Frequently asked questions

General

Do I need to know HTML?

No. Describe what you want to the PBS SoCal MCP (Plexara) and it writes the site. Knowing a little helps you ask for precise changes, and you can always ask it to explain what it built.

What is Plexara?

Plexara is an agent-first platform that sits on top of PBS SoCal's Data Estate. You reach it through the PBS SoCal MCP (Plexara) in Claude, and through the PBS SoCal portal. Pages is the part of Plexara that serves websites and web apps.

Is a Pages site just static files?

It can be, but it doesn't have to be. A site environment can be part of a Plexara Application, which gives its pages live endpoints, a database, forms and scheduled updates. The examples show all three.

Can a site have its own domain, like example.com?

Yes. Pages serves any domain: an internal subdomain such as team-news.pmgsc-data.org, or a custom domain PBS SoCal manages such as example.com. Point the domain's DNS at Plexara and an administrator switches it on. See Any domain.

Is Pages the same as saving a report to the portal?

No. A report saved to the portal is one document. A site has many pages, its own addresses, environments for review and release, and its own sharing. Use a portal report for a one-off analysis and a site for anything people will navigate or come back to.

Why can't I open my new site's address yet?

On PBS SoCal, each new address is switched on by an administrator, who also issues its certificate. Send them the site's name and it's done in about a minute. See the tutorial.

Access

Can someone outside PBS SoCal see my site?

Only if you share an environment with them by email (they sign in as an outside guest and can view, never manage), or the owner or an administrator sets a domain public. Every pages address always requires a sign-in.

I shared my site but my colleague can't get in.

Check that you shared the environment they're opening (sharing dev doesn't open prod, unless the share names no environments), and that you used the email they sign in with.

Can I put member or donor data on a site?

Only on a private site shared with people who are allowed to see it, and only if it's needed. Never on a site that has, or will have, a public domain. For live numbers, prefer an application endpoint, which runs as the signed-in person, over data copied into the pages.

Changes

I promoted a mistake. What now?

Roll back. Ask the MCP to roll back the environment to the release it served before. It takes effect immediately; then fix the problem in dev and promote again.

Why can't the MCP change prod directly?

Every change goes through dev first so that everything people see has been reviewed. Prod moves only by promote and rollback.

Can two people work on a site at once?

Yes. Each change makes a new release in dev. If someone else changed dev after you last looked, an in-place edit based on the older release is refused rather than overwriting their work, and the MCP re-reads and tries again.

How far back can I roll back?

Each environment keeps its last 50 releases. The owner or an administrator can raise that, or keep every release.

Limits and naming

Site and environment names

• Lowercase letters, numbers and dashes: pledge-drive, team-news, stage.
• Never two dashes in a row. -- separates the site from the environment in addresses.
• At least three characters. Two-character names can't get a security certificate for their environment addresses.
• At most 57 characters for a site, so every address stays within the limits of the web's naming system.
• A site can't share a name with a platform application.

Files that are refused

• Any path starting with a dot, such as .env, except .well-known.
• A _headers file setting anything other than security headers.