A Wix site gives a Wix user everything they need to run a business online, with design, content, and business operations all built in. Wix manages the runtime, hosting, and infrastructure. As a developer, you can extend the site with code that runs on the same managed platform.
Understanding how a Wix site works matters whether you extend a Wix Studio or Wix Editor site directly, build a headless site, or build an app that installs on a site.
Wix sites provide a set of built-in tools that your code commonly relies on. Note that not all site features are available for headless projects.
- Dashboard: The control center where Wix users and collaborators manage settings, content, business operations, and analytics.
- CMS: The built-in database for the site's content. Define custom collections, query, and filter data, and read and write data in frontend and backend code. Wix App collections expose data from installed business apps like Stores and Bookings. External databases can be connected through adapters so the same APIs work over 3rd-party data.
- Media Manager: The file storage system for the site, with support for images, videos, audio, documents, and archives. Storage is shared across the site and any apps installed on it.
- Secrets Manager: A secure vault for API keys, tokens, and other sensitive values. Backend code reads secrets at runtime instead of hardcoding credentials.
- Extending with Extensions: How site code is extended with widgets, plugins, and embedded scripts that plug into the site's UI and backend behavior.
- Triggered Emails: Code-triggered transactional emails sent in response to events on a site, distinct from marketing campaigns and rule-based automations.
- Automations: No-code rules that respond to events on the site, like sending a follow-up email when a form is submitted. Automations complement triggered emails for cases that don't need custom code.
The development path determines which features are available to you:
- Sites: Native access to all features in this section.
- Headless projects: Access a subset. The dashboard, CMS, Media Manager, and Secrets Manager are supported, while site extensions and automations aren't supported.
- Apps: Access the host site's features rather than owning them. Your code can read and write CMS data, rotate secrets, and extend the host dashboard, but the data and configuration belong to the site owner.
Each feature article below covers path-specific support in detail.