Blog and messages

Blog and Messages are the site operator’s screens: they manage the public blog at https://dectog.com/blog and the inbox of the public contact form. They appear in the sidebar only for the account with the owner role. Other accounts that open /dashboard/blog or /dashboard/messages are redirected to the Overview, and the API answers 403 Owner access required. Who the owner is, and why signup never creates one, is explained in Account and sign-in.

Unlike every other screen, these are not scoped to an account: there is one blog and one inbox per deployment.

Blog posts

/dashboard/blog, titled Blog posts (“Create and manage your blog content here.”). The screen loads up to 200 posts, drafts included, and searches, sorts and pages them in the browser.

Element	Behavior
New post	Opens the post editor.
Categories	Goes to /dashboard/blog/categories.
Search	Filters by title or category name.
Table	Checkbox · Title (with the slug underneath) · Category · Created · Last edited · Status (Published or Draft). Clicking Category, Created or Last edited sorts by that column; the default is Last edited, newest first. Clicking a row opens it in the editor.
Selection	The header checkbox selects the current page. With a selection, the toolbar reads {n} selected with Delete and Cancel. Delete asks “Delete {n} posts? This cannot be undone.” first.
Pagination	10 posts per page, with numbered pages and Previous / Next.

Empty states: “No blog posts yet” with a Create your first post button, and “No posts match your search”.

The post editor

A side panel. The top bar has a close button, a Publish now switch, a ⋯ menu with Save as draft and, for an existing post, Delete, and the main button, which reads Publish when the switch is on and Save otherwise.

Field	What to enter	Rules
Title (required)	Placeholder Post title.... Typing a title fills the slug while the slug is still empty.	1 to 200 characters.
Slug (required)	Placeholder post-url-slug; a preview shows /blog/{slug}.	Lowercase letters and digits in groups separated by single - or _. The server accepts letters, digits, - and _ up to 128 characters and refuses a slug another post uses: A post with this slug already exists.
Category	A Select category dropdown; the chosen category shows as a chip with an X to clear it.	Required to publish: the text “Category is required for publishing” appears when the switch is on and no category is chosen. Drafts need none.
Image	A URL (placeholder https://example.com/cover.jpg) with a thumbnail and a remove button. There is no upload.	http(s): Featured image must be a valid http(s) URL. Posts without an image get a stock cover on the public blog.
Summary	Placeholder Brief description of the post.... Hint: “This appears on blog listing pages and in search results”.	Up to 500 characters.
Content	A rich-text editor with Undo, Redo, Bold, Italic, Strikethrough, Inline code, Heading 1 to 3, Bullet list, Numbered list, Quote, Code block, Divider, Insert image URL and Add link. Image URLs must start with http:// or https://. Links must start with https://, http://, mailto:, tel:, / or #.	Required: Content is required.

Saving creates or updates the post. The first publish stamps the publication date; unpublishing later keeps it. On success the panel closes and the list reloads. The editor checks the title, slug, summary and category before sending; when a check fails or the server rejects the save, the panel stays open and a toast in the top-right corner names the problem.

Delete in the ⋯ menu asks Delete post: “Are you sure you want to delete this post? This action cannot be undone.”

Categories

/dashboard/blog/categories, titled Categories (“Organize your blog content.”). New category opens the editor; Search filters by name or slug; the table shows a checkbox, Name with the slug underneath, and Created, 10 per page. Bulk Delete on a selection asks “Delete {n} categories? This cannot be undone.” first. Empty states: “No categories yet” and “No categories match your search”.

Field	Rules
Name (required)	1 to 80 characters. While creating, typing a name fills the slug.
Slug	Hint: “Used in blog URLs and filters”. Letters, digits, - and _; generated from the name when left empty; must be unique: A category with this slug already exists.

Delete in the editor’s ⋯ menu asks Delete category: “Are you sure you want to delete this category? Posts using this category will be unaffected but will no longer have a category assigned.” The public blog lists only categories that have at least one published post.

Messages

/dashboard/messages, titled Messages (“Messages sent through the contact form.”). The screen loads the newest 200 messages. Each card shows the subject, the time it arrived in your local time, a trash icon, {name} · {email} with the email as a mailto: link, and the message text. There is no search, no pagination and no read or unread state.

The trash icon asks Delete message: “Are you sure you want to delete this message? This action cannot be undone.” Empty state: “No messages yet.” If the list cannot be loaded: “Could not load messages.”

The public contact form

Messages come from https://dectog.com/contact (“Get in Touch”). The form is checked in the browser and again by the server:

Field	Rules
Name	1 to 100 characters.
Email	A valid address, up to 200 characters.
Subject	1 to 150 characters.
Message	10 to 2,000 characters.

The server accepts at most 5 submissions per hour per IP address. Submissions are counted before validation, so rejected ones use up the allowance; the sixth gets Too many messages — try again later. A message is only stored; no email is sent to anyone. The sender sees “Message sent!” with “Thank you for contacting us. We’ll get back to you soon.”, or “Message not sent” with the error.

Where the public blog lives

• The blog is served by the site host: https://dectog.com/blog and https://dectog.com/blog/{slug}.
• https://app.dectog.com/blog and https://app.dectog.com/blog/{slug} answer with a permanent redirect (301) to the same path and query string on the site host, like the other site pages asked of the dashboard host.
• Only published posts are public; a draft’s URL returns a “not found” response. The public blog page loads up to 50 posts, with a search box and a category filter.
• A shared link to a published post previews as that post: its title, its excerpt and, when set, its featured image. See Blog post pages.
• https://dectog.com/sitemap.xml lists the site pages and every published post, newest first; see Well-known, SEO and routing.

Self-hosting

The blog and the contact form are served on the worker’s SITE_URL host, and the dashboard host (WEB_URL) redirects their paths there. The screens exist on every deployment; whether you use them is up to you.