Quickstart

How to quickly and easily get started with the Canvas template

These four steps are necessary for the most basic use cases of the template.

‌Step 1: Set up your homepage

Our Canvas template includes a fully functional homepage maker. App owners can manage and customize their homepage content from the Admin portal without needing to modify the app index page through the Bubble editor.

To set up your homepage:

• Go to your app (https://bubble.is/page?id=YOURAPPNAME)

• Click on the Data tab > App data tab > Users data object

• Click run as next to the user [email protected] (any user that has the Role field as App Admin will be able to access the Admin portal page)

• On the Admin portal page, click on the Settings tab

• Click on the Homepage tab to customize your homepage content

For more information on how to set up your homepage, click here.

If you make changes to the home page in the "version-test" or development environment, those changes won't be immediately reflected in the live environment. You'd need to push the database to live (as in step 4 on this page) in order to update the Live database if you make these changes in the Development database.

Step 2: Register your app with Canvas Portal

You can easily add fully responsive pages and modules to your app by registering your app with our Canvas Portal.

To register your app:

• Go to your app (https://bubble.io/page?id=YOURAPPNAME)

• Go to the Settings tab > Collaboration tab > add [email protected] as a collaborator

• Go to the Canvas Portal and sign up or log in to your account (please use the same email address you are using for your Bubble account)

• Go to MY STUFF tab to view all of your registered apps with Canvas Portal

• After your app is registered, you can click VIEW DETAILS to add a page, update your app colors, or connect with an AirDev partner

Note: you can add [email protected] as a collaborator only on the development version of your app by checking the box "Only dev version" in Settings > Collaboration. We won't ever enter into your app without your permission, but this locks down the live database so that we can't see that information.

Step 3: Set up your email

Set up "pretty emails" functionality and get email metrics built-in to SendGrid.

This Bubble template does not use Bubble’s native “send email” functionality, but instead it uses an API workflow that generates a nicely-formatted HTML email from SendGrid.

As of April 6, 2020, this flow has changed a bit. New SendGrid accounts require you to verify any emails that are used in the "from" fields of emails via their API and to provide your address or your business' address. This is to prevent users from using their platform for spamming or phishing, as a user could previously put any email they'd like into that field (e.g. [email protected], or a recipient's own email address).

To set up your email:

• Navigate to SendGrid and sign up for a free account

• Once you are in the SendGrid dashboard, click on the Settings tab > API keys tab

• Select Create API key > General API key and fill out the subsequent form

• Save your API key somewhere (you will not be able to view it again)

• Go to your app (https://bubble.is/page?id=YOURAPPNAME)

• Go to the Plugins tab > API connector > SendGrid API > Expand send email API call

• Change the send email data type from JSON to text

• Under Headers enter the following:

  • Key: Authorization | Value: Bearer yourapikey | Private

  • Key: Content-Type | Value: application/json | Private

After setting the API key, you need to set the admin email for the app:

• In run-mode, go to the Admin portal

• From the SETTINGS > EMAIL tab, set your app's contact email. This will be the email addressed used to send all emails from your app, so choose an email address that you can receive responses at, or an email like [email protected]. (NOTE: If this SETTINGS > EMAIL flow is absent, then your app was probably created before we added this feature in mid April. Follow the following guide instead of these steps: https://sendgrid.com/docs/ui/sending-email/sender-verification/)

• Add your from-name

• Update this with the relevant email address and save your changes

• Go to the email inbox for the email you just used

• Open the most recent email from SendGrid - it should say something like "Please Verify Your Single Sender"

• Click the button in that email in a tab that's logged into your SendGrid account, or log in after clicking the button

In your app, you will now be able to send emails from this specific email address.

Step 4: Migrate your Bubble database to live mode

When you first access this template, you will be viewing the Development version of the database. While this database version is sufficient for designing, building, and testing your application, it is highly recommended that you deploy all app updates to live and migrate your development database to the production database before launching your app with real users.

Switching your database view from development to live

When viewing your application's data (through Data > App data in the Bubble editor), it is critical that your data view matches the version of your app that you are examining. To switch views between the Development and Production database, simply click the red "Switch to Live" (or "Switch to Dev.") button in the top right.

Copying over your database from development to live (and vice versa)

After you initially deploy your app to live, please copy over the development database to the production version.

• While it's not critical to migrate every piece of test data to the live version, there are certain data types (and instances of those data types) that are necessary to retain in both versions for various reasons

• Because of this, it is highly recommended that you copy over the entire database and then delete certain bits of test data that are not needed

• In any case, there are a few data types you'll want to make sure you've copied over

  • Each database version should include exactly one instance of the Website data type

  • If you want to retain the ability to customize your homepage, make sure you've copied over all 11 entries for the Homepage block data type

  • Similarly, if you want to retain the specific blocks of content you've configured for the homepage, make sure you've copied over all entries for the Block entry data type

To copy over database versions, click the red "Copy and restore database" button in the top right.

• From this modal, select the option for Copy development data into the live database

• Next, choose All types

• After you've made sure you've selected the appropriate options, type in the requested text and click to confirm the migration

When you've made changes to the home page in the Development version of the app, you can sync it with the Live version by pushing the Website, Homepage Block, Block Entries, and Palette Colors. Changes can also be ported from Live back to Development.

After the app has real users or other data that is only in the Live database, be EXTREMELY careful when migrating data from Development to Live. If you accidentally push all of your data, you can lose ALL client data, and it may not be recoverable.