Build a website

1Open the website we built when you signed up

When you sign up, we build your website from what you told us about your business, and put Website in the Tools rail of every new workspace. The last message in your setup conversation says when it is built, with a link to it. Click Website in the Tools rail to open it.

Every site has a front page and a Contact page with a form. A business that books jobs or appointments also gets a Book page, where a customer picks a service and a day. A business that sells online gets a Shop page and a Bag page, where a customer orders and pays.

Each form saves a request to your Enquiries table, or to Leads or Bookings if you have one of those instead, and we tell your admins about each request. A form with none of those tables shows a line asking visitors to call or email. To connect it, click the form in the editor and choose a table under Saves to.

The Bag takes card payments once Stripe is connected under Admin, Billing, Getting paid. Until then, orders arrive unpaid and we tell you about each one.

A workspace with no website gets the same pages when you ask Scout to build your website.

2Look through the templates before you pick one

Click Website in the Tools rail. Under Start from a template (Add another set of pages once you have a site) there are nine cards. Each shows the part of one page that sets that template apart, such as its menu or its people directory, then a line naming its type and look, then the pages it creates. Templates you have saved sit above them, under Your templates. Click one to open it.

It opens on Overview: the front page, the page the card showed, and a page for one item, side by side. Click any of them to see it whole. Down the left is every page the template creates, each with what it is for: Directory, Profile, Location and so on. Click through them. The first five are shops, and they differ most on their category and product pages: a filter rail down the side suits a few thousand items, a row of chips across the top suits a few hundred. The other four are Professional services firm, Restaurant or venue, Branch network and Real estate agency, and those differ in what they list.

Click Use this template when you have decided. A bar names each step (creating the pages, opening your front page), and the front page opens in the editor when it is done. It takes a couple of seconds.

Clicking Use this template again on a template you already added opens its front page instead of adding a second copy. Once every page it made is deleted or archived, it adds them again.

A page marked Optional has Add this page under it. Untick it to leave that page out, and links to it on the other pages are removed.

3Save your site as a template

On Website, click Save as a template beside Save this site as a template. Change the Template name if you want to, and untick any page under Pages to include that should not be in it. The header, footer and anything else those pages share come with them.

If your business goes by another name, type it under Other names your business goes by, separated by commas. Click Check what is taken out.

Under Your business's name is every place your name was found, and under Details that identify your business every email address, phone number, ABN, ACN, bank detail and street address. Ticked ones are replaced: your name with the name of whoever uses the template, a detail with an invented one such as name@example.com. Untick one to keep it as it is.

Links to pages you left out are removed from the template. Click Include beside one to add that page instead. Uploaded pictures are always replaced with generated ones, and the people, articles or products your pages list come without any of your records.

Click Save template. It appears under Your templates, and Use this template creates its pages as drafts like any other template. To remove it, open it and click Delete template. Pages already made from it stay.

A saved template is listed only in the workspace that saved it, and in any other workspace where you are an admin too, marked Saved in with the workspace it came from.

4Change a saved template

On Website, open the template under Your templates and click Edit template.

Under About the template, change the Template name, Who it suits, the One line description and the Sample business name, which is what its pages call the business in the template picker. Picture style decides the generated pictures, and Colours are the nine colours its pages use.

Under Pages, change a page's title, its Role and its Summary. The arrows move a page up or down, which is the order the picker lists them in. Tick Optional to let whoever installs the template leave that page out. The front page cannot be optional. Click a page to preview it on the right.

Click Edit page beside a page, or Edit beside a shared section under Shared sections, to change what is on it in the website editor. It saves as you go. A picture there is a generated one: Use a generated picture adds one and Another swaps it. In a link field, the template's own pages are listed as you type.

Under Sample records, choose a ready-made template in Take sample records from to fill the lists on your pages, such as twelve people or a dozen products. The one marked its pictures match is the one your site was built from, and suits it best. Untick a list to leave it empty. Your own records never come with a template.

Click Save changes for the settings. Then click Check it installs to see the pages and addresses installing it in this workspace would create, without creating anything.

5Share a template by link

Open the template with Edit template, save any changes, and click Check and share under Share by link.

It is checked for email addresses, phone numbers, ABNs and ACNs, bank details, street addresses, reference numbers, ids from a workspace, uploaded pictures and the names of businesses on Diract. If any is found, nothing is shared and each one is listed with where it is. Change it in the editor, then click Check and share again.

Once it passes, a link appears. Click Copy link and send it. Whoever opens it, signed in, sees every page, what the check found, and Use this template, which adds the pages to their own workspace as drafts. Only an admin can install it.

It is checked again every time somebody installs it, so a change that adds one of those details stops installs until it is taken out. Click Stop sharing to turn the link off. Sharing again makes a new link.

6Update your pages when their template changes

On Website, open the template your pages came from and click Update my pages. Nothing changes yet: it lists what updating would do.

Pages under Changed in the template and not by you, to be updated get the template's new version, and pages under New in the template, to be added are created. Click Update pages to do both, or Cancel.

A page you have changed is never replaced. It is listed under Changed by you, left as they are, even if you only changed its title. A page you deleted or archived is not added back, a page the template no longer has is kept, and a page somebody has open in the editor is left until they close it.

