Content is JSX

You compose every page in Obelisk from ready-made building blocks. No programming required: you describe in plain language what should appear on the page — a heading, a photo gallery, a form, a pricing table — and the assistant builds it for you. Behind the scenes that structure is stored as a single whole, so every page looks consistent and automatically adapts to your site's theme.

Which building blocks are there?

There are three kinds. First, the basics every website knows: headings, paragraphs, links, lists and images. Second, hundreds of interface parts such as buttons, badges, cards, tabs and accordions — see the Components page for a selection. And third, the smart Obelisk blocks: from a hero and an FAQ to live data lists and scroll animations. All blocks are documented with an explanation, example and prompt in the blocks overview.

Why does this work so well?

Because the structure is assembled on the server before it is shown, the page is fast and secure — no sluggish page builder runs along in the browser. And because all building blocks use the same theme colours and typefaces, a theme change applies to every page at once. Even a large site stays visually one whole.

No separate page builder

Other CMSs often work with a separate drag-and-drop editor that runs alongside the actual website, with its own, more limited set of capabilities and regular conflicts between plugins. With Obelisk that is unnecessary: the content is the website. You ask for a change in plain language, and it is processed directly in the same structure that also drives your theme, forms and data types.

Extensible with your own parts

For something the standard building blocks don't cover, you build a fully custom part via apps & components — built once, reusable everywhere afterwards. That way your library of building blocks grows with what your site needs, without ever having to replace the underlying framework.

Example

The prompt for this example

Put a heading 'About us' on the page with a green badge 'Active' next to it, the text 'We build websites you can simply ask for.' and a button 'Get in touch'.