I built client sites for years with page builders and a stack of plugins inside WordPress, and I wanted the speed of visual building without giving up the code. sitereal is the result: you build visually, and it writes plain Astro components, CSS and content files into your own git repo. Visual editing and hand editing are two views of the same files. Here's how a project actually goes. Set up the design system first Every project starts with a design system made of CSS variables: colors with numbered shades, a fluid type scale, spacing, buttons, borders, shadows, corners, textures, themes, focus styles and motion timing. It's modular, so you switch off what a site doesn't need and it stays out of the stylesheet. Everything generated is wrapped in `:where()`, so any class you write yourself always wins. No specificity fights, no `!important`. Once you like a setup, save it as a preset (design system, components, templates, snippets, your settings) and start the next client site from it. Build pages on the canvas - Drag in elements, or paste HTML and it becomes editable elements - A Style panel that writes real CSS, using logical properties (`inline-size`, `margin-inline`) - Reusable components with properties and slots: one definition, live instances everywhere - Templates as layouts, assigned to pages or content types - Device views to check every breakpoint - Ready-made parts: navigation with a mobile menu, carousels, popups, forms, search - Scroll reveals, scroll-linked effects, hover and press states, springs, and curves you shape by dragging 3. Drop into code whenever you want Switch to Code mode and you get the project's files on the left, the open file on the right, and the canvas in the middle as a live preview, with a browser-style inspector for the styles underneath. Edit any file by hand, in sitereal or in VS Code, and the editor reads the change in. If you and the canvas both changed something, it's merged, not overwritten. There's no proprietary format. Delete sitereal and the site still builds. 4. Content your client can maintain Pick per project: - Content types in sitereal. Define fields (projects, team, events) and the editing forms are generated. Content lives as files in the repo by default, versioned with everything else. Larger content can live in a database (libSQL) instead. - EmDash as the CMS. Connect with one approval in EmDash's admin, no token copying. Collections, taxonomies, authors, references and SEO fields come along. - WordPress as the CMS. For clients who know wp-admin. ACF, Meta Box and ACPT fields, featured images and categories come through the REST API, and posts keep their URLs. Then you design a Loop for the listing and one entry page, and every post becomes a static page. Free companion plugins for EmDash and WordPress rebuild the live site when someone presses Publish, and keep the CMS's own pages out of search results. Consent, forms and the legal side - A cookie banner and a preferences panel that block scripts and embeds until consent. GDPR opt-in or US opt-out, including the browser's Global Privacy Control signal - A scan that finds trackers and embeds you missed and reports them - Forms with native validation and mail delivery through a generated endpoint (Node or PHP) - Legal pages, sitemap, share cards, favicons, redirects and a 404 page Work with AI sitereal includes an MCP server. Claude Code reads your design system, components and content types, builds pages the same way you would, and every save is checked against the design system. You see where it's working live on the canvas, and a whole agent run is one undo step. History, git and handover Undo that reaches past the canvas, a visual history built on git, branches as site variants you can merge, and commits from inside the app. Before you deploy, it checks the build and your host's setup. What the client gets is static HTML on any host. JavaScript loads only where something needs it, and every feature still works with its script removed. There's no PHP and no login on the live site, and no plugins to patch. I'd like feedback from people who build sites for clients: - What would stop you from trying a workflow like this? https://sitereal.app   submitted by   /u/julianstry [link]   [comments]