Quick Start

Audience: the person deploying and initially administering Studio

This quick start begins after the Studio source has been reviewed and its Cloudflare Worker resources have been provisioned. Resource creation, binding selection, source updates, backups, and Worker deployment remain operator-owned tasks. Studio owns only the reviewed database lifecycle operations exposed by its application.

1. Check the deployment prerequisites

• Use Node.js 22.22.0 or newer when building Studio.
• Bind a Studio-owned D1 database as DB and configure the other resources declared by the deployment. Do not copy another installation’s resource IDs.
• Keep STUDIO_AUTH_SECRET stable for the lifetime of the installation. It protects sealed setup data and encrypted MFA material.
• Create a separate, temporary STUDIO_INSTALL_TOKEN for initial installation.
• Set STUDIO_SITE_MODE to initial.

STUDIO_AUTH_SECRET and STUDIO_INSTALL_TOKEN use the same strict format: 32–256 printable ASCII characters from ! through ~, with no spaces or control characters. Generate independent values; do not reuse either value as a password or operations token.

For example, the following command produces a suitably sized random candidate. Store its output as a secret rather than in source control:

openssl rand -base64 48

The default Studio integration mode is disabled. An empty or unavailable Edge database therefore does not block core Studio installation and content management.

2. Deploy the initial configuration

Deploy the Worker with:

• STUDIO_SITE_MODE=initial
• a valid STUDIO_INSTALL_TOKEN secret
• a valid STUDIO_AUTH_SECRET secret
• an otherwise uninstalled Studio D1 application catalog

Opening Studio now shows the installation flow. A normal sign-in screen is not available until installation is complete and the operator later changes the site mode.

3. Create the first administrator

The installer asks for the temporary install token and the first administrator’s identity and password. The password is checked locally against Studio’s strong-password policy; installation does not send it to an external breach-checking service.

MFA is mandatory and cannot be disabled:

1. Register the displayed TOTP secret in an authenticator.
2. Save the ten recovery codes outside the Studio database.
3. Confirm a current TOTP code and one displayed recovery code.
4. Submit the installation.

Studio commits the administrator, password hash, TOTP factor, recovery-code digests, system roles, and schema lifecycle state in one atomic D1 batch. It does not create a password-only administrator.

4. Activate the installed Studio

Successful installation does not change the Worker configuration. Before normal sign-in:

1. Delete the STUDIO_INSTALL_TOKEN binding completely. Leaving it defined, even as an empty value, is a fail-closed configuration error after install.
2. Change STUDIO_SITE_MODE from initial to operational.
3. Deploy the changed Worker configuration.
4. Sign in with the administrator password and TOTP or an unused recovery code.

Do not rotate STUDIO_AUTH_SECRET as part of activation. Losing or changing it can make existing TOTP and recovery-code material unusable.

5. Configure the first site

A practical first pass is:

1. Set the site title, canonical URL, locale, and timezone in General.
2. Review output, URLs, homepage, media delivery, and branding settings.
3. Create or import Authors, Posts, Pages, Media, Menus, and Widgets.
4. Leave Edge Services disabled unless comments, Forms, or Newsletter runtime features are ready to be operated.
5. Open Publish, explicitly generate Preview Data, inspect it, and download the JSON for the separate ZeroPress Build workflow.

Studio emits only published Posts and Pages. Draft and Trash content remains in Studio. ZeroPress intentionally does not implement scheduled publishing.

Next steps

• Learn when to use each Site Mode.
• Configure the protected Maintenance & Recovery surface before relying on database backup, restore, upgrade, or recovery workflows.