Development Overview

This section covers everything you need to know about developing on Insites, from understanding the codebase structure to deploying your application across environments. Whether you are setting up a new project or maintaining an existing one, the guides here walk you through the core development concepts and workflows.

What You Will Find Here

• Development Workflow - The recommended process for building, testing, and deploying Insites applications. Covers the flow from local development through staging to production.
• Codebase - The required directory structure for an Insites project. Every directory, file type, and naming convention explained so your code communicates correctly with the Insites engine and API.
• config.yml - Configuration flags that control application behavior, from Liquid error handling to slug matching and security settings.
• Staging vs. Production - How Insites environments work, what differs between staging and production, and how to manage your development workflow across multiple instances.
• Security and Disaster Recovery - An overview of the security infrastructure, data backups, load balancing, and disaster recovery processes that protect your applications.
• Reserved Names and Defaults - URLs, directories, and parameters that are reserved by the platform. Know these before naming your pages and routes.

Core Technologies

Insites applications are built with three primary technologies:

• Liquid - The templating language used across pages, layouts, partials, emails, and authorization policies. Liquid handles everything from rendering HTML to executing business logic.
• YAML - Used for configuration files, database schema definitions, and translations.
• GraphQL - The data layer. All database reads and writes go through GraphQL queries and mutations. There is no direct SQL or database access.

Together, these technologies give you full control over your application's frontend, backend, and data layer without needing to manage infrastructure.