Pages added from a template before 14 September 2026 are listed under Added before updates existed, left as they are. Updating still adds that template's new pages.

An update never adds, changes or removes your people, listings, articles or other records.

7Replace the sample people, articles and listings

The firm, restaurant, branch network and agency templates list records rather than fixed words: people, services, offices, articles, events, dishes, listings. A record is edited on its own screen, not on the page. On Website, click Open Content under Content.

Pick a collection on the left, such as People or Property listings. Click Edit beside a record, change its fields, and click Save. Add person (or Add listing, Add article) starts a new one. The bin icon deletes a record, after asking.

The eye icon beside a record publishes or unpublishes it, and the count under each collection says how many are published. The sample records are published when the template is installed, so delete the ones you have not replaced before you publish the pages, or they are listed on your live site. A record you add starts as a draft and appears nowhere until you publish it.

If you already keep the same person in one of your own tables, use Linked to your own records while editing: choose the table under Choose one of your tables, search for them, and click their name. Copy details across then fills the website record from yours. It copies once. A later change to your own record does not reach the website until you click it again.

8Put your own products in the shop

The five shop templates, and the restaurant template's shop, list products rather than fixed words. On Website, click Open Content under Content, then pick Products on the left.

Click Edit beside a product, change its fields, and click Save. Add product starts a new one as a draft, which appears nowhere until you publish it with the eye icon.

Price is what a customer is charged, whatever any page says. Type it as a number in your company's currency, such as 22.50, with no symbol. Leave Was empty unless it really was that price.

Choice and Choices are the one thing a customer picks, such as Size and S, M, L. Every choice costs the same. Untick Available to order for something sold out: it stays listed, marked Sold out, and cannot be ordered.

9Take orders, with or without card payment

A customer adds a product to their bag from its page, or with Add on a product card, then orders from the Bag and checkout block on your bag page. They give their name and email, and a phone number and a note if they want to.

To be paid by card when they order, click Admin, then Billing, and click Set up card payments under Getting paid. Choose your Business type and fill in Your business, and You for a sole trader, then click Continue to Stripe. On Stripe you choose your industry, add the bank account the money goes to, accept Stripe's terms and confirm who you are. The money goes straight to your own Stripe account.

An Australian business can type its ABN and click Look up to fill in the legal name and business type. Use your legal name and a date of birth that match your ID, because Stripe checks them. For a company, partnership or trust, Stripe asks for the owners and directors on its own page. Fill it all in on Stripe instead skips the form.

Until Stripe is ready the button reads Place order, no payment is taken, and the customer is told you will be in touch. Once Ready to take payments shows under Getting paid, it reads Pay with the total and takes them to a card payment page.

Prices, the bag, the card payment and the order are all in your company's currency, the one for its country. A currency with no smaller unit, such as yen, is charged in whole units, so a price of 1650.50 is charged as 1,651.

To take orders without card payment even with Stripe connected, select the Bag and checkout block and untick Take card payments. Do this if your currency has three decimal places, such as KWD: card payment is not available in those yet, and a customer who presses Pay is asked to contact you instead.

10Deal with your orders

On Website, click Open Orders under Content. To do lists the orders you have not dealt with, Done the ones you have, and All everything.

Each order shows what was ordered, the total, and the customer's email and phone, with its status at the top right. Paid means paid by card, or marked paid by you. Not paid online means you arrange payment with them. Waiting on payment is somebody who went to the card page and has not finished; it changes to Paid by itself if they do.

To change an order's status, pick from that list: Paid once they have paid you another way, Not paid online to undo that, or Cancelled.

Click Cancel order on the order and confirm to cancel it. The customer is not emailed, so tell them yourself. A cancelled order leaves To do and stays under All, where you can change its status back.

Click Mark done once you have made it, posted it or handed it over. Not done yet puts it back in To do.

Admins are told about each order in the app and by email, as the Website order notification. A card order is only sent once it is paid.

11Collect listing alerts and saved searches

The real estate agency template gives visitors two ways to ask for new listings by email: the New listings by email band above the footer on every page, and Save this search under the results on Buy and Rent, which saves whatever filters are in the address at the time.

Nothing is sent until the person confirms. They get an email from your business with a Confirm my alert button, and the link works for 7 days.

Once confirmed, they are emailed once an hour about matching listings published after they confirmed, up to ten at a time. A listing is only ever sent to them once, and every email has an Unsubscribe link.

To see who has signed up, go to Website and click Open Listing alerts under Content. An admin can remove somebody with the bin icon beside them.

12Save requests from a form to one of your tables

Click the form on the page. Under Saves to, choose the table each request goes into, such as Enquiries, then publish the page.

Each request adds a record to that table, and your admins get a New website enquiry notification listing what was sent. An answer goes into the field named like its question, so a question called Preferred Day fills Preferred Day. An answer the table has no field for, or one that does not fit its field, is listed on the notification instead.

A Status field the form does not ask about is set to its first option, so requests in a trade's Enquiries start at New.

The form sends only once the visitor has ticked its consent line, when it has one, and passed the bot check.

