Overview
Your website is already online from the moment you sign up. That's the short answer. This article explains what "live" means on ArtSites, how to share your website, and how to control what visitors can see.
Your website is already at a real address
When you signed up, we gave your website a temporary address: something like trial-yourname.sites.art. Anyone who has the link can visit it right now. There's no separate "go live" button to flip.
Open the Preview option from your dashboard or Settings to see your website's address. Copy that link to share it.
What visitors can see, and what they can't
ArtSites gives you fine-grained control. Each page, artwork, and collection has its own visibility setting:
- Public: visible to everyone who visits.
- Unlisted: reachable by anyone with the direct link, but not listed in your menu or galleries, and left out of search results. Handy for sharing a work-in-progress with one person, a client-only gallery, or a page you want to link to without advertising it.
- Hidden: only visible to you and people who edit this website. Its address doesn't work for anyone else, not even with the link.
So even though your website is live, visitors only see the things you've marked as Public.
Publishing changes you make
When you edit a page in the live editor, your changes are saved as a draft until you click Publish. Until then, visitors continue to see the previous published version.
To put your changes live:
- Make your edits in the page editor.
- When everything looks the way you want, click Publish in the toolbar.
- Your changes are immediately visible to visitors.
If you change your mind, you can keep editing and publish again later.
Sharing your website
Once you have a few works up, share away:
- Copy the link from your dashboard or browser bar and paste it into messages, social posts, or your email signature.
- Add it to your social profiles: Instagram, Behance, and others have a website field on your profile.
- Put it on a business card or postcard for in-person events.
Using your own domain
If you'd rather have your own custom address (like yourname.com), you can connect a custom domain from Settings > Domain. We'll walk you through pointing your domain to your website. This works whether you bought your domain through us or somewhere else.
Tips
- Visitors don't see anything you've marked as Hidden. Use Hidden freely while you're working things out.
- Search engines take a little while to find your website after it goes up. If you want to nudge them along, fill in your SEO description in Settings > SEO.
- Sharing the link doesn't expose your dashboard or your draft work. The visitor view is separate from the editor view.
- If you change your mind about something you published, you can edit it and publish again, or take it off your public pages entirely by setting it back to Hidden.
If you're wondering whether visitors can really see your website, open the link in a private or incognito window. That shows you what an anonymous visitor would see.
For what to do next once you're satisfied with how your site looks, see the After your site goes live article: it covers fleshing out the portfolio, sharing the link, and starting a mailing list.