Roadmap

Import from a live site

Bring an existing website into Sherman Studio from its public address, wherever it's hosted today, as pages you can edit.

Shipped. Available now in the studio: open your site's ⋯ menu, choose Import into this site…, then Import from a live site…. The guide at docs.shermanwebdesign.com/import-live-site walks through it.

Available now. Step-by-step guide: Import from a live site.

What it does

Give the studio the address of a website you own, hosted anywhere, and it copies the public pages into one of your sites so you can keep editing them here.

• Pages you can edit. Pages that share a header, footer and menu are turned into a shared layout, with each page's own content kept separate, so you edit the layout once and each page on its own. A site can have more than one layout.
• Checked before you see it. Every copied page is rebuilt and compared with the original. If a page doesn't come back exactly the same with a shared layout, it's kept as an exact copy instead, and the summary tells you which pages those are.
• Images, styles, scripts and PDFs from the site come along, and links between its pages point to the new copies.
• Redirects on the old site become redirects on the new one.
• Videos, maps and files on other services (for example YouTube or a font service) stay linked where they are.

What you check afterwards

• Forms are kept as they look, but they no longer send anywhere. The summary lists each one so you can connect it to a flow on your site.
• Analytics and tracking codes are left out by default and listed in the summary. You can choose to keep them with one click.
• Pages that only appear after a browser runs their scripts may not copy fully.

Proving the site is yours

Before a full copy, you show that you own the site, in one of three ways: a DNS record, a small file on the site, or a tag in its home page. Sites already hosted with Sherman Studio count automatically. Until then you can copy a small preview to see how it will look.

If you can't do any of these (for example your current host doesn't let you), you can ask for a free manual ownership review. We'll look at it and reply, and your request shows as under review in the meantime.

The copy follows the site's robots.txt rules. Owners who proved ownership with a DNS record, file or tag can choose to include pages robots.txt asks crawlers to skip.

Summary and confirm

Nothing changes on your site until you've seen a summary: the pages, which layout each one uses, the exact copies, forms, analytics and anything left out. You choose what happens with pages your site already has, then confirm.

Who can do it

Admins and Owners of a site can import a live site into it.

For your AI assistant (MCP)

If you connect your AI to the studio, it can check ownership, start the copy, follow it and import it for you, with your Confirm before anything changes.

Pricing

1 credit for each address the copy reads (a page, image, stylesheet, script, PDF, file or redirect, plus the site's robots.txt and sitemap), plus 1 for every further started MB it downloads. A 2.5 MB file is 3 credits. Pages robots.txt asks crawlers to skip aren't read or charged.

• Before you start you see an estimate: at least the pages the site's sitemap lists. Most sites also use images, styles and scripts, so the total is usually a bit higher. For example, our 26-page documentation site took 32 credits.
• While it runs you see the credits used so far. They come from the credits of the site's billing owner, as the copy goes.
• If the credits run out, the copy pauses. Add credits and press Resume: it picks up where it stopped and nothing is read twice.
• A preview costs the same per address and reads at most 10 pages.
• Checking ownership, the estimate and importing the summary into your site are free.

The copied site also counts toward your site's File storage while it's kept (up to 7 days, or until you cancel), like other imports. See Billing & credits.