Publishing makes your page live at a web address you can share. In this lesson, you'll see your three publishing options, how to publish on an Ontraport domain or your own domain, how to keep your live page up to date, and how to take a page down.
First, a quick look at a page address. The domain is the name you own, like yourdomain dot com. A subdomain comes before it, like members dot yourdomain dot com. And the file name goes at the end, after a slash, like slash home. Give each published page its own file name. That's how several pages, like slash home and slash lessons, can live on the same subdomain.
Every option starts the same way: click Publish in the page editor. If you don't have your own domain yet, you can publish for free on an Ontraport domain. Select Temporary domain, enter your subdomain, usually your business name, and pick one of the Ontraport domains. Add a file name if you want one, then click Save & Publish.
For your business, you'll want your own domain. First, connect it to Ontraport. Custom domains are available on paid accounts. Click your profile icon, then Administration, then Business Info, then Custom Domains, and click New custom domain. Enter your domain. Under What shall we configure?, choose an option that includes hosting pages. The same setup can also cover sending email and click tracking.
Then choose how to host. If Ontraport runs your main website, pick Host entire website on Ontraport. If your main site lives somewhere else, like WordPress, pick Host Ontraport Pages on a subdomain only, and enter a subdomain, like members dot yourdomain dot com. Click Configure, and follow the Entri pop-up to log in to your domain provider. It can take up to 48 hours to go live. The Set up your custom domain lesson in the Getting started course walks through it step by step.
Now, back in your page, click Publish and choose My domain. The Domain dropdown only lists domains set up for page hosting. Add a file name to the end of the URL, or leave it blank for your site's home page. Then click Save & Publish.
One tip: don't type www in front of your domain. If you want www addresses to work too, add www dot your domain as another custom domain, choose Page hosting and click tracking or Hosting pages only, and click Configure. That can also take up to 48 hours.
The third option, WordPress, shows up once you've installed the Ontrapages plugin on your WordPress site and turned on the WordPress option in Advanced features. The next lesson covers it.
Whichever domain you use, Ontraport adds an SSL certificate automatically when you publish. Your page shows the lock icon, and its address starts with HTTPS. That can take a few minutes, and sometimes up to 48 hours.
When you edit a published page, Save keeps your changes as a draft and leaves the live page as it was. Publish again each time you want your changes to go live. And if a visitor sees "Your page isn't turned on yet," either the URL has a typo or no page has been published there yet.
To take a page down, click Publish, then Un-Host Landing Page, then Remove Current Page Hosting. Later, you can publish it again at a different URL, or just keep it in your pages collection.
So: publish for free on a Temporary domain, connect your own domain for your business, and publish again whenever you make changes. Next up: publishing your pages on WordPress.