Sign in and create a space

Your CMS is running, but it has no users and no content yet. The first time you open the admin, a short setup assistant asks for two things: the account that runs this CMS, and a first space for your content. This page walks through both.

Before you start, pnpm dev must be running in a terminal, as at the end of Create your CMS.

Open the admin

Open http://localhost:3000 in your browser.

You should see a page with “Welcome to your instance.” on one side and the heading “Create the administrator” on the other. The side panel lists the three steps of the assistant: Administrator, First space, Ready.

If the browser says it cannot reach the page, check the terminal where pnpm dev runs. It must still be running and show no error. If you see a normal “Sign in” page instead, somebody already created the first account on this CMS; sign in with that account.

Step 1: create the administrator

Fill in the form:

Field	What to enter
Name	Your name. It is shown in the admin, for example in the history of a page
Email	Your email address. You sign in with it
Password	At least 12 characters. Pick a good one and store it in a password manager

Click Create account.

This account is special: it becomes the superadmin of the CMS, which means it may do everything, in every space. It is also the only account that can be created this way. As soon as it exists, the setup assistant closes for good; everybody else gets an account from you later, under Settings > Users. See Users and roles.

Caution

Anyone who opens a fresh CMS first can become its superadmin. That is harmless on your own computer, but on a server, create this account right after the first start.

Step 2: add your first space

A space is one website or channel, with its own pages, languages, images and menus (see Key ideas). The assistant now shows the heading “Add your first space” and three choices:

Choice	What it does
Create a space	Sets up a new space. This is the one you want
Import a space	Restores a space that was exported from another Manablox, see Moving a space
Skip for now	Goes straight to the admin; you can create a space later under Settings

Click Create a space. A form appears. Fill it in like this:

Field	What to enter	Why
Name	Website	The name you see in the admin. You can change it later
Technical name	Fills itself in as website	Used by code and in addresses. It cannot be changed later
Frontend URL	Leave http://localhost:3005	The address of the website that shows this space, used for the preview. 3005 is where the starter website runs in Show it on a website. You can change it later
Locales	Leave English	The languages you write content in. Type in the box to search for more
Default locale	Leave English	The language used when a translation is missing
Start with	Empty space	See below

Under Start with, the assistant preselects Basic setup. Change it to Empty space for this guide:

• Empty space creates a space with no content types, documents or menus. In the next step you build a simple content type yourself, which is the best way to understand how Manablox works.
• Basic setup creates Page and Article types with a Teaser block, a published home, about and blog page with one article, and a main menu. It is great for looking around, but it already contains a “Page” type, so the next page of this guide would clash with it.

Tip

Want both? Follow this guide with an empty space now, and later create a second space with the basic setup under Settings > Spaces to see a finished example. With two spaces, the public API needs to be told which one to serve: set MANABLOX_SPACE in your .env file to that space’s technical name. See The public API.

Click Create space. After a moment you should see a short confirmation and the heading “Your instance is ready”.

Step 3: go to the admin

Click Go to the admin. You are now signed in as the superadmin and see the dashboard of your new space.

Take a first look around:

• The sidebar on the left lists the areas of the admin: Dashboard, Content, Templates, Menus, Workflows, Webhooks, Content types, Assets, Activity and Settings.
• At the top of the sidebar is the space switcher. It shows “Website”. When you have several spaces, you switch between them here.
• At the bottom of the sidebar is your account, with a button to sign out.

The full tour is in A tour, but you do not need it for the next step.

Changing the space later

Everything except the technical name can be changed. Go to Settings > Spaces, pick the space, edit the field and click Save changes. That is also where you create more spaces with the New space button. See Spaces and members.

Signing in next time

Next time you open http://localhost:3000, you see a “Sign in” page. Enter the email and password of the account you just created.

Next step

Your space is empty. In Your first page you tell it what a page consists of, then write and publish one.