Guide 00 · Developer docs

Core dna for site builders

Read this guide first. Core dna is hosted, so there is nothing to install; your repository holds only templates and front-end assets; and a new kind of page starts in the admin, with a layout. In half a day, from what the platform is to a page you built, deployed and rendered in Smarty or Twig.

L0

Unit 01 of 05 7 pages

What you are building on

Updated 23/10/2026 01:40

What Core dna is, the two ways to build a site on it, its two template engines, the words every other page uses, the URLs a site answers on, where your repository ends and the platform begins, and why development starts with a layout. Read it before writing any code.

Seven short pages, meant to be read in order and in one sitting. Core dna in one page comes first: it corrects the assumption that there is an application to install and run. The next two pages set up the decision the rest of these docs depend on, how the site will be built and in which template engine, and send you to the guides that make it properly.

The vocabulary every page assumes defines the terms every later page uses without explaining; keep it open while they are new. The last three pages show the site's URLs with a real request to each, draw the line between your repository and the database, and explain why a new kind of page begins in the admin. Those three prevent most of the confusion of a first week.

In this unit

Read in order

01 Core dna in one page Core dna is a hosted platform: one codebase, run by Core dna, serves every customer's sites from the customer's own database. There is nothing to install or run on your machine. You work with an admin, a theme repository, two APIs, custom endpoints and an MCP server. 02 Two ways to build a site The pages of a Core dna site are composed in one of two places: on the platform, from your Smarty or Twig templates, or in an application of your own, from the APIs. Most sites are rendered on the server with a few parts filled in by the browser. Decide which before you write anything. 03 Smarty and Twig are peers Core dna renders server-side templates in Smarty or Twig. Each site uses one, and both receive the same variables and the same records under the same names. What is the same, the handful of differences, and why every template example in these docs is given in both. 04 The vocabulary every page assumes The terms every other page in these docs uses without explaining them: client, site, environment, hostname, record, layout, layout area, input type, component, custom entity, abstraction, member and backend user, and job. One paragraph each, with where each is covered in depth. 05 The URL surfaces of a site Every Core dna site answers on the same paths: the public site at /, the admin at /cdna-admin, the REST API at /cdna-api, GraphQL at /cdna-api/graphql, custom endpoints at /cdna-api/webhook and the MCP server at /cdna-mcp. A real request to each, and what each answers when something is wrong. 06 What is yours and what is the platform's Your repository holds templates and front-end assets. The platform holds everything else: content, layouts, input types, users, settings, jobs and media. Where each part of a site lives, how it is changed, and whether a git push carries it. 07 Development starts with a layout A template that no layout points at is never rendered, and a layout can only point at a file already on the server. So a new kind of page starts with a layout planned for the admin and a placeholder template, not finished markup. The rule, the order of the work, and what it changes in a plan.