Your First 10 Minutes with Tobesee: Navigating the Dashboard and Curating Resources

So you have deployed Tobesee and you are staring at a fresh installation. What now? This walkthrough covers the practical steps you will take in your first session — logging in, finding your way around the dashboard, and building a resource collection that stays perfectly synchronized with your GitHub repository.

Why Resource Curation Matters

A well-organized resource page turns a basic website into a genuine reference hub. Visitors bookmark sites that save them time, and search engines reward pages that aggregate useful, topical links. Tobesee makes this easy because every resource you add is stored as plain JSON in your GitHub repo — no database tables, no migration scripts, no lock-in.

Here is what that means in practice:

• Every edit creates a Git commit you can inspect, revert, or cherry-pick
• Your resource data travels with your repository — clone it anywhere and the data comes along
• Multiple contributors can propose changes through pull requests, just like code reviews

Logging Into the Dashboard

Open your browser and append /admin to your site URL — for example https://tobesee.com/admin. You will see a minimal login screen asking for your access password. This is the value you set in the ACCESS_PASSWORD environment variable during setup.

Behind the scenes, Tobesee issues a JWT token after a successful login and stores it in a secure cookie. The token expires after a configurable period, so you will not stay logged in forever — a deliberate security choice.

Practical tip: Use a password manager to store your admin password. If you ever need to rotate it, update the environment variable on Vercel (or your hosting platform) and redeploy. All existing sessions will be invalidated automatically because the old JWT secret no longer matches.

What You See After Login

The dashboard is intentionally simple. You will find two primary sections:

1. Article Management — where you write and edit Markdown posts
2. Resource Management — where you curate external links and tools

There is no settings maze or plugin marketplace. Tobesee keeps the admin surface small so there is less to learn and less that can break.

Building Your Resource Collection

Adding Your First Resource

Navigate to the resource section and look for the input form. Each resource needs three pieces of information:

• Name: A short, descriptive label. Think of what you would type into a bookmark. "React Official Docs" is better than "React" because it tells visitors exactly what they will find.
• Description: Two or three sentences explaining why this resource is worth visiting. Good descriptions mention the target audience and the type of content (tutorial, reference, tool, etc.).
• URL: The full address including https://. Always test the link before saving — broken links erode trust fast.

Click save, and Tobesee pushes a commit to your GitHub repository within seconds. You can verify this by checking the commit history on GitHub — you will see a message like "Updated resources.json".

Editing and Removing Resources

To edit, click the edit icon next to any resource. The fields become editable inline. Make your changes and save.

Deletion works differently depending on your Tobesee version. Some versions support direct deletion from the UI. If yours does not, you can mark the resource as deprecated in the description, or remove the entry directly from data/json/resources.json in your GitHub repository.

Organizing for Discoverability

As your collection grows past a dozen entries, organization becomes important:

1. Group by topic — Frontend, Backend, DevOps, Design, etc.
2. Prioritize quality — Twenty carefully chosen resources beat a hundred random links
3. Add context — Mention whether a resource is free or paid, beginner or advanced
4. Review quarterly — Links break, projects get archived, better alternatives appear

How Syncing Works Under the Hood

When you save a resource, Tobesee calls the GitHub API through the @octokit/rest library. The flow looks like this:

1. Your browser sends the updated resource data to a Next.js API route
2. The API route authenticates with your GitHub token
3. It reads the current resources.json from your repository
4. It merges your changes and writes the updated file back
5. GitHub creates a new commit with the changes

This entire round trip typically completes in one to three seconds. If your internet connection drops mid-save, the operation fails cleanly — no partial writes, no corrupted data.

Handling Conflicts

What happens if two people edit resources at the same time? GitHub API uses SHA-based conflict detection. If the file changed between your read and write, the API returns an error and Tobesee asks you to refresh and try again. This is the same mechanism that protects code in collaborative development.

Troubleshooting Common Situations

Saved Changes Not Showing on the Live Site

This usually means the hosting platform has not redeployed yet. On Vercel, content changes propagate within a few minutes. You can also check the Vercel dashboard for deployment status. If you use Cloudflare or another CDN in front of your site, you may need to purge the cache manually.

Cannot Log In

Double-check that ACCESS_PASSWORD in your environment variables matches exactly what you are typing — passwords are case-sensitive. If you recently changed the password, make sure you redeployed the application. Clearing browser cookies can also resolve stale session issues.

GitHub API Errors

If you see errors related to the GitHub API, verify:

• Your GITHUB_TOKEN has not expired (classic tokens can have expiration dates)
• The token has the repo scope for read/write access
• GITHUB_OWNER and GITHUB_REPO match your repository exactly (case-sensitive)

You can test your token directly with a curl command:

curl -H "Authorization: token YOUR_TOKEN" https://api.github.com/user

If this returns your GitHub profile, the token is valid.

Wrapping Up

The dashboard and resource management system in Tobesee are designed to stay out of your way. Log in, add or edit resources, and let GitHub handle the storage and versioning. The simplicity is the point — fewer moving parts means fewer things that can go wrong, and more time spent on what actually matters: curating great content for your visitors.