Each visitor also gets an email back once their request is saved. Change its words under Email reply, in Subject and Message, beside the Success heading and Success message they see on the page. Untick Email the customer a reply to send none.

We fill in {first_name}, {name} and {business_name} in the subject and message for each person. We leave out a name holding anything but letters, such as a link.

The email goes to the address typed in the form's Email type of answer, so a form without one sends no email. A reply to it reaches whoever is told about new enquiries, and their notification says the email went.

A form added before this email existed has Email the customer a reply unticked. Tick it and publish the page to start sending. One address gets at most three of these emails a day.

13Put your badges, reviews and phone number where they are seen

Select the Reassurance strip and give each point an Icon, such as a shield for licensed and insured or a clock for same day service. Set Layout to Row to show the titles as one line of badges, which leaves their descriptions out.

On the Hero, fill in Second button and Second button goes to for the other way in: one button calls, the other books. The second button is outlined so the first still reads as the main one.

On the Header, a link under On the right has Shown as. Set it to Button for a call button on every page, and give it the phone Icon. Point it at your number, written as tel: then the digits, such as tel:0200000000.

Add the Call bar block at the bottom of a page. It sticks to the bottom of the screen as the page scrolls, and by default only on a phone: untick Only on a phone to keep it on a computer too.

Add Review score for the number people look for first: the score out of five, how many reviews, and where they were left. Each quote in Testimonials takes its own Stars as well, and nought draws none.

14Add a blank page

On the Website screen, click New page beside Your pages, type a title and click Add page. It joins the list as a Draft with an address made from its title.

To start from a designed page rather than a blank one, choose it under Start from before clicking Add page: an About, Contact, Careers or Services page from one of our templates, each saying what it starts with. Search finds one by name. It is built with your own header, footer, colours and business name, and its words and pictures are examples for you to change.

Click Edit on its row to put something on it, then publish it like any other page.

15Change words by clicking them

Click any block on the page to select it. Click it again to select whatever it sits inside, which is how you reach a section that is completely covered by its own contents.

Double click words to edit them where they are. Type over them and press Enter, or click somewhere else, to keep the change. Press Escape to leave it as it was.

The right panel has three tabs. Content lists everything about the selected block that is not words: how many across, which picture, how many items. Style is spacing, size, type and colour. Ask is where you type an instruction instead.

At the bottom of Content, Add attribute gives the selected block a data or ARIA attribute, such as aria-label for a screen reader or a data attribute a tracking tool looks for. Only data, aria and role attributes can be added, and a row that cannot be used says why beneath it.

16Change how a block looks, at one width

Select a block, then click Style on the right. Spacing, size, type, colour, corners and shadows are all there, in the same order on every block.

It edits the width you are looking at. The Phone, Tablet and Desktop buttons at the top choose both what you see and what you are changing, so there is never a second selector to disagree with the first. The panel says which one at the top: Desktop and wider.

A value set at a narrow width carries up to the wider ones. So set the ordinary case at Phone first, and only change Tablet or Desktop where it genuinely has to differ.

17Save a style and use it on other blocks

Style one block the way you want it, such as a card. Then, with it selected, click Style, and under Saved style click Save these styles as a saved style. Give it a name, such as Card, and click Save.

Select another block and choose the style's name under Saved style. It takes the style's look at every width, including how it looks when somebody points at it. A control that shows From Card is coming from the saved style.

Change a block wearing it and the panel says how many changes it has of its own. Update Card to match makes the saved style look like this block, and every block wearing it changes, on every page. Go back to Card takes the block's own changes off.

Remove Card takes the saved style off the site. The panel says how many blocks wear it first, and those blocks keep only their own changes.

To give every block of one kind the same style, such as every heading, select one wearing it and tick Every heading wears Card unless it is given another. Headings already on your pages take it too. To leave one heading plain, choose None under Saved style.

18Lay blocks out in a row or a grid

Select the block that holds the others, click Style, and under Layout set Arrange as to In a row or column or In a grid. When it runs out of room decides whether the row wraps onto a new line or stays on one.

Then select a block inside it. Under In its row or grid, Share of the row set to Fills what is left makes it take the room the others leave, and Keeps its own size stops it growing. Columns it spans and Rows it spans stretch it across a grid. Its own alignment and Order move just that block, without changing the others.

Each of these is set at the width on screen, like every other style, so a row on Desktop can stack on Phone.

19Drag spacing and size on the page

Select a block. Pink handles sit on the inside edge of its padding: drag one towards the middle of the block for more padding on that side, or out for less. A block that lays out the blocks inside it has another pink handle between the first two: drag it to change the gap.

The white handle on the right edge changes the width, and the one on the bottom edge how tall it is at least. The width catches at full, two thirds, half and a third of the space it sits in, and a dashed line shows where it caught.

Each drag lands on a step the Style panel offers, and the label beside the pointer says which. Letting go saves it at the width on screen, as one change Undo takes back.

20Move a picture or block anywhere

Select a picture, a video or an icon, then drag any part of it to where you want it, such as a logo over the picture at the top of a page. Any other block has a round grip with four arrows in its middle: drag that.

