How one-click templates work

Beginner 105 3 min read

Drop a set of known-good starter files onto your server in one click — what actually happens, the overwrite and application-switch rules, and the ten templates available today.

A one-click template is a shortcut past the boring part. Instead of creating files by hand and hoping you got the layout right, you drop a set of known-good starter files onto your server, press Start, and watch a real app run. Here's how it works and what you can deploy today.

Two ways to deploy a template

From a guide page. Many guides in this library have a Use this template button. Press it, pick your server, and the template deploys onto it.
From the Templates page. Every server has a Templates page in its menu listing the starters you can deploy directly.

Either way you end up in the same place: starter files in your server folder, ready to start.

What actually happens when you deploy

A deploy runs in phases, and you watch the progress as it goes. The important rule is about your existing files:

🎯 Good to know: A template only overwrites files that share a name with a file it's writing. Everything else in your server folder is left untouched.

So a template that ships index.js replaces your index.js, but it won't wipe your .env, your data, or files it doesn't include.

Two more things worth knowing:

One at a time. You can only run one deploy per server at once, and deploys are rate-limited — if you just deployed, give it a moment.
It might need to switch your application first. A template is built for a particular application (a Flask template needs the Python application, a PHP starter needs a PHP application, and so on). If your server is currently running a different application, deploying will offer to switch it. On a fresh or already-matching server there's nothing to switch and nothing to lose.

⚠️ Heads up: Switching an application reinstalls the server and wipes its files. The panel shows a clear warning before it does this, so read it.

How long it takes, and what if it fails

For the app templates below, a deploy is just writing a handful of files, so it finishes in a few seconds — you'll watch the phases tick by (files, then environment, then finishing). The longer wait comes after, on your first Start, when the application installs your dependencies. A template that feels slow is almost always that normal first install, not a stuck deploy.

If a deploy does fail partway, it stops and the panel shows an error message saying what went wrong, and the phase list marks exactly which step failed — you're not left guessing. Because a template only ever overwrites same-named files, nothing you already had is deleted, so fix the problem and deploy again.

The templates available today

Here's what you can deploy right now and what each one is for:

Template	What you get	Guide
Node.js Hello World	A tiny Node web page that prints to the console and serves a page — the gentlest possible first run	Node.js on Falix
Python Hello World	The same idea for the Python application	Python on Falix
Express Website + API	A Node website and API built on Express	Build an Express website
Flask web app	A Python web app on Flask	Build a Flask web app
Bun + Hono API	A fast API on the Bun runtime with the Hono framework	Bun on Falix
PHP Website	A working PHP web server that ships the corrected config it needs to serve pages (a fresh one won't serve without it)	Host a PHP website
Static Website	Plain HTML, CSS and JavaScript served as a website, no backend code	Host a static site
discord.js Starter Bot	A JavaScript Discord bot that logs in and responds	Host a discord.js bot
discord.py Starter Bot	The same for Python	Host a discord.py bot
TypeScript Discord Bot	A Discord bot in TypeScript, wired to compile on install	TypeScript Discord bot

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