Using the site builder

The site builder is where your website gets made. You describe what you want in plain English, the assistant builds it, and you watch the result appear in the preview beside the conversation. Nothing you do here is permanent until you choose to publish.

Opening the builder

Open a website from your dashboard, then select Website builder between Overview and Domain in its navigation. The organization and website header stays visible while you build, so you can move to another part of the website dashboard without first leaving the builder. If you don't have a website yet, select Website on your dashboard and give it a name.

Every website you create gets its own builder, its own conversation history, and its own web address — so a second website never disturbs the first.

Picking a starting point

The first time you open a new website, the builder asks how you'd like to begin. You can change anything later; this only gives the assistant its first direction.

• Start from a website — point at a site you like and it gets rebuilt as your own.
• Describe it — tell the assistant about your business and what you need.
• Start from an image — upload a design, screenshot, or sketch to build from.
• Blank canvas — open the editor and shape every page yourself.

Most people choose Describe it. A couple of sentences about your business is enough to get a first draft on the screen.

Draft, dev site, live site

Your website exists in three places, and knowing which is which saves a lot of worry:

• The draft is what you see in the builder's preview. Every change — a sentence you typed to the assistant, a new page, an uploaded photo — lands here first.
• Your dev site is a free web address on our platform that always shows your latest draft. It's private in the sense that search engines are told to ignore it, but anyone with the link can view it, which makes it handy for showing a colleague.
• Your live site is your own domain. It only changes when you press Publish.

So you can experiment freely. Visitors to your live site keep seeing the last version you published until you decide the new one is ready.

Where to go next

• Touring the builder — what every part of the screen does.
• Chatting with the assistant — how to ask for what you want.
• Editing your pages — changing a section without asking for it.
• Images and the media library — getting your photos into the website.
• Breadcrumbs — the trail above a page's heading and how to change it.
• Managing your website — branding, domains, publishing, and the rest of the settings.