Nothing around it moves. It keeps its room in the page, and the label beside the pointer says how far across and down it has gone.

It is saved at the width on screen, so a picture placed on Desktop stays where the page puts it on Phone. Place it again at each width you want it moved.

To put it back, drag it towards where it started: it catches there and the label says Back in its place. Or open Style, and under Place set Moved from its place to Not moved.

21Set an exact size

Under Size, or Gap under Layout, choose Exact size at the bottom of the list and type the size: 320px, 20rem or 50%. A number on its own is read as pixels.

Sizes go up to 1920 pixels, 120 rem or 100 per cent, and a gap takes no percentage. A size past those is refused and the box turns amber with the limits.

22Keep a block at the top while the page scrolls

Select the block, click Style, and under Scrolling set While scrolling to Stays at the top. It stays at the top of the screen while the section holding it scrolls past, then moves on with it.

Content that does not fit decides what happens to anything too big for the block: Shows past the edge, Cut off at the edge, or Scrolls inside.

23Make words bold, add a link or a list

Double click a text block on the page. A dark bar appears above it: Bold, Italic, Bulleted list, Numbered list, Link and Remove link. Select some words and click one, or press Cmd and B, or Cmd and I. Enter starts a new paragraph.

For a link, select the words, click Link, type the address and press Enter. It can be a web address, an email address starting mailto:, a phone number starting tel:, or a page on your site such as /contact.

Click anywhere off the block to finish. Escape puts the words back as they were.

In the panel the same block shows the words with their marks: bold, *italic*, [words](https://example.com), and a line starting - or 1. for a list.

24Fade a background from one colour to another

Select the block, click Style, and under Colour choose a Background and then a Gradient to colour. The block fades from the first to the second.

Under Gradient, Which way it runs sets the direction. Like other styles it can be different on Phone, Tablet and Desktop.

With no Background chosen it fades from clear, so the page or section behind shows through at the start.

25Choose how a section comes in

On the published page, each section comes in as a visitor scrolls to it. Select the section, click Content, and choose its Entrance: Rises in, Fades in, Slides in from the left, Slides in from the right, Grows in, or Already there for none.

Click Play beside it to see it on the page. Nothing moves on the page while you edit otherwise.

Turn on Bring in its blocks one at a time and the blocks inside the section come in one after another instead of together.

26Keep the important part of a picture in view

A picture cropped to fit, such as a wide image or a hero's background on a phone, loses its edges. Select the image or hero, click Content, and under Keep in view click the part of the picture that must stay. You can drag the dot too.

The block on the page moves as you click, so you can see the crop. Middle puts it back to the centre.

On the phone app, choose one of nine places, from Top left to Bottom right.

27Write shorter words for a phone

Click Phone at the top of the editor, select the heading, button or text that is too long, and click Content. Turn on Different words on Phone, then change the words, in the panel or by double clicking them on the page.

Only phones show those words. Tablet and Desktop keep the block's own words, and you can do the same at either of them.

The panel says Has its own words on and the widths that already have their own. Turn the switch off to go back to the block's words at that width.

28Change how a block looks when somebody points at it

Select a block, click Style, then click Hover at the top of the panel. Choose a Shadow, how See through it is, or a colour for its background, text or border. Click Focus to do the same for when somebody reaches it with the Tab key.

Point at the block on the page to see it. The change eases in and out, and it applies at every width.

A dot beside Hover or Focus means that block has one set. Choose Same as normal, or the slash beside the colours, to take it off.

29Give a page its own web address

Open the page and click the address under its title. Type the part after your domain, so /about or /services/wills. Letters, numbers and hyphens, up to four levels deep.

A page that shows one record at a time, such as a person's profile, gives every published record an address one level below its own. Give that page /our-people and the record whose URL slug is jane-smith is at /our-people/jane-smith on your domain. A page at that exact address, if you make one, is shown instead of the record.

See what this changes lists what points at the old address: your other pages, your menu, your footer. Tick Point them at the new address too and they move with it, or leave it and they keep working through the redirect.

Renaming a live page always leaves a redirect. Anyone following the old address, from a bookmark or somebody else's website, lands on the new one. There is nothing to turn on and no way to skip it.

The change is to the draft. Publish the page to put the new address live.

30Ask Scout for a page, or for how a page shows in search

Open Scout and say what you want: "make a page about our fees", or "set the search title and description for the About page". It only publishes a page when you have said to.

A share link is /public/pages/ followed by a short name, and that name is unique across every business on the app. When yours is taken, the page gets your business name in front, so services becomes your-company-services. The assistant tells you the address it actually used.

A search title can be up to 70 characters and a description up to 160. Longer ones are refused rather than cut off, so nothing goes out halfway through a sentence.

Hiding a page from search engines only happens once you confirm it. On the home page that takes the whole website out of search results, and the assistant says so before it asks.

To move a website you already have, open the page that should become your home page and ask Scout to copy it: "copy my site example.com.au exactly". The page you are on becomes a copy of that site's home page, with its pictures and video copied into your library. Each page its menu links to waits under Create the page, and its colours and typefaces under Apply the colours and Apply the new look.

