Getting Started

Three things to do here, in order: create your account, create your first site, and set up deploy. After that, the WordPress editor is your main workspace, and Stelae stays out of your way.

How Stelae Works

Stelae gives you a private WordPress in an isolated cloud container. Build your site in the editor like you normally would, with any theme, plugin, or page builder. One click crawls the result and ships static HTML to your hosting target. Visitors see only the static output; the WordPress instance sleeps when you’re not editing. Nothing dynamic to attack.

1. Create your account

Go to stelae.eu/register and create an account with your email address and a password.

Verify your email

Check your inbox for the verification link. If it doesn’t arrive within a few minutes, check your spam folder.

If account creation says we’re full

Stelae runs on a single machine, operated by one person. Sign-ups are limited at first while the system proves itself in production. If the cap is reached you’ll see a waitlist form. Leave your email and I’ll write when a slot opens. No newsletter, no marketing.

2. Create your first site

Click “+ New Site”

From the dashboard, click + New Site and pick a preset. Presets are known-good setups: each installs a theme plus matching plugins and applies sensible static-export defaults. Kadence is the recommended starting point if you don’t have a strong preference; it ships with a starter-template importer so you can pick a designed layout to begin from. Pick Elementor if you prefer that ecosystem, or Blank if you want to bring your own theme. Your site gets an auto-generated subdomain like cef9-9eedfb.stelae.eu for editing. Visitors never see this URL once you deploy.

Open the WordPress editor

Provisioning takes a few seconds. Once your site card shows up, click Open Editor. This is your main workspace in Stelae, so bookmark the link. It takes you to the WordPress login page; sign in there with the WordPress admin credentials you set during install. The Stelae link controls access to the site (anyone with it can reach the login page, so treat the link like a password and regenerate it from the site card if it leaks); the WordPress login still controls who is signed in as which user once they’re inside.

Wake-on-access

Your WordPress container sleeps after 60 minutes of inactivity. Clicking the editor link again wakes it up, and you’ll see a brief splash page while it starts (about 5 seconds). This is normal.

Heads up: email from your WordPress

Anything your editor tries to send (password resets, plugin notifications, test contact-form submissions) is captured in an outbox in your dashboard rather than relayed. See the email guide for how to read the outbox or connect your own SMTP provider.

3. Set up deploy

Once your site card exists, click Configure deploy on it and pick a target. This is one-time setup per site. After that, the Deploy button on the site card crawls your editor, generates static HTML, and ships it. Visitors see the deployed URL, not the editor URL.

statichost.eu: free EU-hosted tier. Recommended for most users; nothing to set up beyond signing up at statichost.eu.
Cloudflare Workers: free tier. Good if you already use Cloudflare.
Git host: GitHub Pages, Codeberg Pages, or anything that builds from a pushed git repo. Bring your own repo + SSH key.

See the Deploying guide for target-specific credential setup.

Heads up: this step takes some effort

Plan for 5 to 10 minutes the first time. The deploy target is a separate account that you own, which keeps your published site independent of Stelae. Here’s why we set it up that way.

Don’t have time right now? Skip this for the moment. Open the editor and start building. Come back to deploy setup when you’re ready.

What’s next

That’s the platform-side onboarding. From here you’re working in WordPress and only come back to the dashboard for new sites, deploy, or billing.

Editor guide: what works in the WordPress editor on Stelae and what doesn’t.
Static compatibility: which plugins survive the static export, which don’t, and recommended replacements.
FAQ: pricing, data ownership, support scope, beta-end behavior.

WordPress settings worth knowing about (optional)

If you picked a preset (Kadence / Elementor), Stelae has already applied the static-export-safe defaults that matter (comments closed, bundled bloat removed). For every site (preset or blank), pretty permalinks (/%postname%/) are set automatically at install. So most people don’t need to touch anything in Settings.

The handful of WP settings that are still up to you:

Front page (Settings → Reading): latest posts vs. a static page. Your call.
Timezone (Settings → General): affects timestamps in post metadata. Set it before you publish to avoid the “all my posts say UTC” surprise.
Comments (Settings → Discussion): presets close them; for blank installs, you may want to disable comment submissions since static sites can’t accept them.
SEO plugin (optional): Yoast and Rank Math both work on static. Meta tags, canonical URLs, sitemaps all bake into the export.

For everything else — theme, plugins, content — treat your Stelae site like any other WordPress install. The static compatibility guide covers what survives the export and what doesn’t.