Live data

A single number or status that changes over time — fundraiser totals, stock counts, build status, currently-playing.

What live data is

A live data entry is one piece of information about your business that updates over time. The classic examples:

• Fundraiser total — "$12,847 of $20,000 raised."
• Stock count — "3 left in stock."
• Build status — "Currently brewing: Mexican Chiapas."
• Currently playing — "Now spinning: Talk Talk — The Colour of Spring."
• Open / closed — "We're open until 6pm today."

It differs from a collection in one way: collections are LISTS of similar things (every blog post, every portfolio piece, every donor). Live data is ONE thing whose value changes. The rule of thumb: if you'd ever want to show more than one at a time, you want a collection.

What it costs

• Free — 1 live data entry per site.
• Paid plans — unlimited.

See pricing.

Set one up

Tell Claude what you want to track and what fields it should hold. Lanlan creates the entry, gives you a webhook URL to update it from anywhere, and shows it on your site:

• "Set up a fundraiser tracker for my home page — fields are raised (a dollar amount) and goal (also a dollar amount). Show it as 'Raised $X of $Y'."
• "I want a 'currently brewing' status on the menu page. Just one text field, called coffee."
• "Set up a build status indicator with two fields: status (string like 'building' or 'idle') and last_updated (a timestamp)."

Lanlan lets you define computed fields too — values calculated from other fields. The fundraiser case usually wants remaining = goal - raised and pct = raised / goal * 100 so the page can show a progress bar without doing math.

Update the value

Three ways:

• Ask Claude. "Update the fundraiser tracker — we're at $14,200 raised." Good for one-off changes.
• Webhook from another tool. When you create the live data entry, Lanlan gives you a webhook URL. Point Stripe, Zapier, n8n, or any service at it — every webhook fires updates the value. The webhook merges incoming fields into the existing record (so you can update raised without touching goal); pass replace: true if you want to overwrite the whole record.
• From the dashboard. Open your data page and edit the value directly.

For incrementing values ("add this donation to the running total"), the webhook supports a special increment mode — the Connect Stripe flow uses this for fundraisers.

Show it on your site

Two display patterns, and they compose:

• At deploy time — the value is baked into the HTML when the site builds. Best for SEO and instant rendering. The page rebuilds automatically when the webhook fires (usually within seconds of an update).
• At page-load time — the page fetches the latest value when a visitor opens it. Best when updates happen many times per minute and the deploy-time bake would lag. Lanlan ships a tiny helper that wires this up automatically.

Claude picks the right pattern based on how often the value changes and where it appears. You don't have to think about it.

What to try next

• Connect Stripe — 4-min read
• Set up a blog or portfolio — 4 min
• Forms beyond contact — 3-min read

If you get stuck

Ask Claude. "I can't figure out how to…" almost always gets you unstuck. For anything Claude can't help with, email support.