Getting started as a site owner

Viking CMS is the private application where you edit a website. Visitors use a separate public address. Saving in the CMS changes your editable copy, called a draft. Publishing makes the saved site available at the public address. You need a browser and a sign-in account; installation is your administrator's task.

Before signing in

Ask your administrator for your CMS address, public website address, sign-in account and permission to publish. Example addresses in these guides use https://cms.example.net and https://example.com; use the addresses you were given. A new site has no public homepage until someone creates / and publishes.

Open the CMS address. Viking redirects you to your organisation's sign-in service.
Enter your credentials there and complete any second-factor or consent step.
After returning to Viking, check the identity displayed at the top of the screen. If access is denied, ask your administrator to check your assigned roles.

The sign-in service is also called the identity provider, or IdP. Viking does not provide a separate local username/password registration screen.

Create your homepage

Choose New and select Markdown, the default format.
Enter a title, such as Welcome, and set the URL path to /.
Write a heading and paragraph in Visual mode. Source shows the Markdown text behind the formatting; either mode edits the same page.
Choose Preview to inspect the rendered page. Check desktop, tablet and mobile widths. Preview is private and does not publish.
Choose Save draft and wait for success before leaving the page.

You can instead choose Visual page (GrapesJS) for drag-and-drop layouts, Raw downloadable object for a downloadable file with a description, or an installed renderer's format for other source text. See editing pages and downloads and packages before choosing those formats.

Add a second page and design

Create an About page at /about. Select In the menu if it should appear in the site's navigation. A theme needs a Navigation binding to display that menu. Open Themes, preview a bundled theme and choose Use theme for site. See navigation and themes for ordering, submenus and custom designs. Open Settings to set the site's title, description and favicon from uploaded images. Save settings and publish to apply those choices to the live site.

Publish and verify

Save any theme/settings changes in their own workspace.
Select Publish or Publish site and wait for a release number and success. Viking saves changes to the currently open page first, then publishes all saved pages, settings, theme and assets together.
Open the public address in a separate browser tab. Visit / and /about/, follow menu links and check images.

A release is a complete generated copy of the site, identified by a number such as 000001. Publishing switches the active copy only after preparing it. The public server can take about one second to detect a new copy with its default settings; browser or proxy caching can add delay.

Every saved page is included in the next publication. Hiding a page from the menu does not make it private. See publishing and rollback before publishing sensitive content.

Keep work safe and end your session

Save explicitly; do not rely on a browser tab as a backup. If sign-in expires, keep the editing tab open. Carry on working lets you keep editing locally; saving/publishing stays blocked until login is repaired. Log in again preserves a per-tab draft checkpoint and signs in in the same window. Use the same account and do not reload the tab while it contains unsaved work. Use Log out when finished; the sign-in service may also end its session when it supports provider logout.