Rosario Property Owners Association Information Site

How We Update This Website

This page explains, in plain terms, how RPOA board members can update this website — no coding or technical background needed. It’s public so anyone can see how the site is maintained, but the setup steps are only useful to board members.

The short version

We use an AI assistant called Claude to make website edits.

  1. You tell Claude what you want changed, in plain English. You can attach a PDF, like new meeting minutes, and Claude will turn it into a web page. If your change needs a photo or PDF file added to the site, Claude tells you exactly where to upload it. (See “Photos, PDFs, and other files” below.)
  2. Claude makes the change, and it goes live on rpoa.site within a few minutes.
  3. You take a quick look at the page to make sure it’s right.
  4. If anything’s off, just tell Claude, and it will fix it or undo it.

You never touch any code. There’s no approval step and nothing to “publish” — the person who asked for a change is the one who checks it.

One-time setup

This takes about 15 minutes, and you only do it once (plus a quick renewal once a year). There are three parts: a free GitHub account, a personal access code, and connecting Claude.

If you get stuck anywhere on this page, check “Common problems” at the bottom, or ask the board member who looks after the website.

Part A: Get your own free GitHub account

GitHub is the service that stores our website. Having your own account means the site’s history shows who made each change, and it lets you upload photos and PDFs when a change needs them.

  1. Go to github.com/signup.
  2. Enter your email address, choose a password, and pick a username (anything you like, e.g. jsmith-orcas).
  3. GitHub will email you a code. Type it in to confirm your email. If it asks a few questions about how you’ll use GitHub, you can skip them.
  4. Send your new username to a board member who’s already set up, and ask them to add you to RPOA’s website team. (They do this on GitHub: from the People page of the rpoa-orcas organization, they click Invite member and type your username.) If nobody’s sure how, ask the board member who looks after the website.
  5. You’ll get an email invitation from GitHub to join rpoa-orcas. Click Join (or Accept invitation).

That’s it for the account. You won’t need to use GitHub’s website again except for part B, and for uploading photos or PDFs (see “Photos, PDFs, and other files” below).

Part B: Create your personal access code

The access code (GitHub calls it a “fine-grained personal access token”) lets Claude make website edits on your behalf, and nothing else. Sign in to github.com, then:

  1. Click your profile picture (top right corner), then Settings.
  2. Scroll to the very bottom of the left-hand menu and click Developer settings.
  3. Click Personal access tokens, then Fine-grained tokens, then Generate new token.
  4. Fill in the form:
    • Token name: RPOA Website
    • Expiration: pick the longest option offered, up to 1 year. GitHub will email you before it expires (see “Once a year: renewing your access code” below).
    • Resource owner: choose rpoa-orcas.
    • Repository access: choose Only select repositories, then pick rpoa-orcas.github.io.
    • Permissions: under Repository permissions, find Contents and set it to Read and write. (GitHub adds “Metadata: Read-only” automatically — that’s expected.) Leave everything else alone.
  5. Click Generate token at the bottom.
  6. Copy the code right away and save it before you leave that page. It’s a long string of letters and numbers that starts with github_pat_. Keep it somewhere safe, like a password manager. GitHub only shows it once, and you’ll need it in part C.

Didn’t save it, or lost it? No problem. Go back to the page in step 3, click RPOA Website in the list of tokens, and click Regenerate token. Pick the longest expiration again, then copy and save the new code.

If GitHub says the token is pending approval, an owner of the rpoa-orcas organization needs to approve it first. Ask a board member who’s already set up; if they can’t, ask the board member who looks after the website.

Part C: Connect Claude to the website

You’ll need your access code from part B, step 6. Have it ready.

