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Dashless documentation

Dashless is WordPress without the dashboard: a local Codex plugin, a WordPress companion, and an owned Astro frontend working as one publishing system.

WordPress remains the canonical source for editorial content. Codex becomes the daily workspace. Astro becomes the reader-facing site. The WordPress dashboard remains available for emergency administration, but drafting, revision, preview, publishing, deployment, and restoration no longer depend on it.

Start here

• Getting Started — requirements, installation, connection, and first preview
• Editorial Workflow — drafts, published changes, media, taxonomy, pages, and revisions
• Deployment — WP Cloud, SSH/rsync, and local release directories
• Publishing Safety — preview locks, content generations, verification, and failure behavior

Understand the system

• Architecture — what runs locally, in WordPress, during a build, and on the public host
• Astro Frontend — routes, content mapping, theme, customization, and quality gates
• Optional Reader Signals — private notes, Receiver List, reactions, Webmentions, and discovery
• Privacy and Security — secrets, local data, trust boundaries, and removal

Maintain or contribute

• Support and Scope — tested platforms and deliberate 1.0 boundaries
• Development and Releases — repository map, commands, CI, packaging, and acceptance gates

The non-negotiable publishing contract

1. WordPress is the only production source for posts, pages, media, terms, and editorial metadata.
2. A design, preview, deployment, or launch request never grants permission to create content.
3. New authored content begins as a WordPress draft.
4. Published content is changed through a staged revision, not silently in place.
5. Only the exact, unchanged preview approved by the user can be published.
6. Save, preview, WordPress publication, production build, deployment, and public verification are reported as separate states.
7. A failed build or release leaves the previous static site online; failed WP Cloud public verification restores it automatically.

If WordPress contains no published editorial content, Dashless renders an intentional empty state. It never fills a theme with invented posts.

Three pieces, no remote Dashless service

flowchart LR
    A[You] <--> B["Codex + Dashless<br/>local"]
    B <--> C["WordPress<br/>canonical content"]
    C --> D["Astro<br/>static build"]
    D --> E["Immutable release<br/>local, SSH, or WP Cloud"]
    E --> F[Readers]

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• The Codex plugin stores connection metadata locally, talks to WordPress, stages changes, generates and builds Astro, and deploys releases.
• Dashless for WordPress reports the site contract and content generation. On WP Cloud it also verifies, activates, routes, and rolls back static releases.
• The Astro project is ordinary source code owned by the user. It has no dependency on a Dashless account or hosted runtime.

Dashless has no cloud account, proprietary CMS, telemetry, analytics, advertising, or remote worker.