Take a tour of the admin

In this guide you sign in to the admin, the private part of your site where you write and manage everything, and look at each main screen once. At the end you know where your content, the look of the site and the settings live, and what your account may change.

Before you start

A running Hatamoto site. If you have not set one up yet, follow First run.
An account on the site: an email address and a password. The owner can make one for you, see Users and API keys.
A web browser. The admin also works with JavaScript turned off and on a phone.

Steps

Open https://example.com/admin in your browser, with your own site address in place of example.com. If you are not signed in, the sign-in page opens at /admin/login.
Sign in with your email address and password. You arrive at Entities (/admin/entities), the list of everything on your site. An entity is a piece of content: a page, a blog post, a person or any other item.
- If the site was installed a moment ago and nobody has finished setting it up, /admin/setup opens a short wizard instead. It asks for the setup code, a one-time code the server prints to its log so only someone with access to the server can create the first owner. First run walks you through it.
If the admin asks you to complete your profile, add your name and a photo, then save. The admin shows this step at /admin/profile/complete until your profile has both.

Look around

Look at the sidebar on the left. It has up to five items:

Item	What you find there	Who sees it
Entities	your pages, posts and other content, and People	owners and editors
Theme	how the site looks: themes, colours, menus, reusable blocks	anyone who may open at least one Theme screen
AI analytics	which AI tools and search engines read your pages	owners and editors
Plugins	add-ons that give the site extra features	owners
Settings	everything about the site as a whole	anyone who may open at least one Settings screen

Look at the bottom of the sidebar. Your picture opens your profile at /admin/profile, the next button switches between light and dark colours, and the last one signs you out.
Open Settings. A second, narrower menu appears with the Settings sections: General, Email, Media, Entity models, Forms, Redirects, Internal linking, Users, API, Webhooks, Performance, Updates and Import & export. You only see the sections your account may open. The Settings reference describes each one.
Open Theme. It has its own second menu too: Themes, Colours and fonts, Design system, Style presets, Layout parts, Blocks, Templates and Menus.
Check which role your account has. A role is what an account may do. If an editor opens a screen that is for owners only, the admin shows a Not allowed page. There are two roles:
- An owner can do everything: content, users, settings, themes and plugins. A site always keeps at least one owner: the last owner can never be deleted or made an editor.
- An editor works on content: pages and posts, media, menus, forms and the messages they receive, redirects, internal links, reusable blocks, templates and AI analytics.

See how the admin behaves

Try a list. Open Entities, type a word in the search box and choose a status. The address in your browser changes to hold your search and filters, so you can bookmark the view or send it to a colleague.
Notice how the admin protects you from mistakes:
- Delete never acts on one click. It opens a confirmation first, and deleting many rows at once asks twice.
- If you fill in a form wrongly, the same form comes back with a list of the problems at the top. When a save works, a short message confirms it.
- Some secrets are shown once only: a new API key, an invitation link, a password reset link and the signing secret of a webhook (a web address your site calls when something changes). Copy them when they appear, because you cannot open them again.
If you use a phone or a narrow window, the sidebar becomes a bar at the top of the screen, and the second menus of Settings and Theme become a drop-down list with a Go button.

Check it worked

You can answer three questions: where your content list is (Entities), where the menus of your site are (Theme > Menus) and which role you have. If you cannot see Plugins or most of Settings, you are signed in as an editor, which is normal.

If you forgot your password, open /admin/forgot and enter your email address. When the site can send email, you receive a reset link that works once, for one hour. When it cannot, ask someone with access to the server to run this command there, with your address:

hatamoto user reset-password --email [email protected]

For keyboard use, screen readers and how the admin keeps your account safe, see Accessibility and security. What the admin aims for and how it is tested is in the Accessibility statement.