  1. Go to claude.ai and create a free account, if you don’t already have one.
  2. In Claude, open Settings, click Customize in the left-hand menu, then click Connectors. Click the Add button (top right of the connectors list), then Add custom connector. (The list may already show a built-in GitHub or GitHub Integration connector. That’s a different thing and won’t work for this. Leave it alone, or remove it. You’re adding your own.)
  3. In the first box, type the name RPOA Website. In the second box, type the server address https://api.githubcopilot.com/mcp — no slash at the very end. Click Continue.
  4. Under Authentication, choose No sign-in. Don’t choose “Sign in now” (even though it’s marked “Detected”) or “Sign in when needed.” Once No sign-in is selected, there should be no OAuth Client ID or Client Secret boxes anywhere in the window. Check that they aren’t there. You don’t need to touch the Advanced section. (If you don’t see an option called “No sign-in,” the screens may have changed. Ask the board member who looks after the website before picking a different one.)
  5. Under Request headers, click Add header if there isn’t a row there yet. In the first box of the row, choose authorization from the dropdown list (it’s first in the list). Leave Required checked.
  6. Next is the value box. This is where your access code from part B goes: the long code starting with github_pat_ that you saved. Go get it from wherever you saved it. (It isn’t your GitHub password.) The box has to read exactly Bearer, then one space, then your code. It works best to put that together in a plain-text program first, rather than typing it straight into the box:
    • Windows: open Notepad.
    • Mac: open TextEdit and choose Format > Make Plain Text.
    • Chromebook: there’s no Notepad, so open a new Google Doc. Google Docs sometimes “corrects” what you type, so look closely afterward to make sure the line reads exactly right.

    Type the word Bearer, then one space, then paste your access code right after it, all on one line, so it looks like Bearer github_pat_.... Then select that line and copy it.

  7. Click in the value box of the header row and paste. Then click the eye icon at the right end of the value box to show what you pasted. Make sure it starts with Bearer github_pat_, with exactly one space after Bearer and nothing extra before or after it. Do this check now: once you click Add, Claude stores the value and never shows it again. (Typing Bearer straight into the box didn’t work reliably for us, and this way did. We don’t know why, so please don’t skip it.) If you don’t see the eye icon (it sometimes disappears after you paste a long code), click in the box once. If it’s still not there, skip this check. The test in “Every time you start a new conversation” below will tell you whether it worked.
  8. Close Notepad or TextEdit without saving, since your access code is in it. If you used a Google Doc, it saved automatically, so delete it, unless that’s where you keep your code (in which case, never share that doc with anyone). Then scroll to the bottom of the connector window and click Add.
  9. In any chat, click the + next to the message box (not the + New button), go to Connectors, and turn RPOA Website on for that conversation.

If something went wrong, start over. Claude doesn’t let you change the access code after a connector is added, so the fix for most mistakes is to remove the connector and add it again. In Settings > Customize > Connectors, click RPOA Website, then click Disconnect, or open the ⋯ menu and choose Remove. Then do part C again from step 2.

If any of these steps look different than described, or something doesn’t work, check “Common problems” at the bottom of this page, or ask the board member who looks after the website. A screenshot of what you’re seeing helps a lot. (Just make sure your access code isn’t showing in it.)

Every time you start a new conversation

Every time you open a new chat with Claude, it starts completely fresh — it doesn’t remember earlier conversations, even ones about this same website. It also can’t guess which website you mean. So:

  1. Start a new chat by clicking + New at the top of the left-hand menu.
  2. Click the + next to the message box, go to Connectors, and make sure RPOA Website is turned on.
  3. Copy and paste the box below as your first message, before asking for anything else:
Before I ask for any changes, please do this first:

1. Confirm you can access the GitHub repository
   rpoa-orcas/rpoa-orcas.github.io using your connector.
2. Read the file called CLAUDE.md and the file called README.md, both
   at the top level of that repository.
3. Follow the instructions in CLAUDE.md for how changes get made.
4. Tell me in plain English whether all of this worked. If something
   didn't work, tell me plainly what's wrong instead of a technical
   error message — for example, whether it looks like my connector
   isn't set up right.

Once you've confirmed everything is working, I'll tell you what I'd
like changed on the site.

Claude will ask permission before it uses the website tools. Click Always allow, so it doesn’t keep asking. It will also ask for your name, so the site’s history shows who asked for each change.

Claude should then reply confirming it’s ready, or explain clearly what’s wrong. If something’s not working, see “Common problems” at the bottom of this page.

Requesting an update

Once Claude has confirmed it’s ready, just tell it what you want changed, like you’d ask a person. For example:

“Can you update the board page? I’m the new president as of October

  1. My name is Pat Example, I’ve lived on Cascade Way since 2015, and I taught high school science for 28 years before retiring.”

Or, with a PDF attached:

“Here are the minutes from our October board meeting. Please turn them into a page and add it to the Records page.”

