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Site Builder lets you build a website by dragging and dropping blocks, with no code. When it's ready, you publish it to your hosting plan with us, and it appears at your domain. This article covers building your site, publishing it, and fixing the most common publishing problem.
You need a hosting plan with us
Site Builder websites are published to a hosting plan with us, so you need one to publish. The easiest way is to buy Site Builder with a hosting plan, or add it to your hosting plan from your client area: publishing is then set up for you.
Opening the builder
- Sign in to the client area and go to My Services.
- Click your Site Builder service (or open your hosting plan and find it under Addons).
- Use the log-in button on its page. The builder opens already signed in.
Building your site
- Choose a template close to the look you want. You can change everything afterwards: colours, fonts, pictures and text.
- Add pages for each part of your site, such as Home, About, Services and Contact. Your plan sets how many pages you can have (One Page is a single page; the other plans allow more).
- Add blocks to each page: ready-made sections such as a header, text and picture, gallery, contact form or map. Drag them into place and click to edit.
- Preview on desktop and phone before you publish. Most visitors will see your site on a phone.
Selling online (Store plans)
The Store plans add an online shop: Store for up to 10 products, Store Plus for up to 50 and Store Premium for up to 500. Add your products, prices and pictures in the builder, and connect a payment provider so customers can pay. If you're VAT-registered, set up VAT in the shop settings so it's shown and charged correctly.
Publishing your site
Click Publish in the builder. Your site is uploaded to your hosting plan and appears at your domain within a minute or two. After any change, publish again to update the live site.
Already have a website on that hosting plan? Publishing puts the Site Builder website in its place, replacing the old home page. If you want to keep the old site, take a copy first (see Backups and restore), or ask us about publishing to a different domain.
For your site to show at your domain, the domain must point at your hosting plan with us. See Pointing your domain at your website and email.
Free Trial
The Free Trial has every feature, so you can build your whole site before you pay. To publish it, move to a paid plan: open the Site Builder service in My Services and choose to upgrade (see Upgrading or downgrading your plan). Everything you've built is kept.
"Publishing unavailable"
This means the builder doesn't have working details for uploading your site to your hosting plan: they're missing, or the password has changed. Usually it's because Site Builder was bought on its own rather than added to a hosting plan.
- If you have a hosting plan with us, contact our support team and we'll connect it for you.
- If you've changed the password of the FTP account the builder uses, update it in the builder's publishing settings (see FTP accounts).