Managing Your Site

Managing groups

Groups define the sections of your site and control how articles are organised in navigation menus.

To create a group: Open your site in Scribe CMS and click New Group. Give it a name — this becomes the section heading on your website.

To reorder groups: Drag groups into the order you want. Connected websites reflect this order in navigation menus.

To rename a group: Click the group name to edit it. The change takes effect on your website immediately.

Caution

Renaming a group changes its URL segment on your website (e.g. /writing/ might become /notes/). Old URLs will break unless your website is configured with redirects. Check with your developer before renaming a group that already has published articles.

Managing articles

To move an article between groups: Drag the article to a different group. The article remains published — only its group changes.

To unpublish an article: Click Unpublish and confirm. It’s removed from its site and group together and returns to Draft — no longer visible on any website. You can publish it again at any time.

To delete an article: Open the article and click Delete. Deleted articles are permanently removed from your account.

To edit a published article: Open it, make changes, and save. The updated content appears on connected websites immediately — no need to re-publish.

Site settings

Open your site and click Settings to update:

• Title — the name of the publication
• Description — a short summary used in RSS feeds and search results
• Domain — the domain of the website this site powers (e.g. alice.example.com)
• URL prefix — if your blog lives at /blog/ rather than at the root, set this to blog
• Splash image — a featured image for the site, used in social previews
• Logo — an image used in website headers. Scribe also uploads a square version as the publication’s icon, which Bluesky-compatible reading apps use to identify your site.

Image Library

Scribe CMS has an Image Library — a media manager for photos and images you use in your articles, separate from any one article. Open it from the main menu.

Uploading

Drag and drop one or more images onto the Image Library, or click to browse for files from your device. Scribe accepts JPEG, PNG, WebP, TIFF, and GIF files up to 50 MB each. Each upload shows its own progress, and you can drop a large batch of photos at once — they upload and process a few at a time rather than all together.

Behind the scenes, Scribe automatically generates several sizes of each image you upload. You don’t need to do anything for this — it happens on every upload, and readers’ browsers pick the appropriately-sized version automatically when your article is viewed.

Organising into folders

Create folders to organise your images — by trip, by project, by article series, however suits you. Drag images between folders, or select multiple images and folders at once to move or delete them together.

Personal folder vs. a site’s shared folder

Every account has its own personal folder, visible and usable only by you.

Each site also gets its own folder, shared with everyone who has access to that site:

• The site’s Owner can always see and use it.
• Any Contributor you’ve invited and who has accepted can see and use it too, once they’ve accepted.
• Nobody else can see or use either kind of folder — not your personal one, not a site’s shared one.

Uploading directly into a site’s folder is a convenient way to share reference photos or assets with everyone writing for that site, without needing to send files around separately.

Tip

If a site’s shared folder doesn’t appear for you (for example, right after a site is created or a Contributor accepts an invitation), open the site’s Configure page and click Resync Image Folder to fix it.

Using an image in an article

While writing or editing an article, click the image icon in the editor toolbar to open the same Image Library. Browse to the image you want, and click one of its size options to insert it at your cursor. Once inserted, you can drag its edges to resize it, and add alt text for accessibility from the image’s own toolbar in the editor.

Subscriber notifications

When a reader clicks the Subscribe button on a site powered by Scribe, they are added to the subscriber list for that publication. When you publish a new article, Scribe can send each subscriber a Bluesky direct message with a link to the article.

How it works

1. You publish an article as normal — click Publish, choose a group, and click Publish in the modal.
2. A “Notify subscribers?” prompt appears immediately after publish.
3. Click Notify subscribers to send a direct message to every current subscriber, or Skip to publish without notifying.

The message includes the article title, a link to read it, and an unsubscribe link so readers can opt out at any time.

Disabling the prompt

If you prefer to notify subscribers manually rather than on every publish, you can silence the automatic prompt per site:

1. Open your site in Scribe CMS.
2. Click Configure.
3. Under Notifications, uncheck Show “Notify subscribers?” prompt after publishing.
4. Save.

With the prompt silenced, you can still notify subscribers at any time from the site management view.

Subscribers and unsubscribing

Readers can unsubscribe by clicking the Subscribe button again on any page where it appears — it acts as a toggle. They are shown a confirmation before their subscription is removed. Every notification message also includes an unsubscribe link for readers who prefer that route.

Analytics

Scribe CMS can show a pageview chart for your site on the Insights page, if you connect your site to your own Umami analytics account. This is entirely optional — nothing changes if you skip it, and it works with any Umami instance, whether it’s your own self-hosted server or someone else’s.

Connecting Umami

1. Open your site in Scribe CMS and click Configure.
2. Scroll to the Analytics section and click Integrate with Umami.
3. Enter your Umami instance’s details:
   • Base URL — the address of your Umami instance (e.g. https://analytics.example.com)
   • Website ID — found in your Umami dashboard under the website’s settings
   • Username and Password — your Umami login
4. Click Connect. Scribe CMS checks the details immediately and confirms once connected, showing the name of the website it found.

Tip

We recommend creating a separate, restricted Umami user just for this connection rather than using your main admin login — Umami lets you scope a user to view only the website you’re tracking. That way, if this credential is ever compromised, the damage is limited.

Once connected, a Pageviews chart appears on the Insights page alongside your other site metrics.

Editing or disconnecting

To update your connection (for example, after changing your Umami password): click Edit in the Analytics section and enter the new details. You only need to re-enter your password if it changed — leave it blank to keep the one already saved.

To disconnect: click Disconnect and confirm. Your Pageviews chart stops appearing on Insights.

Caution

Scribe CMS cannot retrieve a saved Umami password once it’s stored — reconnecting later means entering it again.

If something’s not working

If your Umami connection has a problem — a changed password, a deleted website, or an unreachable instance — Scribe CMS shows a warning naming the affected site when you visit Insights. Check the site’s details in the Configure page’s Analytics section to fix it.

Multiple sites

You can manage multiple sites from a single Scribe account. Each site has its own groups and articles, and each can power a different domain.

To create a second site, click New Site from the site list. Articles belong to exactly one site — you cannot share a single article across multiple sites.