Website overview and builder

The website overview

Click Website in the main menu to open Website overview. It shows your site's status, what still needs doing, and how the site is performing. Two buttons sit at the top right:

• Edit website opens the builder.
• Manage comments opens the comments page.

The period toggle beside them (7 days, 28 days, 90 days or 12 months) sets the range for most numbers on the page. Two things ignore it: the live visitors strip always covers the last 30 minutes, and the Returning-visitor cohorts chart always covers the last six months.

Site status

The first card shows:

• Domain: your site's address, with a Live badge once it has been published, or Draft before then.
• Published: when the site was last published, or "Not published yet".
• Pages: how many pages are published, how many are drafts, and how many are disabled.
• Search Engine Preview (SEO): your site's search title, description and share image, as search results would show them.

Launch checklist

The Launch checklist counts how much of your setup is done. Every item is worked out from your real settings, and finished items move to the bottom. Click an item to go straight to the place that fixes it:

Needs attention

This card warns you when:

• your website isn't published yet
• your site has no meta description
• search engines can't list your site because Discoverable on the web is turned off in SEO settings

When none of these apply, it says "No alerts as of now".

The rest of the overview is your website analytics: live visitors, headline numbers and the Analytics deep dives. These are explained in the website analytics guide.

Creating your site for the first time

The first time you open the builder, a short setup walks you through four steps:

1. Template: pick a template to start from.
2. Color palette: choose one of the template's palette presets.
3. Typography: choose a font combination for headings, text and buttons.
4. Review: check your choices. Each one has an Edit link to go back.

Click Start building to create your site. Every page of the template is set up for you, along with a header and footer. Nothing is public until you publish.

Finding your way around the builder

The top bar shows your site's address (click it to open your site in a new tab) and two status pills:

• Saving…, Unsaved or Saved: whether your latest edits are saved. The builder saves automatically a moment after you stop editing.
• Not published, Published with a time, or a count of pages not yet published: what readers can actually see. Hover over the count to see which pages are waiting.

The icons down the left side open the builder's tools:

The page itself sits in the middle. Click any block on it to select it, and its options appear in the panel on the right. With nothing selected, that panel says "Select a block to edit".

Under the page, switch between Desktop, Laptop and Preview. Desktop and Laptop show the page at different widths. Preview shows it as readers see it, with editing turned off.

Pages

Open Pages to see every page on your site. Click a page to edit it. Your home page has a house icon.

Small markers beside a page tell you about it:

• an orange dot: the page has unpublished changes
• a crossed-out eye: the page is hidden
• a crossed-out magnifier: search engines are asked not to list it

Drag a row up or down to change the order of your pages. A Page links block in your navbar lists your pages in this order. The navbars that come with the templates are built from individual links instead, so dragging here doesn't move them. To change those, open the navbar editor (see Colours, fonts, header and footer) and rearrange the links there.

Each page's menu offers:

• Rename: you can also double-click the name.
• Page settings…: see below.
• Duplicate: the copy starts hidden. The post, author and survey pages can't be duplicated, because each one is the single layout every post, author or survey uses.
• Hide this page or Show this page: once published, a hidden page shows a "page not found" error to visitors. This doesn't change your navigation menu.
• Hide from search engines or Allow search engines.
• Delete page: only for pages you added yourself. The page and everything on it is removed, and its address stops working. This can't be undone.

Your site's built-in pages, such as Home, Newsletters, Authors and Recommendations, can't be deleted, because your site expects them to exist.

Hiding a page, hiding it from search engines, renaming it and changing its address are saved as draft changes, just like edits to the page's content. Your live site keeps showing the page as it was until you publish that page. If the page has been published before, it gets an orange dot so you can see it's waiting.

Adding a page

Click Add page at the bottom of the panel. In Add a page:

1. Pick a starting layout: About, Contact, Landing, Coming soon or Sponsor. The previews use your site's own colours and fonts.
2. Give it a Page name.
3. Check the Address. It fills in from the name, and can only use lowercase letters, numbers and hyphens.
4. Click Create page.