Scout names anything it could not match, such as a picture that could not be copied or a typeface we do not have. A part of the site with no matching block, such as a table, is drafted as close as we can, and shown as its words if even that fails.

31Set how a page shows in search and when it is shared

In the editor, click the magnifying glass at the top, beside the clock. Search and sharing opens on the right, with a preview of the page as a search result.

Type a Search title and a Description. The counter beside each shows how many characters you have used: a title can be up to 70 and a description up to 160. Leave the title empty to use the page's own title.

Under Share picture, choose the picture shown when somebody shares the page's link, or None. Only pictures already on a published page are offered.

Tick Hide this page from search engines for a page nobody should find by searching, such as a thank you page. Click Save. The change is live straight away, without publishing the page again.

32Ask for a new page, a new look or search settings from the editor

In the editor, click Ask on the right and say what you want: "add a services page listing what we do", "set this page's search title and description", or "use a serif for the headings and give it more room".

Changes to the page you are on happen straight away, and Undo takes them back. Anything that reaches further is a card under the reply with a button, and nothing happens until you press it: Create the page makes the new page as a draft, then Open the new page opens it. Apply saves the search title and description. Apply the new look changes the type and design of every page, and Apply the colours changes its colours.

Pictures come only from the ones you have uploaded. If none fits, the picture is left empty and the reply says so: click it and choose one.

A list of people, services or other records only shows what you have published under Collections. If that collection is empty, the reply says so.

33Bring the addresses from your old site

On the Website screen, scroll to Old web addresses and click Add addresses from your old site. Paste your list, one per line: the old address, then the new one. A comma, a tab, a space or an arrow between them all work, and a full web address is fine because only the part after your domain is used.

Click Check the list first. It tells you what it would add and, line by line, what it could not use and why. Nothing is written until you click Add.

Each one shows how many people have followed it. Before you remove one, look at that number: removing an address 412 people followed breaks 412 links.

To fix one, click the pencil on its row, change the old address or the new one, tick Temporary for a 302, and click Save. Changing only where it goes keeps its follow count.

34Use the records you already keep

Open Content from the Website screen and pick a list, People for example. If you already keep those people in one of your own tables, choose it under Link these to your own records and it matches them up by name in one go.

Everything it is sure about is ticked. A name that only matches once you ignore the order, and anybody whose name appears twice, is left for you to decide. Untick anything that is wrong, then Link. Linking only says which of your records is which: nothing is published and nothing is copied.

Open a record and click Copy details across. It shows you every field it would fill, which of the two names it matched on, and exactly what each one would change from and to. Untick anything you want to keep as it is, then copy.

35Put a picture on a page

Select the block, then click Choose image on the right. Upload an image takes a PNG, JPEG, WEBP or GIF up to 10MB, and everything you have uploaded before is in the grid underneath, so the same photo goes on a second page without uploading it twice.

Fill in Alt text: that is what somebody using a screen reader hears. For a picture that is pure decoration, tick Decorative, no alt text needed instead. Anything still missing one is named in the publish panel before the page goes live.

A photo from a phone is often four thousand pixels wide. Smaller copies are made for you when you upload, and a visitor's phone takes the one it needs, so you do not have to resize anything first.

36Put a video behind a section

Select a Section, then under Background click Choose background video and Upload a video. It takes an MP4 or a WebM up to 30MB, and plays without sound, on a loop.

Choose a Background picture as well. It shows while the video loads, and in place of it for anybody who has asked their phone or computer for less motion.

Wash over it lays a colour over the video, and Wash strength says how much: 10 is a faint tint, 100 hides the video completely. Height sets how tall the section is, and Content sits puts your words at the top, middle or bottom of it.

37Put one thing on top of another

Add Layers from the Structure list, and set its Height. Each Layer inside it is drawn in the same place, on top of the others.

Give each layer a Depth: Background at the back, Foreground in front. Layers at the same depth stack in the order they are listed.

Sits places a layer: Fill covers the whole area, which is right for a picture or a Looping video at the back, and the others put it in a corner, an edge or the middle. Colour with a Colour strength below 100 lays a wash over the layers behind it.

To float your menu over a photo, put a Header in a foreground layer set to Top, and set the header's Colour to Clear. Set the layer's Text to Light if the photo is dark.

38Have more than one website

Go to Website and click New website at the top. Give it a name, such as the name of a second business or a campaign, then click Choose a template and pick what it starts as.

It is a website of its own: its own pages, its own colours and typefaces, its own header and footer, and its own web address, yourbusiness-name.diract.io. Your first website is not changed in any way.

Switch between your websites with the row at the top of Website. Everything below it, the pages, the colours and Add another set of pages, is for the website you have chosen.

39Find your website's address

Every business has an address from the day it signs up: yourbusiness.diract.io, made from your business name. Go to Admin, Company, Your web address to see it, and click it to open your site.

It carries every link you send a customer, not only your website. A quote reads yourbusiness.diract.io/quote/..., and so do an invoice, a payment page, a job report and an order. Your name is on the link before they open it.

Change gives it a different name. Your old address keeps working and sends visitors to the new one, so a link you have already given somebody does not break.

