an identity banner (its name, whether it is a human or AI account, and whether it is top-level or a sub-user of another account) and, below, its sub-users. Sub-user rows are tinted so they read as nested at a glance. Editing is a deliberate second step: press Configure <name> to open that account's settings in a full-width editor sheet with a coloured header naming the account. The sheet is the same size and position however deep the account sits in the tree, so nesting never shrinks it and it is never ambiguous whose settings are on screen. Close it with Esc, the × button, or a click outside.

Groups

/manager/groups (under Access in the menu). View, create, and delete groups, and tick membership per group. A group is defined by its membership, so creating one needs a first member. (Per-user assignment is also available on the Users page.)

Sessions

/manager/sessions (under Access; needs the Users & groups permission). Lists the live sessions - user, signed in, IP address, device, with a marker on your own current session - and lets you:

  • Sign out a single session (its cookie stops working immediately).
  • Sign out everywhere for one user - all of that user's sessions, including any signed in before session listing existed.
  • Invalidate all sessions at once by rotating the signing secret - every cookie, including yours, stops working and everyone signs in again.

Sessions are still signed cookies, not server-side records: the list is an advisory registry written at login (self-pruned after 24 hours), and revocations are enforced at cookie verification. Sessions from before this feature cannot be listed, but per-user sign-out and secret rotation still kill them. Revocations are recorded in the audit trail.

Backups

/manager/backups. Typed snapshot sections - Content backups (create, download, in-app restore with an automatic pre-restore safety snapshot) and Full-system backups (download only; restored by a system user with install.pl --restore-full, since they carry the auth secrets). Backups are the disaster-recovery mechanism, including config and secrets; day-to-day content versioning lives in the Content history plugin (Plugin Manager / Plugin Config). Theme and layout snapshots are managed on the Appearance page.

Cache

/manager/cache. Cache inspection and invalidation:

  • Lists all cached .html files with age and source status
  • Invalidate a single cached page
  • Clear all cache at once (useful after theme changes)

Audit

/manager/audit. The material-action trail (logins, edits, deletes, config/theme changes, denied attempts) with who/what/when/where and the outcome. Filter by user, target, or a From/To date range; each row records the action's target (the page, the plugin, nav, etc.). Operations run on the shell with the users tool (setup-manager, account and credential changes) appear here too, with origin cli and the invoking system user; installs and upgrades appear with origin install. Browsing analytics live separately in Visitor statistics, not here. Viewing the audit trail requires the Audit trail permission - its own capability, separate from Analytics - granted through a group on the Groups page; it is read through an append-only cache, so only newly-appended lines are parsed on each load.

Visitor statistics

/manager/stats. A read-only dashboard from lazysite's own first-party access log: the site records its traffic itself (always anonymised at write - a daily-salted visitor key, never the IP), so statistics work out of the box with no web-server setup. The web-server access log is the fallback source when no first-party data exists. Because lazysite uses no cookies or JS, it classifies traffic by log-only heuristics into real people, the logged-in operator, AI assistants, bots and probe noise (each reported separately), splits referrers into external / internal / direct, links top pages to the live page, and shows per-day counts over a configurable window. If a server error log is readable (auto-detected), it also shows a synthesised summary of recent server errors (categories and counts only - never raw lines, addresses or paths). It never exposes any log file's path, and the raw logs are not downloadable through the manager. Provided by the opt-in Visitor Statistics plugin: the nav item appears only when the plugin is enabled - enable it on Plugin Manager (recording and retention are tunable on Plugin Config). An AI connector granted the Analytics permission can analyse the same data for trends via the analyse_visitors tool, getting only the aggregated, IP-anonymised figures (see AI connector tools and AI briefing - visitor analytics).

Admin bar on site pages

When the manager is enabled, the processor injects an admin bar on site pages (non-manager pages) for authenticated users with manager access (the ui capability). The bar shows:

  • Manage - link to /manager/
  • Edit - link to the editor for the current page
  • Sign out
  • Warning when the user has no password set

The admin bar sits in normal page flow at the top (it scrolls with the page, so it never overlaps a theme's own sticky header). Unauthenticated visitors and non-manager users do not see it.

Installation

The installer copies lazysite-manager-api.pl to cgi-bin/ alongside lazysite-processor.pl. The manager pages in starter/manager/ are served as regular lazysite pages; the manager's internal template in starter/lazysite/manager/ (D013: outside both layouts/ and themes/) supplies its chrome.

For manual installation:

cp lazysite-manager-api.pl /path/to/cgi-bin/
chmod 755 /path/to/cgi-bin/lazysite-manager-api.pl
cp -r starter/manager /path/to/public_html/manager
cp -r starter/lazysite/manager /path/to/public_html/lazysite/

Security

Manager access enforcement

Access to /manager and all sub-pages is restricted to authenticated users whose groups carry the ui capability. Unauthenticated users are redirected to /login.

Blocked paths

The manager API blocks read and write access to sensitive files:

  • lazysite/auth/.secret
  • lazysite/forms/.secret
  • lazysite/auth/users
  • lazysite/auth/groups
  • All .pl files

User and group management is handled through the dedicated Users page, not through direct file editing.

Path validation

All file operations validate paths with realpath() to ensure they resolve within the document root. Path traversal attempts are rejected.