Your first site, step by step
From creating your account to going live — the whole path, in order.
Overview
Every Tropic Arts site takes the same path: create your account, tell us about your business, choose a design, make it yours, then take it live. This guide walks that path in order — follow along with your own site open in another tab.
Nothing you do along the way is public. A new site sits behind an “Opening Soon” page until you decide to open it, so you can take as long as you like getting it right.
Building costs nothing. Your first site starts on the free trial, which includes the full editor, hosting, and a Tropic Arts web address. You only need to choose a plan at the last step, when you make the site public.
Create your account
One login covers everything you build, so you'll only do this once.
- Open the sign-up page and enter your first name, last name, and email, then confirm you're 18 or older.
- Read the Terms & Conditions. The Create account button stays disabled until you've scrolled to the end of them.
- Check your email for a temporary password — it can take a minute to arrive — and enter it.
- Set a password of your own, at least 8 characters, and you're in.
You land on New site, ready to set up your first one. Home, the dashboard that spans every site on your login, is worth knowing too: it carries your setup checklist while a site is still a draft, and your orders, appointments, and traffic once it's live.
Tell us about your business
A new site starts with a few questions, so its first draft says your name, your number, and your license rather than a template's. Have a website already? We can fill in the answers from it for you to check. Your first site starts here as soon as you've signed up; for another one later, click Launch new site at the top of Home.
- Your current website, if you have one — choose Start from my current website, enter its address, check the box to confirm it's your business's website and that you have the right to use its content, check the box to confirm you're 18 or older and accept our Terms and Conditions and Data Processing Agreement, and click Read my site. We read what it shows publicly and fill in the answers below for you to check. If it can't be read, we'll say so, and you can fill them in yourself. Or choose Start fresh.
- Your business — its name, and the kind of business it is, picked from a searchable list. Those two are the only answers required. What you offer is worth filling in too: it's what your pages are written from.
- Contact — the phone number, email, and service area you want on the site.
- Credentials and links — any licenses, and your social profiles.
- Click Continue after each step, then Choose a design. Going back a step keeps your answers.
Where you are and when you're open aren't asked here. If you started from your current website, a Review what we found step before the design shows the locations and opening hours it lists, along with its services, pages, posts, and products, for you to keep or leave out, and the locations you keep go on your Locations page when the site is created. Otherwise, add them on the Locations page whenever you're ready, and your site picks them up from there. Anything you leave out is left off your site rather than made up.
Choose a design
The last question is how your site looks. You never start from a blank page, and nothing is created until you click Create site.
- Build a custom theme — the AI designs a site around your answers. A few quick questions about style and color, then it chooses the fonts and colors, decides which pages you need, and writes every one.
- Or start from a template — three are picked for your kind of business, all designed in-house, and Browse all templates shows every one. Click Preview on any of them to look around first.
- Website address — your site lives at this label under tropic-arts.com. It's filled in from your business name; type your own if you like, and if the one you want is taken, a number is added.
- Click Create site. It's created as a draft, ready to edit.
Choose a template for its structure, not its color: palettes, fonts, images, and wording all change in a few clicks, while the sections it gives you and the features it's built around are what's worth choosing carefully. Your name and your address aren't locked together, either. Renaming the site later updates the tabs, emails, and text everywhere and leaves the web address exactly as it is. When you're ready for an address of your own, a custom domain sits in front of all of this — bought separately from your plan; see the Domains & email guide.
Let AI write the first draft
As soon as the site exists you land in the AI builder. On a template it's “Build [your site] with AI”: describe the look and feel you want, and your site is written for you — the home page and the pages that came with your template, with your words and your details in place of the template's. On a custom theme it's “Design [your site] with AI”: answer a few quick questions about style and color, and the AI designs and writes every page while you watch.
Either way it's a starting point rather than a finished site: keep refining it right there in plain English, or fine-tune anything in the editor. Pick one of the color palettes it suggests or set your own colors, and drop in your own photos for it to place where they fit.
Started from a template and not interested? Choose “Skip — I'll build it myself” and you go straight to Home with the template exactly as it was designed. Nothing is lost either way.
Make it yours in the editor
The editor is the heart of the platform, and it works the way you'd hope: you edit the real page, not a form that describes it. Open it from the setup checklist on Home, or from the gear button below View site when you click Home in the side navigation.
- Click any text and type. Headlines, paragraphs, button labels, prices — they all edit in place.
- Click an image to swap it, either uploading your own or pasting the address of one that's already online.
