Someone built this website for you

You were invited to a finished website that somebody else built. What it is, what you can change yourself, and what happens when you press Publish.

Somebody - an agency, a developer, a friend who is good at this - built a website for your business and handed it over to you. You did not have to make it, and you do not have to be technical to look after it.

This page is the short version of what you now have.

What you are looking at

When you sign in you land on the website's home screen. In the middle is a picture of your own website exactly as it looks to a visitor. Around it are the few things you can do with it: Edit, Publish, and a list of anything waiting for you.

The website may already be live at your own address, or it may be waiting for you to put it out. The home screen says which.

What you can change yourself

Text and pictures. Click Edit, then click the words on the page and type. It is the real page, not a form - what you see is what a visitor gets. Pictures are swapped the same way: click the picture, choose a new one.

Your contact details, your opening hours and the words on your buttons all work like that too.

You do not need to ask the person who built it for a small change. Ask them for the big ones - a new page, a different look, something that has to be designed.

Publishing is yours to press

Nothing you change reaches your visitors straight away. Your edits are saved as a draft that only you can see. The website out on your address carries on exactly as it was.

When you are happy, press Publish. That takes everything in your draft and puts it out at your address, usually within a minute. That is the whole thing: Publish means "show this to the world now".

If you would rather look first, use Preview - it shows the draft as a visitor would see it, without publishing anything.

You cannot break it

Every time you publish, we keep a copy of what the website looked like. If a change turns out wrong, open Version history and go back to an earlier version. Nothing is lost, and it takes a few seconds.

That is why it is safe to try. The worst case is one click back.

What is not yours

The account the website sits in may belong to the person who built it. If so, they handle the bill, and they decide which parts of the account you can reach - which is why your account may have fewer areas in it than a guide describes. If something a guide mentions is not there, it is not broken; it was simply not handed to you.

Ask them if you need something turned on, or if you want the website moved to an account of your own. Moving it is a normal thing to do and it does not take the website offline - see Move a website.

Where to go next

If you get stuck, the Ask AI button in the app answers questions about your own website in plain language.

Didn't find the answer, or is something wrong here? Tell us.