Publishing & sharing your site

Publishing is how your work goes from a private draft to a live site anyone can visit. It's free, it takes one click, and your site gets a yourname.sitesplaced.com address the moment it's live. Websites are live from the moment you create them; a store starts as a Draft and goes live when you click Publish.

Publish a store

1. 1Open the store from your Dashboard with Manage Store.
2. 2Add at least one product — the Store Dashboard shows a Draft label until you go live.
3. 3Click Publish (top-right on a computer). On a phone, the bar at the bottom says Add your first product until you have one, then Publish store.
4. 4A Your store is live! popup appears with your link, a Copy button, WhatsApp and Instagram share buttons, a QR download, and a Visit store button. The label at the top of the dashboard switches to Live.

Want to take it down for a while? Click Unpublish. You'll be asked to confirm — customers then see a *not found* page until you publish again. Nothing is deleted.

Publish a website

Websites and portfolios built in the editor are live as soon as they're created, so the Publish button (top-right of the editor) is there to push your latest edits and confirm everything went through. Clicking it saves first, then shows a Your website is now live! popup with your link, a Copy button, and LinkedIn, Instagram and WhatsApp share buttons. The Visit button next to it opens the live site in a new tab.

The green banner under the editor toolbar tells you what applies to this site — for example *Free to publish with a small SitesPlaced badge*. The only sites that aren't free to publish are celebration invitations (wedding and event templates), which need a one-time unlock (₹999 in India) when you click Publish.

Your address

Your free address is yourname.sitesplaced.com, where yourname is your slug. You'll also see it written as yourname.sitesplaced.site on your Dashboard and in the live popup — both open the same site, so share whichever you've copied. To change the slug, see Your free subdomain; remember that changing it breaks any link you've already shared.

When you connect your own domain and it's verified, that domain becomes the main link everywhere — the Dashboard card, the live popup and the QR code — and the free address keeps working as a backup. See Connect your own domain.

Share your link

Copy your yourname.sitesplaced.com link and share it anywhere — your WhatsApp status, Instagram bio, Google Business listing, a printed flyer, wherever your customers are. It works on every phone and computer, no app required.

• Dashboard — the site card shows your address; once published, the arrow button next to Manage Store or Edit opens the live site.
• Store Dashboard — Open Store in the header opens the live store in a new tab. On the Home tab, Share store link opens your phone's share sheet (or copies the link on a computer).
• Store QR code — also on the Home tab. Download PNG, Download SVG, Copy link or Print. Customers scan it with their camera and land on your store — put it on packaging, visiting cards or the shop counter. The code keeps working even if you connect a domain later.
• Live popup — right after publishing, use the WhatsApp and Instagram buttons. Instagram doesn't accept links from other apps, so that button copies the link for you to paste into your bio, story or DM.

Push your edits live

Once a site is live there is no separate draft copy — what you save is what visitors see, usually within a minute or two. The rules are slightly different in each place:

• Website editor — edits autosave about two seconds after you stop typing. The toolbar shows Unsaved, then Saving…, then ✓ Saved. Click Save if you don't want to wait, and Publish to push everything and get the share popup.
• Store products and orders — saved the moment you click the form's save button; they're live straight away.
• Store Settings — a bar appears saying You have unsaved changes with Save and Discard. Nothing changes on the live store until you click Save.
• Store Design tab — section edits are not autosaved. The header shows Unsaved changes; click Save to apply them.

Good to know

• Free sites carry a small badge — Made using sitesplaced.com on websites, Powered by SitesPlaced in a store's footer. A paid plan removes it; see Free vs premium store.
• Publishing also tells Google about your site. It still takes days or weeks to appear in search — see Store SEO for what speeds it up.
• The website editor is desktop only. On a phone you'll see a *Desktop Only* notice with a Visit Site button; the store dashboard, by contrast, works fully on a phone.
• Websites don't have an Unpublish button in the editor. To take one offline, delete it from the Dashboard, or contact support and we'll switch it to draft for you without deleting anything.

Want your own address instead of the sitesplaced.com one? You can add a custom domain — and if it isn't resolving yet, see Troubleshooting.