About Silex, live web creation.

Silex, is a free and open source website builder in the cloud. Create websites directly in the browser without writing code. And it is suitable for professional designers to produce great websites without constraints. Silex is also known as the HTML5 editor.

Brought to you by Silex Labs team, promoting free software.

Links

• Silex official website
• Documentation wiki
• questions and answers, bug report, feature requests
• Silex license is GPL
• Road map and change log

News and tutorials

• Silex blog
• subscribe by email

Contact us and let people know about Silex

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Google plus
• Contributors list

Host an instance of Silex

If you plan to host Silex for your clients, your users or the community, this section is for you.

If you feel like helping and host an instance of Silex as an alternative to the official Silex site http://editor.silex.me/ please let us know so that we can advertise it to the community.

You will need a nodejs server, which you can setup yourself or host at Gandi or IndieHosters for example.

Download the zip file on github or clone this repository, and then follow the same steps as the developers when they install silex locally on linux - starting at npm install. See instructions bellow.

For the lazy ones, there is the Heroku One-Click Deploy:

Installation on your local computer

This is for developers only, since our beloved designers can use the online version.

Developers you can clone this repository and start Silex, with nodejs. See instructions bellow.

Recommended: with Docker

Prerequisite :

• docker

$ docker run -p 6805:6805 silexlabs/silex

Open http://localhost:6805/ and you are ready!

local installation on linux or macos or cloud9

Prerequisite:

• node.js installed
• NPM installed
• python (version >= V2.7)
• java (version >= 7)

Clone this repository, and do not forget the sub modules (cloud-explorer and unifile)

$ git clone --recursive https://github.com/silexlabs/Silex.git

Install all needed modules and build the assets

$ npm install
$ npm run build

Start the server and then open http://localhost:6805/ - note that the port is 6805, which is easy to remember, since it is the date of sexual revolution started in paris france 8-)

$ npm start

Note for cloud9 users: you may want to activate python with this command:

$ nada-nix install python

And finally, take a look at the "available commands" section bellow

local installation on Windows

instructions provided by Régis RIGAUD:)

Prerequisite:

• node.js installed
• Git Client installed (e.g. windows github client)
• NPM installed
• python

Installation of Silex:

• Launch the "Git Shell"
• Create a complete clone of Silex Project: git clone --recursive https://github.com/silexlabs/Silex.git
• Go to Silex's Directory.
• install depedencies : npm install

Start Silex:

• Launch Silex from a command prompt (Silex's Directory): npm start
• Open your favorite browser on http://localhost:6805/ and ENJOY !!!
• also take a look at the "available commands" section bellow

Available commands

If you develop or debug Silex, these npm scripts can be used with npm (they are defined in the file package.json)

• $ npm start will start the server
• $ npm run start:debug will start the server in debug mode (no error catchall, enable local service to use local file system as a storage)
• $ npm run build will build the client side code (html, css, js), ready for production
• $ npm run build:server this only check that the server scripts are correct
• $ npm run watch:client will watch the html, js and css source folders and rebuild when a file changes

environment variables

• PORT, optional, default: 6805, used here in the code
• SSL_PORT, optional, default: to 443, used here in the code
• SILEX_FORCE_HTTPS, optional used here in the code to force https/ssl (default is false)
• SILEX_SSL_PRIVATE_KEY, optional (see ssl section bellow), used here in the code
• SILEX_SSL_CERTIFICATE, optional (see ssl section bellow), used here in the code
• SILEX_SESSION_FOLDER, optional, default: dist/sessions, used here in the code
• SILEX_DEBUG, optional, default: false, when true this will enable the service "www" (storage on the local server in www/) with login admin and pass admin, used here in the code
• RESTART_ROUTE, optional, if set it will enable the route GET {{Silex server instance URL}}/tasks/{{RESTART_ROUTE}} which will restart the server, used here in the code. See this article to learn about deployment and why this hack.
• GITHUB_CLIENT_ID and GITHUB_CLIENT_SECRET: optional, to activate github service, you need to create a github app to get these info (create a github app to get those)

enable https / SSL

When you start Silex, it looks for the environment variables SILEX_SSL_PRIVATE_KEY and SILEX_SSL_CERTIFICATE. If they are present, it enables SSL.

SILEX_SSL_PRIVATE_KEY is expected to be the path to a .key file, and SILEX_SSL_CERTIFICATE the path to a .crt.

dependencies

These are the upstream projects we use in Silex

• unifile, a nodejs server which provides a unified access to cloud services. This projects uses nodejs and these modules: express, dbox, express, googleapis, logger, node-oauth, oauth, path
• Cloud explorer, a file manager for the cloud services. It is a front end javascript app which connects to a unifile server
• Prodotype, Build components and generate a UI to make them editable in your app.
• ace, an excellent code editor in javascript
• google closure library and compiler
• jquery and jquery UI are included in the sites generated by Silex
• GLYPHICONS library of precisely prepared monochromatic icons and symbols (CC license)