Some names cannot be used because they are ones Diract itself answers on, or ones too general for one business to hold. The box tells you which as you type. It also tells you when another business already holds the name you want.

40Put the site on your own domain

Go to Admin, Company, Your own domains. Type a domain you own, without https://, so www.yourfirm.com.au, and click Connect.

Add the DNS records it shows you at whoever manages your domain, then click Check now. It usually takes a few minutes and can take a few hours. Diract keeps checking on its own every hour, so you do not have to sit on the screen.

Add your other addresses the same way, the apex without the www, or a domain you used to trade under. Every one you add sends visitors to your main address, keeping the rest of the link, so an old link to /about/fees still lands on /about/fees.

Make this the main address moves your website to a different one of them. The old main address becomes a redirect to the new one, so nothing you have already sent anybody breaks.

The bin icon disconnects one. Disconnecting the address your website lives on asks you to type it out first, and will not let you go while other addresses still point at it: make one of them the main address first.

41Change the header once, for every page

A template creates a Header and a Footer that every page shares, and the larger templates add a band above the footer, such as Book a table or Appraisal and alerts. They are listed under Shared on every page on the Website screen, below your pages.

Open one and edit it the way you edit anything else. Every page that uses it changes at the same time, so the business name goes in once rather than once per page.

The first time you publish a page, the header and footer it uses go live with it, because a page cannot show a header that has never been published. After that, an edit to the header goes live when you publish the header itself, so a half finished change does not reach every page the moment somebody publishes an unrelated one.

42Show your records in a design of your own

Add Repeat for each record from Add, into a section. Select it, click Content, and choose its records under Records from, such as people.

Put blocks inside it, such as a heading, a picture and some text, and write the fields you want with double braces: {{name}}, {{job_title}}, {{photo_url}}. That is one record's design. On the site it is drawn once for each published record, with that record's words.

On the page the first copy is the one you change, showing the {{field}} words as you wrote them, and the next two show real records so you can see the result. The line above them says how many records it repeats for.

Under Which records, Only where this field and Equals narrow it, such as office and Sydney, Order by this field sorts it, and At most limits how many. Across, on a wide screen sets how many sit side by side.

43List records from one of your own tables

Add Repeat for each record and, under Records from, choose table. Then choose the table under Your table.

Under Fields the page may show, tick the fields the page may show. Each says the word that puts it on the page, such as {{name}}; write those words in the blocks inside the Repeat. Nothing you have not ticked reaches the page.

Only where this field, Order by this field and At most work as they do for any Repeat, up to 60 records. Dates and money are written the way your company writes them.

44Show a block only for some records

Inside a Repeat for each record, or on a page that shows one record at a time, select a block such as a Call button and click Content. Turn on Show only for some records.

Choose the field and the condition: has something in it, is empty, is or is not, with the words to compare for the last two, such as sold. Capitals and spaces at either end do not matter.

On the site the block appears only for the records that pass: the Call button only for people with a phone number, a Sold badge only on sold listings.

45Add a ready-made section

In the editor, click Add, then Ready-made sections at the top. The sections come from our templates and are drawn in your own colours and type, which is how they will look on your page.

Pick a shelf, such as Openings, Points and steps or Contact and forms, and click a section to add it after the block you have selected, or, with nothing selected, at the end of the page just above the footer. You can also drag one into place.

Then change its words and pictures the way you change any block. Its buttons start with nowhere to go, so give each one a page or an address.

46Share a section you built on one page

Select the block on the page, such as a band you designed on the home page, and click Content. Under Share it across pages, click Share it across pages, give it a name such as Book a table, and click Make it shared.

The block becomes a shared section in the same place. To put it on another page, open that page and choose Shared section under Add, then pick it by name under Which section.

From then on it is edited once, and every page using it changes together. It goes live with the first page you publish that uses it.

47Change a shared section's words on one page

On the page, click the shared section, such as the band above the footer, and click Content. Under Words on this page each of its headings, text and buttons has a box, showing the section's own words in grey.

Type in a box to change those words on this page only. Every other page keeps the section's words, and a change to the section's layout or colours still reaches this page.

Use the section's puts one back, and from then on it changes with the section again.

For more than different words, click Make it this page's own. A copy of the section goes on this page to change like any other blocks, and changes to the shared section stop reaching it. Undo puts the shared section back.

48Set the colours once, for the whole site

Click Website, then Save colours under Colours. There are nine: an accent and the words that go on it, the page, cards, two weights of text, lines, and a dark band with its own text.

These are what the blocks use, so changing the accent changes every button, every price and every badge at once. A published page picks the new colour up immediately without republishing.

In the Style panel, a block's background, text and border are chosen from those same nine rather than from a colour wheel. That is what keeps a site looking like one site after somebody has edited twenty pages of it.

49Turn on dark mode for visitors who use it

Click Website, and under Colours turn on Dark mode. Nine dark colours appear below it, each marked Suggested: they are worked out from your own colours, keeping your accent.

Change any of them the way you change the colours above. Use the suggestion puts one back.

Click Save colours. Visitors whose phone or computer is set to dark now see the dark colours; everyone else sees the usual ones.

