You've been invited to edit a site.

What you will see

1The sign-in card

Go to the site's address with /kiln on the end, for example yoursite.com/kiln. A small card says Sign in to edit and offers two buttons. Yours is Continue with Google. The GitHub button is for the site's owner.

Use the exact Google address the owner added for you. If they added [email protected] and you sign in as [email protected], it will not match.

2The site, with one new button

After you sign in you are back on the site. It looks the way it always does, with one addition: a round button with a pencil on it, in the bottom right corner. That is the Kiln button. Move the pointer onto it (on a phone, tap it) and the Kiln menu opens. Visitors never see the button or the menu.

3What you can change

On a computer, move the pointer over the page. Anything you are allowed to change shows a dashed outline. On a phone there is no pointer, so tap the words or the picture you want to change.

The things you will do

1Change some words

Click the text. It becomes a box you can type in, and a small toolbar appears. For most text it offers a Style menu, bold, italic, underline, lists and links. Type what you want. When you are happy, press Done on the toolbar or click anywhere else on the page. To throw away what you typed in that box, press Revert or the Esc key.

The text you changed now has a solid yellow outline. That means it is waiting. Nothing has changed for visitors yet.

2Swap a picture

Click the picture, choose Replace image… and pick a file from your device. Type a short description in the box beside the button: screen readers read it aloud to people who cannot see the picture. To make the picture bigger or smaller, drag the round handle on its corner.

3Add, move or remove an item in a list

Some parts of a page are lists of similar things: cards, table rows, photos, events. Point at one item and small buttons appear on it: arrows to move it up or down, ＋ to make a copy, ✕ to remove it. On a phone the buttons are always showing. A button under the list adds a new item.

4Publish

As soon as something is waiting, a Publish button appears beside the Kiln button. It says how many edits are waiting, for example Publish 3 edits. The same button is the first item in the Kiln menu. Press it. The next part says what happens.

What happens when you press Publish

Nothing you change is live until you publish. Pressing Publish first opens a sheet that shows what is about to change. Each edit is listed as before and after: changed words are marked, and a new picture sits beside the old one. Drop leaves one edit out and puts that part of the page back. A yellow line is a warning, not a stop: a picture with no description, a link that goes nowhere, an empty heading. You can write a line under What changed? so the site's history reads well. Then press the button at the bottom. Cancel closes the sheet and keeps everything.

Kiln saves all your waiting changes together into the site's files, with your name on them, and the site rebuilds itself, which takes about a minute. For ten seconds the confirmation reads Published. Undo. Undo takes exactly that publish back and puts your edits on the page again, unpublished, so nothing you typed is lost. After that the line says Live ✓ once visitors can see your change. You can keep editing while the site rebuilds, and you can close the tab. The change is already saved.

If the button says Suggest changes instead of Publish, the owner has asked to see your changes before they go live. Press it, add a note if you like, and press Send suggestion. Nothing changes on the live site until the owner approves.

Not ready to publish? Choose Save as draft in the Kiln menu. Your waiting text changes are put aside without going live, and the next time that page is opened in Kiln it offers to pick the draft up again. A draft holds text changes only, so publish new pictures first.

How to undo a mistake

Before you publish

• Undo and Redo buttons appear beside the Kiln button as soon as there is something to undo. Ctrl+Z (⌘Z on a Mac) does the same.
• To drop everything that is waiting, open the Kiln menu and choose Discard edits. The page goes back to what is live.
• Closed the tab by accident? Your waiting changes are kept in that browser for 7 days. Open the same page in Kiln again and it asks Pick up where you left off? Choose Restore edits.

After you publish

In the first ten seconds, press Undo on the Published. Undo line. If someone else published the same page in those seconds, Undo does nothing and tells you so, because it would take their work with it. Later, open the Kiln menu and choose History & restore. Every publish is listed with who made it and when, and each one offers two ways back. Undo this change takes back that one publish and leaves everything since. Go back to this returns the whole page to how it was then. Either way Kiln shows you the result on the page first, and it goes live when you press Publish again.

If History & restore is not in your menu, the owner has not given you that tool. Tell them what went wrong. They can undo any publish.

If something goes wrong

“You're not on the list (yet)”

The site is fine. The Google address you signed in with is not the one the owner added. Try your other address, or ask the owner to add this one under People & access.

I signed in and there is no Kiln button

Look for a small ✎ Resume editing button in the bottom right corner. It shows after you choose Done editing, and pressing it brings Kiln back. If that is not there either, the page you are on has not had Kiln switched on. Tell the owner which page.

Nothing I point at shows an outline

The owner may have given you some pages, or some sections, and not the whole site. On a page that is not yours, a note in the bottom left corner says Read-only here and lists the pages you can edit. If you need more, ask the owner. It is a quick change for them.

“Someone else changed this page”

Another editor published a change to the same words while you were working. Reload & review reloads the page with their version and keeps your changes ready to restore. Publish mine anyway replaces their version with yours.

“Build failed”

Your change was saved, but the site could not rebuild with it, so visitors still see the old page. Tell the owner. The message links to the exact change, which is what they will want to look at.

It has said “Publishing…” for a long time

The site is slow to rebuild. Your change is saved. After six minutes Kiln stops watching and says so. If the change still has not appeared a little later, tell the owner.

I was signed out

Your sign-in lasts as many days as the owner chose, from 1 to 360, or it never runs out. Go back to yoursite.com/kiln and sign in with Google again. If it now says you are not on the list, the owner has removed you. Ask them.

Do I need a Gmail address?

You need a Google account. It can belong to any email address, and many work addresses already have one.

Can I do this on my phone?

Yes. It is the same editor laid out for a phone: the Kiln menu slides up from the bottom of the screen and the toolbar sits above the keyboard.

Who do I ask?

The person who invited you. They can do everything you can, and they can undo anything you publish.