Publishing your website

This guide covers the part of the website that does not change: picking your address, the check that runs before anything becomes public, pressing Publish, and taking it down again. The editing tools around it are being rebuilt at pace at the moment, so we are deliberately not describing those yet — but publishing works the same way throughout.

Nothing is public until you say so

Step one: pick your web address

Before anything else you choose the address, which takes the form yourname.soclo.site. The app asks for this early, on purpose — it is the moment you decide what the site is called.

The rules are simple and the app checks as you type:

• 3 to 40 characters.
• Lowercase letters, numbers and hyphens only.
• Cannot start or end with a hyphen, and no double hyphens.

Choose the thing people would type: your business name, or your business name and your town if the plain version is taken. Then press Create my site.

One useful detail: the instant feedback while you type is a convenience, not the final word. The server decides whether an address is genuinely available, so a green light as you type is not the same as it being yours.

Using a domain you own

If the option is switched on for your account, a panel called Your own web address sits directly under the address bar. From there you can search for and buy a domain, or connect one you already own.

Buying one asks for your name, address and phone number. That is worth understanding rather than being suspicious about: the domain registry requires those details of anyone who registers a domain anywhere — it is not Soclo collecting them for its own purposes, and the app says which is which on the form.

Step two: run the full website check

Before you publish, Soclo can check the site properly. Not a preview — it builds and renders every page a visitor would actually receive and inspects the result.

It looks at actions, accessibility, navigation, responsive safety, metadata, and any booking or payment details you have switched on. Findings come back in three grades:

• Blockers — must be at zero before you can publish.
• Review — worth your attention, but they will not stop you.
• Optional — suggestions.

Each finding offers a button that takes you straight to the thing that needs changing, so working through them is not a hunt.

Two things about this check are worth knowing:

• The rendered check is the authority. Anything inspected in the browser is instant guidance only and is never allowed to declare the site ready. The real check happens against the composed pages.
• It states its own limits. In the app's words, it is not a ranking, conversion, legal or accessibility guarantee. It catches real, checkable faults. It cannot tell you the site will work, and it does not pretend to.

When it comes back clean you get "No publish blockers found" — and, pointedly, "Publishing still waits for your tap." A clean check never publishes anything on your behalf.

Step three: publish

Press Publish and you are asked to confirm, with the consequence stated plainly rather than implied:

That sentence is the one to read properly, because it is the whole decision. A public web page is public: not only to customers you send the link to, but to anyone who finds it. Everything you have put on the page — your business name, what you have written, your photographs — is what you are making public.

Once confirmed, the app tells you your address can take a few minutes to update. That is normal. If the address does not load immediately, wait rather than republishing.

Taking it down

The button now reads Manage live site, and taking it down is available there whenever you want it. Again the consequence is spelled out first:

So taking a site down is not deleting it. Everything you wrote and every image you added remains, and putting it back is one tap. That makes it a reasonable thing to do — while you rework a page, over a period you cannot answer enquiries, or if you simply want it private for a while.

A sensible order the first time

1. Pick the address you would say out loud to a customer.
2. Fill in the Brand Kit first if you have not. The site is built from what it holds, so an empty one produces a vague site. The Brand Kit guide covers it.
3. Get the practical facts right before the design: what you do, the area you cover, how to contact you, and your hours. What a website should include is the checklist.
4. Run the full check and clear the blockers.
5. Read the confirmation properly, then publish.
6. Open the address on a phone, not just on the machine you built it on. Most visitors will be on one.
7. Send the link to somebody who does not know your business and ask what you do and what they would do next. If either takes more than a few seconds, fix that before promoting it anywhere.

What this guide deliberately does not cover

How to edit and lay out the pages. That part of the app is being actively rebuilt and the controls are changing week to week, so anything we wrote today would be wrong shortly — including the screenshots. We would rather have no guide than a confidently wrong one.

What is on this page — the address, the check, publishing, taking it down — is the part that is stable, which is why it is here now.

Where to go next

How Soclo is organised shows where the website sits among everything else. What Soclo will never do without asking covers the wider rule this page is an example of — that anything with a public or financial consequence waits for you. And how to write a service page is the most useful thing to read before filling in the words.