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AppBlips can put your project online for you. It uses Surge, a free hosting service. Your project gets its own web address, such as https://my-bakery-x7k2.surge.sh, that anyone can open. The address uses HTTPS, the padlock in the address bar that keeps the connection secure. Publishing works for apps, websites and games. Imported sites can’t be published yet. Download them with Export instead.

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Publish for the first time

You need a free Surge account. AppBlips creates one for you the first time you sign in.
1

Open the Publish window

In the preview toolbar, click Publish (the globe button near the right end).
2

Sign in to Surge

  • New to Surge: click Create an account. Type your email, choose a password, type it again in Type the password again, then click Create account.
  • Already have a Surge account: leave I have an account selected, type your email and password, then click Sign in.
3

Choose the web address

Under Web address, AppBlips suggests a name based on your project. Keep it or type your own. Use only lowercase letters, numbers and dashes.
4

Choose a site icon (optional)

Under Site icon, click Choose image… and pick a picture from your computer (PNG, JPEG, WebP, GIF, SVG or ICO). It’s the small picture people see in the browser tab, in bookmarks and on a phone’s home screen. A square image works best. To go back to no icon, click Remove.
5

Publish

Click Publish. After a few seconds, the window shows Your site is live and the link. Click Copy to copy the link, or Open site to visit it.
6

Share it (optional)

Under Share it, click one of the icons: email, X, Facebook, LinkedIn, Reddit, Bluesky or WhatsApp (point at an icon to see its name). Your browser opens that service’s share page (or your email app) with the link filled in. Nothing is posted until you post it there.
7

Submit it to the Showcase (optional)

Click Submit it to the showcase to send your project to the AppBlips team, with its link already filled in. Approved projects are featured in the Showcase. See Showcase.
Anyone with the link can see your published site. Don’t publish anything private.

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Update a published site

After you change your project, click Publish in the preview toolbar again. For a project that’s already online, the window shows This project is online and its address.
  • Update site: replaces what’s online with your latest version, at the same address.
  • Site icon: change or remove the icon, then click Update site to put the change online. AppBlips remembers the icon for each project.
  • Unpublish: takes the site offline. See Remove a published site.
  • Publish to a different address: puts a second copy online at a new address. The old address stays online until you unpublish it.

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If the address is taken

Surge addresses are first come, first served. If someone else already uses the name, the window says it belongs to another Surge account. Type a different name and click Publish again.

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Your Surge sign-in

  • Your password goes to Surge once and is never saved. AppBlips keeps only the sign-in that Surge sends back.
    • In the desktop app, that sign-in is encrypted with your computer’s keychain.
    • In the browser version, it’s saved on your computer in a file only your user account can read. It’s never saved in the browser.
  • To sign in ahead of time, or to sign out, open Settings → Connectors and click the Surge card. You can also click Sign out in the Publish window.
  • Surge sends a confirmation email when you create an account. You can publish without confirming it, but confirmed accounts can publish more often.
  • If you forget your password, reset it at surge.sh.

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Remove a published site

  1. Open the project and click Publish in the preview toolbar.
  2. Click Unpublish.
  3. Click Unpublish again to confirm.
The site goes offline and the link stops working. Your project stays in AppBlips, so you can click Publish again later. Someone else could take the address in the meantime. AppBlips only remembers the last address you published each project to. To remove an older address, install Node.js, open a terminal, type npx surge teardown old-name.surge.sh (using your own address) and press Enter, then sign in with your Surge email and password.

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Limits

  • Surge’s free plan includes HTTPS on every surge.sh address. Custom domains, such as www.mybakery.com, aren’t supported in AppBlips yet.
  • Surge limits how often you can publish in a short time. If you see a “rate limited” message, wait 15 minutes and try again.
  • Surge’s terms apply to what you publish.
  • Images made with Pollinations are copied into your site when you publish, so they stay online as long as it does. Publish again after the AI changes an image.
  • Your own images from My images are uploaded with the site, but only the ones your pages use. A site’s images can be at most 60 MB in total.