- Add a section from the block menu. You're offered the blocks that suit your template — a hero, a gallery, a pricing table, a contact form — and each one arrives already styled to match.
- Drag sections up and down to reorder the page, and delete the ones you don't need.
- Made a mess? Undo and redo sit in the header and step back through everything you've done.
- Click Preview to see the page exactly as a visitor will, then Publish when you're happy with it.
The editor saves constantly, but it saves to a draft. Your published site doesn't change until you press Publish — so a half-finished page can sit for a week without anyone seeing it. The Visual editor guide covers all of this in more depth.
Work through the setup checklist
While a site is still a draft, Home shows a “Finish setting up [your site]” card with a running count of what's done. It's the shortest path to live:
- Add your content — open the editor and make the pages yours. It checks itself off once your site has more than one page.
- Connect payments — only needed if you're selling, and only once the site is on the Store plan. You connect Stripe yourself under Settings → Payments: Set up payments hands you over to Stripe's own secure flow, and the step is checked off once Stripe switches charges on.
- Add a custom domain — optional, sold separately, and easy to leave for later. Your free tropic-arts.com address works perfectly well in the meantime.
- Choose a plan — the one step you can't skip, since a trial site can't be made public.
- Publish your site — the last step, covered below.
The checklist is per-site: if you're building more than one, each draft site gets its own card. Payments is the one step with nothing to click on the card itself — you do it in that site's settings. Anywhere else, a missing Open → link means it's a step your role can't act on, so ask whoever owns the site to take it.
Take your site live
A new site is a draft. It already exists at its address, but anyone who visits sees an “Opening Soon” page instead of your site, while you, signed in, see the real thing. Going live lifts that gate.
One thing to know before you click: a trial site can't be activated. If you're still on the trial, turning off Draft mode brings up a prompt to choose a plan instead — pick one and the site goes live right after.
- Open Home in the side navigation. The Home panel beside it shows your site, its pages, and whether it's Draft or Live — if you have more than one site, click Switch site to pick the right one.
- Turn off Draft mode — the switch below View site.
- Confirm with Activate site. You'll get a “[your site] is live!” message, and the panel now says Live.
It's reversible. Turning Draft mode back on puts the Opening Soon page back up at any time, and activating again later doesn't charge you twice — your plan is billed when you choose it and then monthly, never per activation.
Where to go next
Going live is the beginning, not the end. Depending on what your site is for:
- Selling online — set up products, shipping, and checkout in the Store & payments guide.
- Taking bookings — add your services and open your calendar in the Bookings guide.
- Writing and mailing — publish posts and send newsletters in the Content & marketing guide.
- An address of your own — connect or buy a domain (sold separately), and set up email on it, in the Domains & email guide.
- Everything else about this one site — its name, brand, logos, and colors all live in Site settings.
All of it is yours to do, at your own pace. If something goes wrong or you'd like a hand with it, click your name at the top right, choose Help & Support, and send a New request — a person will pick it up from there.
Frequently asked questions
No — and there's nowhere to write any. Every change is made by clicking the thing you want to change and typing, or by dragging sections into a different order. If you can use a word processor, you can build your site.
They're two different switches, and it catches almost everyone once. Publish, in the editor, pushes the edits you've made on a page out to your live site. Draft mode, on the Home panel in the side navigation, decides whether the public can see the site at all. A brand-new site needs both: publish your pages, then activate the site.
Most people have a real, presentable site the same day. The account and the site take a few minutes each, the AI draft another few, and after that it's however long you want to spend on wording and pictures. Stop and come back as often as you like — nothing expires.
Yes. The free trial gives you the full editor, hosting, and a Tropic Arts address, so you can build and preview as much as you want. A plan is only needed to make the site public, to send email campaigns, and to add products to sell.
Yes, through a version. In your site's Settings, open Versions, click Create version, and pick the other template: your products, journal posts, locations, and matching words and photos carry over, while the page layouts start fresh from the new design. Preview it privately, then Apply to live when you're happy — your current site is saved as a backup first.
Yes. Every section is built to be responsive and keeps its designed proportions on any screen, so you arrange sections rather than resizing them by hand. Preview in the editor before you publish and you'll see exactly what visitors get.
Undo and redo step back through your changes, and nothing you do reaches visitors until you publish. If a page has already gone out, keep editing and publish again — there's no limit on how many times you publish.
Yes. A site can have more than one person on it, each with their own login and their own level of access — some can edit pages, others can change settings or billing. Add or invite them from the site's Staff & permissions settings.