To see a page in dark mode while you edit it, click Dark at the top of the editor. Click it again for the light colours.

50Ask for a change instead of making it

Click Ask on the right, type what you want, and press the send button. "Add a section about delivery with three points" and "put our name and address in the footer" are both one instruction.

Each step is named as it happens, so a long build is not a silent wait. When it is done it says what it did in a sentence or two.

Before it hands the change back, Testing the page appears as a step. Every link and button it added has to go somewhere real, every form it added needs somewhere to send, every picture needs a description and every list has to read one of your collections. It fixes what fails, and anything it could not fix is named at the end of its reply.

The whole instruction is one step on the undo list. Press Cmd+Z (Ctrl+Z on Windows) once to take back everything it did.

51Rebuild a site you already have

Click Ask, give your current site's address and say it is yours: "example.com.au is our site, rebuild its home page here with the same layout, fonts, colours, logo and photos".

It reads the pages it needs and how the site looks: its typefaces, its colours, its corners, how each part of the page is laid out, and every picture and video. The ones it uses are copied into your own library, so the new site keeps them after the old one is switched off.

The look comes back as a separate button, Apply the design, with a sentence saying what changes, such as "Set headings in Montserrat and text in Inter, change 9 colours". It changes every page, so it waits for you to press it. The page itself comes back with Apply and Discard like any other change.

It builds the page in the same shape: a video or a photo with your menu and logo on top of it as layers, a row of three as three columns, and a footer with the same columns, list and badge. A large video is copied as a smaller version where your old site keeps one.

Read the end of its reply. It names anything it could not match, such as a typeface we do not have and the one used in its place, or colours that would be hard to read.

52What it will not do

It will not write a link, an image, a phone number, a price or a claim about your business that you did not give it. Ask for a logo it has never seen and it asks you for one rather than inventing an address that looks right.

Anything wide is shown before it is applied, as the real change rather than a count: which blocks, which fields, and for a paragraph, the words. Apply and Discard are underneath. Nothing lands on the page from a decision you have not seen.

Publishing and changing how the site looks (its colours, typefaces and corners) are never done for you. It puts a button in the chat and you press it. If you are not an admin, the request goes to one for approval instead of being refused.

53Add, move and copy blocks

The left panel's Add tab lists everything that can go on a page, grouped. Drag one onto the page and a line shows exactly where it will land, or click one to put it after whatever is selected.

A selected block has a small toolbar above it: drag it by the handle, move it up or down, duplicate it, put it in a group, select what it sits inside, or delete it.

From the keyboard: Cmd+D duplicates, Cmd+G groups, Cmd+Up and Cmd+Down move a block within its own section, Delete removes it, and Escape selects what it sits inside. Cmd+C and Cmd+V copy a whole section and paste it, including onto a different page of the site.

54Put one of your apps on a page

An admin can add App from the Add tab, under Other. Select it, and choose one of your plugins under App in Content. Only plugins that are switched on are listed.

On the website the app runs on its own, with no access to your tables. Anything it asks for is refused, so an app that shows your records shows nothing there: build the ones you put on a page to work without them.

Height set to fit grows with the app, up to 1200 pixels. fixed keeps it at the height you give.

Before this goes public cannot read the words an app draws, and says so when a page has one. Read them yourself before publishing.

55Check it on a phone

Phone, Tablet and Desktop at the top of the editor change the width of the page you are looking at. This is a real change of width, not a picture scaled down, so the page behaves exactly as it will on a phone.

Check the front page and the category page at Phone before publishing. More than half the people who open a shop are on one.

Your Header draws its menu as a button on a phone once the links in it are too many to sit on one line. Tap it to see the whole menu, and tap a link to go there. Below a tablet's width the links come back as a row. Anything under On the right, such as Book a table, stays on the bar at every width, so keep that list to one or two.

A header with two or three short links keeps them on the bar rather than behind a button, because they already fit.

56Change a page from the phone app

Tap Tools, then Website. Each page shows its address, whether it is Live or a Draft, and when it changed. Publish puts a draft on the site and Take off the site brings a live page back to a draft. Open opens the live page in your browser at your own web address, and New page adds one, blank or from Start from, as on the web.

Tap a page to open it. Its blocks appear in the order they sit on the page, each one indented under the block that holds it. A block shows its own words, so a heading reads as that heading rather than as Heading.

Tap a block to change it. Content is what it says. Layout is how it sits: Arrange as, Gap, padding, margin, type and Colour. Every row starts on Default, and tapping Default again removes your change.

The arrows beside a block move it among the blocks around it, and the bin removes it. Add block opens the blocks you can add, with a search: type head to find Heading, Header and Article header. The list offers only what can go where you are adding it.

On a block with a picture, tap the picture to change it. Take a photo uses the camera and Choose a photo opens your photos. Either one joins your site's pictures. Already in your site below lists the pictures you have added, so you can reuse one.

A block holding a list shows how many are in it, such as the offers on an offer block. Tap it to see them in page order. The arrows move one and the bin removes it. Add puts a new one at the end, then opens it so you can type straight away.

