Keep these best practices in mind when you work in Site Setup.
Save and Publish
Always click on the Save and Publish button before you leave Site Setup. Otherwise, any revisions you have made will not be preserved, and will not show up on your public website.
Make Site Setup a solo
Don’t allow or invite others to edit in Site Setup at the same time you’re making changes. Because the changes in your Site Setup window will be different from the changes in someone else’s Site Setup window, some of changes will not be saved when everyone tries to Save and Publish. Additionally, if you ask your Onboarding Specialist to change something for you in Site Setup, or if they are in your site performing an audit, please stay out of Site Setup until they have finished their task and notified you as such.
Build from the bottom up on Photo Gallery pages
If you want to build a Photo Gallery page on which the newest photo gallery is at the top of the page, then deactivate all the individual gallery widgets on the page except for the one at the bottom. Begin with that bottommost widget. As you add gallery content for new seasons or sections, activate the next widget above the one at the bottom, and so on, building up toward the top of the page.
Formatting from word processing applications
When you copy formatted content from Microsoft Word or another word-processing application and paste it in to a text-based widget in Site Setup, the formatting comes along for the ride. To remove the formatting and just paste in the text, first paste your content into a text-only application, then cut it from that application, and finally paste it in to Site Setup. You also can override type styling that comes along with pasted styled content. Select the text in the widget’s editing window and change the “Font” dropdown menu to a different option. (Text-only applications include Notepad on Windows, and TextEdit and BBEdit on the Mac. In TextEdit, you’ll need to go to Format > Make Plain Text if your text window opens up with a ruler at the top edge.)
Staging Sites
Always remember that if you build a Staging Site, it is not visible anywhere except in Site Setup—unless you click on the “Save” button and then the “Publish” button, in which case it now becomes your Public Site. (Your former Public Site now switches places and becomes your Staging Site.)
Additionally, remember that you do not need to build a Staging Site unless you want to experiment with a different website theme. This feature is completely optional. While you’re going through Onboarding, if you tell your Onboarding Specialist that you want to switch to a different theme, they will build the new version of your site in a Staging Site, and then Save it and Publish it to become your Public Site. That’s because you can’t change themes on a Public Site, and if you change themes on a Staging Site, any pages that you already had created in the Staging Site will be removed.
The reason for this is simple: Page templates are set up differently in each theme. Each page template provides the same functionality in each theme, but the template setup differs in each theme because the designs differ. We protect your Public Site from disappearing because of a theme change, and limit theme changes so they only can occur in Staging Sites.
A Staging Site is not a backup for your Public Site. It is a separate site creation that can become your Public Site—but only becomes visible to the public if you Publish it.
Placeholder content on some page templates
Some page templates display special placeholders for all or a portion of their content in Site Setup. These include the following templates:
Amenities
Events
Forms
Payments
Committees
Member Directory
Newsfeed
One-Time Charges
The FAQ looks different in Site Setup than it does on your public site, but it includes no placeholder content.
If you need to see the actual content on any page that uses one of these page templates, go to
Manage Site > Public Site
and review the page there.
Page Previews are not meant to be fully functional
In page previews, menu items and all links—except for those that you add to text-based widgets via the Link tool above the edit window—are non-functional. Content may display slight variances from what you will see on your public site. Again, go to
Manage Site > Public Site
and review your page there to see its actual content and formatting.