Website publishing problems

Your Afterify website is live from the moment it's created. When something you changed isn't showing, or the site isn't loading at all, the checks below cover the usual causes.

Changes aren't appearing on the live site

1. Save your work in the builder. Edits aren't on the live site until they're saved; if you try to navigate away with unsaved changes, the builder warns you. Go back to the editor and make sure nothing is pending.
2. Give it a minute. The public site caches pages briefly, so a saved change can take about a minute to show up. Hard-refresh the page (Ctrl+Shift+R, or Cmd+Shift+R on a Mac) to skip your browser's own cache.
3. Check you're looking at the right thing. Blog posts have their own lifecycle: a post in Draft or scheduled for later isn't on the site yet, no matter how the pages look in the builder. See Publish, comments and sharing.
4. Client index blocks only show published clients. If a gallery is missing from your website's client index, publish that client in the Studio first.

The site doesn't load at all

A deactivated website is not served publicly; visitors get a not-found page instead. Reactivate the site to bring it back. If you recently reset your website, its content is gone permanently, but your Studio photos are untouched; you'll be rebuilding from the template. See Publish your website.

Custom domain won't connect

Open Website → Settings and click your domain to see its live status. The statuses walk you through the pipeline:

• Waiting for DNS: add the DNS records shown in the domain panel at your DNS provider. DNS changes can take up to a few hours to propagate, so this state right after adding records is normal.
• DNS detected and Issuing certificate: we found your records and are requesting the SSL certificate. This usually takes a few minutes.
• Connected: your domain is live.
• DNS not found: we couldn't find your records yet. Double-check them at your DNS provider.
• Certificate failed: re-check your DNS records or try again.

Common record mistakes:

• Copy each record's type, name/host and value exactly as shown; use the copy buttons in the panel. A stray trailing dot or a pasted space breaks matching at some providers.
• Delete conflicting old records on the same hostname (a previous A record or a parking-page CNAME will shadow the new ones).
• Enter the bare domain, like mycustomdomain.com; don't include https:// or www. when claiming it, and note that IP addresses and afterify.com addresses can't be connected.
• If your provider proxies DNS (orange-cloud style), turn the proxy off for these records until the certificate is issued.

Custom domains are a paid feature; on the Free plan the settings page shows Custom Domains as locked with an upgrade link. See Connect a custom domain.

The builder is read-only after a downgrade

If you downgraded from a paid plan to Free, the website builder switches to read-only: your site stays online, but editing, page reordering and settings changes are disabled until you upgrade again. (A Free account that never had a paid plan can still build its one included page; the lock only applies after a downgrade.) Free plan limits also apply: one website, one page and up to 10 components. See Billing, upgrades and downgrades.

Related

• Publish your website
• Connect a custom domain
• Website basics