Tap a row to change it. Each row reads as its own words, so a list of offers shows the offers rather than Offer 1, Offer 2 and Offer 3. A row you have not filled in yet shows its place in the list.

The phone makes a photo smaller before it leaves, which also strips the camera's location. A photo of a customer's house does not carry its address onto a public page.

Nothing there puts a picture on the internet. It goes public when you publish a page that uses it.

Every change saves as you make it, so you get no Save button. Editing the same page on the web at the same time refuses the phone's change and says the page changed somewhere else. Two people saving over each other is how a paragraph disappears.

57Publish the pages

Publish at the top right shows what would change on the live page and then asks. View opens it in a new tab once it is live, at your own web address, such as your-company.diract.io/services.

A draft that matches what is already live says so, and the button reads Nothing to publish. A page that has never been published says the whole page goes live, rather than drawing a comparison against nothing.

Under the comparison, Before this goes public lists the claims in what you are about to publish: prices and timeframes, rankings like "leading", registrations and memberships, and promises like "same day". It reads only what changed since the last publish, so the fourth publish asks about the two paragraphs you touched rather than the whole page. Text written for you by Ask is marked and listed first, because it is the text nobody has read yet.

A sentence about what the law requires is the one that holds the button. Either change it on the page to quote the rule with its number and say the page is general information current as at a date, or type why it is right as written in the box beside it. Whichever you do, who confirmed it and when is kept against that version of the page.

To put a whole site live at once, go back to Website and click the button beside Your pages, which counts the drafts: Publish 22 drafts for the real estate agency template. Publishing the front page on its own leaves its menu pointing at pages that do not exist yet, and a visitor who clicks one gets nothing. A bar under the button counts them off, so if one fails you can see how far it got.

Publishing pages does not publish records, and publishing a record does not publish a page. A new person, listing or article appears on the live site once both its record and the pages that list it are published.

Publishing is an admin's to do. Anybody in the company can open a page and change it, and the Publish button says so rather than refusing after the fact: it is greyed out with Only an admin can publish beside it.

Unpublish, beside View, takes a live page back to a draft. It asks first: Take it off the internet?, then Unpublish or Keep it live. The page stops answering at once, at your own address and at its share link, and everything else stays: its address, the copy that went live, and every version behind the clock. Publish it again when you are ready.

58Take a page down

To take a page off the site for a while and put it back, use Unpublish in the editor instead of any of this. It keeps the page's address, so nothing else on the site moves and the page leaves no redirect.

For the rest, on the Website screen, click the bin at the end of the page's row. Or open the page and click the archive icon at the top, beside the clock, which is labelled Take this page down. Both open the same panel: there are three ways down and it names what each one costs.

Archive it takes the page off your website and out of your page list, keeps everything, and can be undone at any time. Somebody who follows an old link is told the page is gone rather than that it is missing, which is what stops it sitting in search results for a year.

Download a copy first gives you the page and every saved version of it as a file. Worth doing before the third one.

Delete it permanently removes the page and its versions. You have to type the page's title exactly, and there is no way back.

59Go back to an earlier version

Click the clock at the top of the editor. Every time you publish, and every so often while you work, a copy of the page is kept, newest first.

What changed beside a version lists what that version did: the blocks added, removed, moved and rewritten, and for a paragraph, the words. A block that lists records from a collection is named at the bottom, because changes to those records are not part of the page and are not shown.

Restore shows what restoring would take back before it does anything, then asks. It comes back as a NEW version, so the page you were on a moment ago is still in the list to go back to.

Restoring changes the draft, not the live page. Click Update the live page afterwards to put it out.

60See who changed the live site

Recent changes at the bottom of the Website screen lists the last fifteen: who published a page, who put an earlier version back, and who took a page off somebody who had it open.

A header or footer that went live because a page needed it says so on its own line, so a section nobody opened turning up as published is explained rather than surprising.

It records changes to the LIVE site, not every edit. Ordinary editing is saved as you type and kept in each page's own version list, behind the clock in the editor.

61When two people have the same page open

The page saves itself as you work. The word beside the width buttons says where it is up to: Saved, Saving..., or Unsaved changes.

Opening the editor holds the page while you are in it. If somebody else has it open, a band across the top names them and says that nothing you change is being saved. An admin can click Take over to take the page from them. Anybody else is told to ask one.

A held page is let go when the editor is closed, and after ninety seconds of silence in any case, so a closed laptop does not keep a page to itself.

A cafe replacing the pizza template's sample deals

The Pizza takeaway template is installed. Its deals page carries four invented offers with invented prices, each with its own conditions line.

Open the deals page from Website. Click Ask, and type: "Change these four deals to ours: a $12 breakfast roll and coffee before 10am on weekdays, a $9 toastie and coffee at lunch, a $28 cake for six with a day's notice, and a $6 filter coffee refill for regulars." One instruction rewrites all four cards.

Then read what it wrote. The conditions line under each offer is a promise the business is making, so it is the line worth checking by hand: "before 10am on weekdays" has to be the real cut off, not a rounded one.

Double click any price to correct it on the page. Publish the deals page, then the rest, from Website.

What each page of a template is for