Updated: Oct 12, 2025
Article Contents
Knowledge Base
Getting started in the Website Builder
Your initial setup in the Website Builder depends on whether you’re creating a new site or migrating an existing one. If your publication site was created with the legacy Website Builder, please refer to our migration guides.
For those ready to create a new website, the following steps cover the onboarding flow of selecting your template, choosing your colors and typography, and selecting pages for advanced templates. Once done, refer to our guide on using the Website Builder.
Website Builder theme onboarding experience
To access the Website Builder, go to Website > Builder from the left panel of your account.
Step 1: Select a template
The first time you open the Website Builder, you’ll be prompted to choose a template. Your selection will apply a preconfigured theme to your site, which you can fully customize at any time.
To preview a template, click the tool icon in the bottom right corner. A preview window will pop up with Desktop and Mobile viewing options.
Available Templates
Use the Basic and Advanced tabs on the left to view the template options. We recommend starting with a basic template for smaller or newer publications.
Basic Templates:
- Flow
- Uno
- Framework
Advanced Templates:
- Alpha
- Aura
- Hangout
- Capital
- Newsroom
- Putty
- Standard
- The Atlas Collective
- Tradecast
- Wireframe
After reviewing the options, select your template and click Next to continue.
Step 2: Choose your color palette
After selecting a template, you’ll be prompted to accept or choose a color palette. Each template comes with a default set of theme colors designed to create a cohesive and polished look out of the box.
You can customize these colors to better match your brand, or quickly apply one of the Sample color palette presets with a single click. If you're happy with the default colors, click Next to move forward without making any changes.
Theme colors palette:
- Core color: The background color of your site.
- Primary color: Used for text on the background, typically applied to buttons, links, and other key elements.
- Secondary color: Accent color for text elements like hyperlinks.
- Tertiary color: Used for borders and dividers.
- Accent color: Highlights key elements like buttons and callouts.
To customize the colors, click on any color swatch to open the color picker.
Within the color picker you can manually adjust the color or enter a 6-digit hex code. You can also adjust the opacity of the color by using the slider.
At the top of the color panel, you can click the Shuffle colors icon to quickly rearrange color roles in the template. You can also use the Undo or Redo arrows next to the shuffle icon to go back or forward in your selections.
Once you're happy with your palette, click Next to continue.
Step 3: Choose your typography
Next, you’ll select your site’s typography or theme fonts. A set of default fonts will be preselected to match your chosen template, helping to ensure a clean, cohesive design. You can use these defaults as-is, select from Sample font combination presets, or manually select fonts that better match your brand.
If you're happy with the default fonts, click Start building in the top right corner. For those using an advanced template (as pictured), simply click Next to move forward.
Fonts can be applied to the following elements:
- Heading: Used for titles and section headers.
- Text: Applied to paragraphs and general body content.
- Button: Used for call-to-action buttons.
To adjust, you can choose from a set of curated font pairings or manually select fonts that better reflect your brand by clicking on the font names.
Step 4: Select your website pages (for advanced templates)
If you’ve selected an advanced template, there is an additional onboarding step for you to choose which pages to include on your website. The default pages of your website template will be displayed with the colors and fonts you just selected.
Scroll through the preview to decide which pages to activate and make visible to visitors by checking the Active box in the bottom right corner of each page preview, or keep them all selected as suggested. Afterward, you can enable or disable pages at any time from the Website Builder.
Once done selecting your site pages, click Start building in the top right corner.
Using the Website Builder for the first time
Once you click Start building, your new site is created and you'll enter the Website Builder. Here, you'll be guided through a quick interactive onboarding experience, that you can also choose to opt out of.
This walkthrough includes a series of helpful tooltips that introduce key areas of the builder, simply click Next on each tip to move on.
- Select a block: Hover over the editor in the center of the screen and click on any block to select it.
- Insert a new element: Start by selecting a template, or dragging and dropping a widget from the sidebar.
- Navigate & add pages: Navigate across your site pages, or add new ones.
- Layers & Navigation: Inspect the different items on your page, or navigate to the navbar and footer of your website.
- Modals: Update your signup, login, and other modals.
- Settings: Navigate to our suite of options to customize your website.
- Preview & device modes: Switch between desktop, mobile, and preview modes to see how your page looks & feels.
- Go to your website: Quick access to your live website.
- Save page: Press the cmd+s button to save the page, save via the keyboard, or allow our autosave feature to save for you.
- Version history: View the version history of the site and pages.
- Undo & Redo: Undo (cmd+Z) and redo (cmd+Shift+Z) changes made to the page.
- Ready to get started? Click Complete onboarding to finalize.
After going through all of the tips, click Complete onboarding to begin customizing your site.
Customizing, previewing, and publishing your site
Congrats! You’ve completed onboarding. At this point, you’re in full control of your site and can begin exploring all that the Website Builder has to offer. The top right button is where you’ll find your publish/preview options and everything from your template, colors, and fonts to page structure can be edited freely as you build.
You can now:
- Sync and display your newsletter posts.
- Swap placeholder content with your own.
- Add subscribe forms and additional pages.
- Customize individual blocks, layouts, and global styles.
- Preview and publish your changes on all devices.
As we continue to improve the Website Builder experience, you’ll find more articles available here in the KB. Check out these resources to go deeper on specific features:
- How to use the Website Builder
- Customizing your site in the Website Builder
- Using content tags on your website
- Website redirect options
- Adding signup flows to your website subscribe forms
- How to embed YouTube videos on your website
- Security settings for your website
- How to publish your website
- View all articles on the Website Builder
Publish and preview options
When you're ready to go live, the Publish button includes options to:
- Publish the current page only.
- Publish all pages or selected pages.
- Preview your full site before making changes public.
- Push all changes live across your site.
You can continue building privately until you choose to publish; preview your site at any time to test layout, links, and responsiveness.