# Quick start

> A tour of the admin, from your first edit to a published page. Ten minutes, no code.

You've installed Lettern and signed in. This tour walks you through the five things you'll do most: find your way, edit a page, set your style, add content and publish.

## 1. Find your way around

After signing in you land on the **Dashboard**: what changed recently, and whether your live site is up to date.

![The Dashboard, with the sidebar on the left.](https://docs.lettern.org/media/screens/dashboard.webp)

The sidebar on the left is where you work. Under **Content** are your pages, your other content, media, menus, forms and globals; under **Design**, the design system, templates, components and collections. **Settings**, the gear next to your name (`⌘⇧,`), holds what you set up once: your account, the site's general settings, email, users and roles, and the settings of each plugin.

A few shortcuts save a lot of clicking:

| Press | To |
| --- | --- |
| `⌘K` | Find any page, setting or command |
| `⌘\` | Hide or show the sidebar |
| `⌘J` | Open the workspace, at the right edge |

## 2. Edit a page

Open **Pages** and click **Home**. The page opens exactly as visitors see it, and you edit it right there.

![The page editor: the page itself on the left, the settings of the selected heading on the right.](https://docs.lettern.org/media/screens/editor.webp)

- **Click any text** and type to change it.
- **Point between two blocks** and press the `+` that appears to add something new: text, an image, a button, columns, a form.
- **Select a block** to see its settings on the right, under **Content**, **Design** and **Interact**.

Changes save as you go. Nobody sees them until you publish.

> **Note:** To start a new page, press **New Page** in Pages, or just press `C`.

Learn more in [Writing](https://docs.lettern.org/editing/writing) and [Block settings](https://docs.lettern.org/editing/canvas).

## 3. Set your style

Open **Design System**, under **Design** in the sidebar. This is where your site's colors, fonts and spacing live, with a live preview on the right.

![The design system: colors in the middle, a preview of the site on the right.](https://docs.lettern.org/media/screens/design-system.webp)

Every block on every page uses these values. Change your main color once, and the whole site follows: there's nothing to update page by page. See [Design system](https://docs.lettern.org/design/design-system).

## 4. Add your own kind of content

Pages aren't the only content a site has. A restaurant has dishes, an agency has projects, a blog has posts. Each kind of content is a **collection**, with its own fields.

Open **Collections**, under **Design**, to make one, say _Dishes_ with a price, a description and a photo. Then everyone fills in a simple form, and your pages show the dishes in your design.

![Filling in a dish: one simple form, with the fields the collection asks for.](https://docs.lettern.org/media/screens/entry.webp)

See [Collections](https://docs.lettern.org/content/collections) to set one up.

## 5. Publish

When you're happy, press **Publish**. The page goes live straight away: there's no deploy step and no cache to clear. **Publish Site** on the Dashboard publishes everything at once.

![Publishing the site from the Dashboard.](https://docs.lettern.org/media/screens/publish.webp)

## 6. Work from the workspace

Press `⌘J`, or **New Chat** at the top of the sidebar, and the [workspace](https://docs.lettern.org/getting-started/workspace) opens beside the page. Type `/` for a command, such as **New Page** or **Add to Menu**, or type a few words to search the whole admin. Every answer is something to act on: open it, publish it, undo it.

With the [assistant](https://docs.lettern.org/agents/assistant) set up, ask in plain words in the same place, for example: _"Add a pricing section with three plans to the home page."_ It works in the admin just as you do, and asks before anything that goes live or is hard to undo. Lettern works fully without it.

## Where next

- [How Lettern works](https://docs.lettern.org/getting-started/how-it-works) explains the few ideas everything is built on.
- [Templates](https://docs.lettern.org/design/templates) change the frame around your pages: the header, the footer, the layout.
- [Users and roles](https://docs.lettern.org/operations/users-and-roles) lets your clients and team in, with the right access.

---
Source: https://docs.lettern.org/getting-started/quick-start