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Developers · Setup

Installation and Configuration

Last updated 2 November 2026

The setup process of developing an application on Insites consists of the following steps:

  • Step 1: Sign up for an Insites Console account
  • Step 2: Create an Instance from the Console
  • Step 3: Create your codebase
  • Step 4: Setup the Insites CLI Tool
  • Step 5: Deploy to your instance

Step 1: Sign up for an Insites Console account

You need to sign up for an Insites Console account before you can build on Insites. To sign up for an account:

  1. Go to console.insites.io and select Create an account.
  2. Follow the steps to create your Insites account. You use the same account to sign in to the Console, CloudShell and the CLI.
  3. Confirm your email address when asked.

Congratulations! You can now begin building on Insites!

Step 2: Create an Instance from the Console

The Console is your central administration panel where you can create, manage, and configure your instances and applications built on Insites.

Note

Here are some important details about the Console:

  • The console allows you to created Instances which are either 'Staging' or 'Production' environments. When building your application you may have multiple staging instances for your development workflow, along with your production instance.
  • What each person can do in the Console depends on their role: Viewer, Editor, Developer, Admin or Owner. Admins and Owners manage the people in the account. Deploying needs Developer or above.

A summary of the steps needed to create an Instance on the Console is as follows:

  1. Go to Instances from the main menu of your Insites Console account.
  2. Select Create instance.
  3. Fill out the details.
  4. Select Create instance on the Review & create step.

Note

Please visit the documentation on Creating an Instance on the Console for more details.

Step 3: Create your codebase

Insites is framework agnostic and allows you to build your application in any frontend technology. Some common ones are VueJS, ReactJS and Angular. To correctly communicate with the Insites engine and API, your codebase should be organised into a specific directory structure. To create your codebase on your computer, run in an empty folder (Step 5 below).

What you’ll need:

  • Node.js
  • Insites CLI Tool

Step 4: Setup the Insites CLI Tool

The Insites CLI tool is a command line interface that helps you deploy configuration files and assets to your Insites application. It also allows you to use team collaboration tools like Git in your workflow.

You can use the Insites CLI to deploy or sync your codebase to the instance, as shown in Step 5 below.

An overview of the steps needed to install the Insites CLI tool is as follows:

  1. Once you have Node.js installed in your machine, open your preferred command-line tool and run the following command:


    npm install -g @insites/insites-cli --no-fund

  2. After installing the Insites CLI tool, run the following command to test if the tool was installed successfully:


    insites-cli --version

    If everything went smoothly, the CLI prints its version number (for example: 6.3.2). To update the CLI later, run the install command again.

Note

Please refer to our documentation on Getting Started with the Insites CLI Tool for more details on setting up and using the Insites CLI tool.

Step 5: Deploy to your instance

To create a project and deploy it to your Insites Instance, following these steps:

  1. Create an empty folder for your project.

    [user@host] $ | mkdir my-project

  2. Navigate to the project's folder in the command line.

    [user@host] $ | cd my-project

  3. Initialize the Insites directory structure.

    [user@host] $ | insites-cli init

  4. Create your environment.

    [user@host] $ | insites-cli env add <environment> --instance-uuid <instance-uuid>

    You find the instance UUID on the instance's CLI Commands tab in the Console. A browser window opens. Check that it shows the same code as your terminal, sign in with your Insites account, and approve. If anything goes wrong, run .

  5. Upload your code to the Instance.

    [user@host] $ | insites-cli deploy <environment>

    When the deploy finishes, the CLI prints how many files of each type were upserted, deleted and skipped.

  6. Once your codebase is uploaded, you can use sync to automatically push your code to the instance when you save the file.

    [user@host] $ | insites-cli sync <environment>