How the Ultranet works

Written for Taylor, Luis and whoever runs IT after Ian. No programming knowledge assumed. Updated October 2026.

What this is

One internal website, moss-ultranet.pages.dev, with a few tools inside it:

What it runs on

Everything is a standard, documented service. Nothing was built from scratch that a contractor or a Cloudflare support article could not explain.

Not used: no email provider, no SMS, no third-party login, no analytics, no paid API keys. The help desk can send email or phone alerts if a Resend or ntfy account is added later; today it does not.

What it costs

There is no subscription and no card on file for any of this. The only way it could start costing money is if someone enabled a paid feature on purpose (for example Cloudflare R2 storage for large certificate scans, which asks for a card even though the first 10 GB are free).

Logins and the admin password

• Staff pages (Page IT, Time off, Directory, Branding, Home) need no login. The address is only shared inside the company.
• Admin pages share one password. Sign in once per browser; it stays signed in for 30 days.
• Nobody can look the password up, Ian included. Cloudflare stores it write-only. If it is lost, it is reset, not recovered.

Resetting the admin password

Needs a PC with Node.js installed and a Cloudflare login for the account (see Changing the site for the one-time setup). In the project folder:

npx wrangler pages secret put ADMIN_PASSWORD --project-name moss-ultranet
npx wrangler pages deploy public --project-name moss-ultranet

The first command asks for the new password (type it, it stays hidden). The second one publishes the site again; Cloudflare only picks up a new password after a publish. Without the second step the old password keeps working.

Day-to-day, no code needed

These are all done in the browser on the admin pages. None of them requires Ian.

Maintenance calendar

There are no software updates to install. Cloudflare maintains the platform.

Changing the site

Content changes (people, events, certificates, tax rules) need no code. Changing the pages themselves does: the site is a folder of files that gets published to Cloudflare. Anyone comfortable with a command line can do it, and any web contractor can do it in an afternoon, because the stack is plain HTML, JavaScript and SQL with no framework.

One-time setup on a PC

1. Install Node.js (the free LTS version from nodejs.org).
2. Get the project folder (moss-internal). It should live in a shared place: a GitHub repository or the company file share, not only on one laptop.
3. In that folder run npx wrangler login. A browser window asks you to allow access to the Cloudflare account.

Publishing a change

npx wrangler pages deploy public --project-name moss-ultranet

That is the whole deployment. It takes about ten seconds and the live site updates immediately. If a change goes wrong, Cloudflare keeps every previous version: in the Cloudflare dashboard open Workers & Pages → moss-ultranet → Deployments and click "Rollback" on the last good one.

Where things are in the folder

Where the data lives, backups

All data is in the two Cloudflare D1 databases. Cloudflare keeps its own point-in-time history for 30 days, and you can take a file backup any time:

npx wrangler d1 export moss-help-desk --remote --output helpdesk-backup.sql
npx wrangler d1 export moss-sales-tax --remote --output salestax-backup.sql

Each file is a plain SQL text file that can be opened in Notepad and restored with npx wrangler d1 execute <database> --remote --file <file>. Put the monthly backups on the company file share.

Certificate scans uploaded on the Sales Tax pages are stored inside the sales tax database today (1.5 MB per file). Keep the paper or PDF originals as well; the registry is the index, not the only copy.

What it does NOT touch

• It never connects to TRAVERSE or ProcessPro Global. The sales tax batch reads a CSV or Excel export that a person uploads; nothing is written back.
• It has no access to the office network, SQL Server, email, or Microsoft 365.
• It holds no financial data beyond what is typed into it: invoice amounts for a tax decision and certificate numbers.
• Turning it off (deleting the Cloudflare project) loses the help desk history, PTO records, directory and certificate registry, and nothing else.

If Ian is not here

1. Move the Cloudflare account to the company. Today it is under ianminnr@gmail.com. Either create a Cloudflare account on a Moss address (for example it@moss-seal.com) and transfer the Pages project and both D1 databases to it, or add a second member with the Administrator role under Manage Account → Members, so the account is never single-person. Do this before anything else.
2. Put the project folder in a shared place. A private GitHub repository under a Moss organization is the standard answer; the company file share works too. Whoever maintains it later needs the folder, not Ian's PC.
3. Write the admin password in the company password manager, shared with Taylor and the next IT person. If nobody has it, reset it with the two commands under Logins.
4. Hand this page and the README to whoever takes over. A contractor who knows Cloudflare Pages can take it from there; it is a common platform, not a custom one.

What Taylor and Luis can do with no help at all

Everything in the day-to-day table. The admin pages are the whole job for HR, the help desk and sales tax. Code is only needed to change how a page looks or add a new tool.

What to tell a contractor

"Cloudflare Pages site with Pages Functions and two D1 databases, plain HTML/JS, no framework, no build step. Deploy with wrangler. README in the repo." That sentence is enough for anyone who has used Cloudflare.

When something breaks

Map of the pieces

Browser  ──►  moss-ultranet.pages.dev (Cloudflare Pages)
                 ├─ static pages: Home, Help Desk, HR, Branding, Sales Tax, this guide
                 └─ Pages Functions (the "server"):
                      /api/*       help desk   ──►  D1: moss-help-desk
                      /api/hr/*    HR          ──►  D1: moss-help-desk
                      /api/tax/*   sales tax   ──►  D1: moss-sales-tax
                                               ──►  Census geocoder (public)
                                               ──►  Texas Comptroller boundary service (public)

Not connected: TRAVERSE / ProcessPro, SQL Server, Microsoft 365, email.

Questions about this page: Ian, or the README in the project folder.