Your First 30 Minutes: From Blank to Live

You don't need a whole weekend to get your business online. This is a friendly, do-it-now checklist that takes you from a fresh StoutStack site to something you're proud to share, in about half an hour.

Good news before you start

A few things worth knowing so you can relax and just build:

  • Your site is already live. The moment your account was created, your site started working at its free address: yourname.mystoutstack.com. You're editing a real, working website, not setting one up from nothing.
  • Nothing is public until you publish. You can preview every change privately and only make it visible to visitors when you're happy with it.
  • Your work saves automatically. There's no Save button to remember. StoutStack saves as you go.
  • You can't break anything. Every step below is easy to change again later, so feel free to experiment.

Your quick checklist

Here's the whole plan at a glance. We'll walk through each step below.

  1. Set your brand: logo, colors, and fonts.
  2. Make your homepage yours.
  3. Point your contact form at the right inbox.
  4. Add your key pages.
  5. Go live on your own domain when you're ready.

Step 1: Set your brand (about 5 minutes)

This is the highest-impact thing you can do first. Your brand settings flow through your entire site at once, so one change here restyles every page (no need to update pages one by one).

  1. In the left-hand menu, go to Site Settings.
  2. Open the Branding section.
  3. Upload your logo.
  4. Choose your brand colors: usually a main color, a secondary color, and an accent. Buttons, links, and highlights across the site will follow these automatically.
  5. Pick your fonts for headings and body text.

Watch the whole site take on your look instantly. If a color feels too strong or too subtle once you see it in place, just come back and adjust. It restyles everything again in a click.

Step 2: Make your homepage yours (about 10 minutes)

Your homepage is your first impression, so it's worth a few focused minutes.

  1. Go to Pages in the left-hand menu and open your Home page.
  2. Your page is built from stacked sections. Click into a section to edit its text and swap in your own images.
  3. Update the top section first: your headline, a sentence about what you do, and the main button (for example, "Get a quote" or "Call us").
  4. Work down the page, editing or removing sections you don't need. You can reorder sections by moving them up or down.
  5. Use Live Preview to see exactly how it'll look to visitors, then publish when you're happy.

Don't aim for perfect. Aim for clear. You can keep refining after you're live.

Step 3: Point your contact form at the right inbox (about 3 minutes)

Your site already includes a contact form so customers can reach you. The most important thing is making sure those messages land somewhere you'll actually see them.

  1. Go to Forms in the left-hand menu and open your contact form.
  2. Check the notification email address. This is where a copy of every submission is sent.
  3. Set it to an inbox you check often. Send yourself a quick test message from the live page to confirm it arrives.

Even if an email is ever missed, every message is also saved under Form Submissions, so you'll never lose a lead. For more detail, see the Forms articles.

Step 4: Add your key pages (about 10 minutes)

A few core pages cover what most visitors are looking for. The usual starting set is:

  • About: who you are and why customers should trust you.
  • Services (or Products): what you offer, and roughly what it costs if you list prices.
  • Contact: how to reach you, with your contact form and your hours or location.
  1. Go to Pages and create a new page.
  2. Add and edit sections just like you did on your homepage.
  3. Publish the page when it's ready.
  4. Add it to your navigation so visitors can find it. That's under Site Menus.

You can always add more pages later. These few are plenty to launch with.

Step 5: Go live on your own domain when you're ready (optional)

Your site works great on its free yourname.mystoutstack.com address, so there's no rush. When you'd like a more professional web address like yourbusiness.com, you can connect a domain you already own or one you'd like to use.

This is a Site Admin task, and it takes a little coordination with wherever your domain is registered. See the related article on connecting your custom domain for the full walkthrough.

Good to know

  • Come back anytime. None of this is one-and-done. Colors, text, images, and pages are all easy to change whenever you like.
  • Preview before you publish. If you're ever unsure about a change, preview it privately first. Visitors won't see it until you publish.
  • Simple and finished beats big and stalled. A tidy homepage plus About, Services, and Contact is a real, working site. Launch it, then improve as you go.

That's your first 30 minutes. You've got a branded, working website with a homepage, key pages, and a contact form that reaches you. Nicely done.

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