What happens after you ask

  1. Claude makes the change and tells you which page to check.
  2. Usually within a few minutes, the change is live on rpoa.site. Occasionally GitHub is slow, so give it up to an hour. If you don’t see it yet, reload the page (press Ctrl+Shift+R on Windows or Cmd+Shift+R on a Mac) so your browser fetches it fresh.
  3. Look it over. If anything’s wrong — a typo, the wrong photo, or you’ve changed your mind — just tell Claude, and it will fix it or undo the change entirely.
  4. If you still don’t see your change after an hour, even after reloading, tell Claude it isn’t showing up. Claude will give the site a nudge to rebuild itself (it saves a harmless change that nobody can see). Check again about ten minutes later. If it’s still not there, ask the board member who looks after the website.

If you ask Claude to delete a page or a file, it will check with you first. Deleted things can be brought back from the site’s history, so nothing is lost for good by mistake.

Photos, PDFs, and other files

Claude can change the website’s text and pages, but it can’t upload photo or PDF files itself. That’s a limit of how it connects to the site, not something you did wrong. So when your change needs one of these files, Claude tells you exactly where to put it, and you upload it. It takes about a minute. You don’t need to know how the site is organized; Claude works out the right place.

  1. Ask for the change as usual, and say what the file is. For example: “Add the October board minutes to the Records page,” or “Put this photo of our new president on the board page.”
  2. Claude replies with two things: an exact file name and a link.
  3. On your computer, rename the file to exactly that name. (GitHub can’t rename a file after it’s uploaded, so do this first.)
  4. Click the link Claude gave you. It opens GitHub, on a page for uploading to the right folder. Sign in if it asks. Drag your file onto the page, or click choose your files.
  5. Scroll down, leave “Commit directly to the master branch” selected, and click Commit changes. (You can type a short note in the box above the button, but you don’t have to.)
  6. Go back to Claude and say “done.” Claude checks that the file arrived, then finishes the changes to the page.

Please use the link Claude gives you rather than uploading from GitHub’s main page. Files uploaded there land in a spot that doesn’t appear on the website. (If that happens, tell Claude; it will have you upload it again in the right place and clean up the stray copy.)

A few things to know:

If you ask Claude for something it can’t do, it should tell you plainly and say what to do instead. It should never link to a file that isn’t actually on the site. If you ever click a link Claude gave you and it doesn’t work, tell Claude.

Once a year: renewing your access code

Your access code stops working after the expiration you picked in part B (up to a year). GitHub emails you before it expires. It’s worth putting a reminder in your calendar for about 11 months after you set up. When it’s time:

  1. On GitHub, open Settings > Developer settings > Personal access tokens > Fine-grained tokens, and click RPOA Website.
  2. Click Regenerate token, pick the longest expiration again, and copy and save the new code in place of the old one.
  3. In Claude, remove the RPOA Website connector and add it again with the new code (see “If something went wrong, start over” in part C, then follow part C from step 2).

A few things worth knowing

Common problems

The connector says “Connection issue: Couldn’t connect to the server”

The full message is “Couldn’t connect to the server. Check that the URL points to a valid MCP server,” on the connector’s page in Settings, with a Reconnect button. This usually means the access code in the connector is wrong, missing, or expired. Occasionally it’s a typo in the server address. Try Reconnect once. If that doesn’t fix it, remove the connector and add it again (see “If something went wrong, start over” in part C). If you’re not sure your code is right, or it may have expired, regenerate it first (see the end of part B).

Red text under the value box says to choose “Sign in now”

The full message is “Add a value or remove this header. The value can’t be added after you save. This server offers OAuth sign-in: choose ‘Sign in now’ instead.” It appears while you’re adding the connector, and it means the value box is empty: your paste didn’t go in. Click in the box and paste again (see part C, step 6). Ignore the advice to choose “Sign in now.” For our site, No sign-in is correct.

The authorization header or the value box is grayed out

“Sign in now” or “Sign in when needed” is selected. Choose No sign-in (part C, step 4).

I can’t find the eye icon to check my code

See part C, step 7. If clicking in the box doesn’t bring it back, it’s fine to skip the check.

I didn’t save my access code, or I lost it

Regenerate it (see the end of part B). If your connector was already set up with the old code, you’ll need to set it up again with the new one.

Claude says it can’t reach the website

Make sure the connector is turned on for this chat (the + next to the message box, then Connectors). If it is, your access code may have expired: see “Once a year: renewing your access code.”

My change isn’t showing up on the site

See “What happens after you ask,” step 4.

Still stuck, or something else doesn’t work? Ask the board member who looks after the website.