Some addresses are reserved for your site's own pages, and two pages can't share an address. If you pick one of these, you'll see a message saying so.

Page settings

Page settings applies to one page only. Your site-wide defaults live in the builder's settings.

• Name and Address. Built-in pages have a fixed address.
• Visible on the site: off makes the page show "page not found" once you publish it. It doesn't change your navigation menu.
• Allow search engines: off asks search engines not to list this page.
• SEO title and SEO description: what search results and link previews show for this page. Leave them empty to use your site's defaults.

The two switches save as soon as you flip them. The other fields save when you click Save.

Everything in page settings is saved as a draft and only reaches your live site when you publish the page. Until then, a page you've switched off is still visible to readers, and a new address doesn't work yet.

Adding and arranging blocks

Open Build and pick a block to add it to the page. Use Search blocks... to find one by name. Blocks are grouped:

Synced blocks fill themselves from your publication. For example, the Testimonials block shows the testimonials you add in the builder's settings, and the Recommendations block shows your Top 4 recommendations.

Some blocks only belong on certain pages. Dynamic post blocks, for instance, only make sense on the post page. Blocks that don't fit the page you're editing aren't offered. Some blocks can only be used once per page. When a page already has one, the block is greyed out with the reason.

To rearrange blocks, drag them on the page or in Outline.

Colours, fonts, header and footer

Open Design. It has two tabs:

• Theme: pick your Color palette and Typography. These apply to every page. They are saved as soon as you choose them and apply to your live site straight away, without waiting for Publish.
• Header & footer: the parts shared by every page, the Navbar and Footer, plus the Login Modal and Signup Modal popups.

You can also click the navbar or footer on the page itself. Then click Edit Navbar or Edit Footer in the right-hand panel to open it in its own editor, with its own blocks and layers. Use Main Editor to go back.

To start again with a different template, open Themes in the builder's settings and click Switch Templates. This replaces the content of your pages, navbar and footer with the new template, and it can't be undone. The new template's colour palette and fonts are saved to your theme, so like any theme change they apply to your live site straight away. The new page, navbar and footer content only reaches readers when you publish.

Publishing

Your edits are saved as drafts. Readers see nothing new until you publish. Click Publish at the top right and choose what goes live:

• All pages, then Publish now, publishes your whole site.
• Select pages lets you tick individual pages, the navbar or the footer. Items with changes show an unpublished badge, and Select all with changes ticks them all at once.

Your first publish has to include every page. Until a page has been published, visitors get "page not found", so Select pages is only available after that.

Scheduling

Click Schedule instead to pick a date and time under Publish at, then click Schedule. You can schedule the whole site or one page. The time must be in the future.

Only one publish can be scheduled at a time. Scheduling again replaces the one already waiting. While a publish is scheduled, the top bar says what and when, with a Cancel button.

Troubleshooting

"This page was changed somewhere else": someone else, or an assistant, or you in another tab, changed this page while you had it open. Choose Discard my changes & reload to see their version, or Keep mine to save yours over it. Your edits are kept while you stay in the builder, but are lost if you leave to edit the navbar, footer or a popup first.

My changes don't show on my site: they are saved but not published. Look for the orange dot in Pages, then Publish.

I hid a page but readers can still see it: hiding a page is a draft change too. Publish that page to take it off your live site.

Reordering pages didn't change my menu: your navbar is built from individual links. Rearrange them in the navbar editor, or use a Page links block, which follows the order in Pages.

I can't choose "Select pages": your site hasn't been published yet. Publish all pages once first.

A block I want isn't in the list: it doesn't belong on this kind of page. Check you're editing the right page.

A block is greyed out: the page already has as many of that block as it can hold. Remove the existing one first.

I can't delete a page: built-in pages can't be deleted. Hide it instead.