> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.gridbeds.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.
# Websites
> The property website Gridbeds hosts: creating, editing and publishing it, your own domain, direct bookings, and the booking widget for another site.
Gridbeds hosts your property's website, booking engine included: guests see your rooms and prices, book and pay, and the booking lands straight in Gridbeds, with no channel commission.
**Websites** is in the Sales & Distribution group. It is part of your subscription's Website Builder module; without it, the page says the module is not available. To create, change or publish a site you need permission to manage websites — by default **Owner** and **Admin** have it. The buttons show for others too, but their saves are refused ("You do not have permission to perform this action.").
## Create the site
The **Your Websites** page has two buttons:
**Generate website** → **Build from this property** → **Generate my website**. Gridbeds builds the site from the data it already has: the property photo, the rooms, amenities, the restaurant (menu and hours), contact details and the legal pages, with the bookable properties attached. At the end: **Open in editor** or **Preview draft**. Only one site can be generated per organization; if you already have one, you see "You already have a website".
**Create Website** → **Choose Template** → **Website Details**: **Website Name**, **Subdomain** (the address will be `subdomain.gridbeds.com`; lowercase letters, digits and hyphens), **Tagline** and **Description**. The site starts empty, with the chosen template, and opens in the editor.
A new site is a **Draft**: private, at `subdomain.gridbeds.com`, hidden from search engines.
## Working on the site
A site's page has these tabs:
| Tab | What you do there |
| - | - |
| **Overview** | Quick stats, the publish checklist, the site's status and the **Show the book-direct benefits strip** switch. |
| **Page Editor** | The drag-and-drop block editor (booking widget, rooms, properties, contact form, map, FAQ…), autosave, **History** and desktop, tablet and phone previews. |
| **Pages** | The site's pages and the header and footer menus (**Rebuild from pages**). The home page cannot be deleted. |
| **Properties** | **Add Properties**: which properties can be booked on the site. A property must be active and visible to be bookable. |
| **Restaurants** | The restaurants shown on the site. |
| **Languages** | Translating the pages — see below. |
| **Media** | The site's images. |
| **Theme Settings** | Colours (primary, secondary, accent), fonts, logo and favicon. |
| **SEO Settings** | **Meta Title** (up to 70 characters), **Meta Description** (up to 160), the social share image and, under **Analytics & Tracking**, Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, Facebook Pixel and the Google Business Profile link. |
| **Domain Settings** | The subdomain, your own domain, maintenance mode and **URL Redirects**. |
| **Embed** | The booking widget for another site — see below. |
| **Analytics** | Over 7, 30 or 90 days: page views, unique visitors, bounce rate, average session, bookings and the funnel page view → booking started → booking completed. |
| **Messages** | Messages sent from the site's forms: contact, inquiry, newsletter, booking request. Mark them read, replied or archived. |
**Preview** opens the site as it is now, with a link valid for an hour. **Share preview** makes a link for someone else — the whole site or a single page, valid for 1, 7 or 30 days; copy it straight away, it is not shown a second time.
### Which language you are editing
Every language of a page is a page of its own: the English home page and the Romanian home page are two pages, and the editor edits one of them at a time. The page picker shows the language beside the title once the site has pages in more than one, and marks a page that is still a draft **Draft**.
Under the toolbar, a strip says where your edits show:
* **Editing:** the language of the open page, and whether it is the site's default language.
* Whether the page is **On the live site**, a **Draft** (visitors do not see it), or on a site that is not published or is in maintenance.
* What readers in each of the site's other languages see at this page's address: their own copy of the page — marked when it was written before your latest changes, or when it was never checked against them — or the page in the default language, when their language has no copy of its own. **Open** opens that page in the editor.
A saved change reaches the live site within a minute. If the site shows something other than the editor, check the strip first: the site is most likely showing the page in another language.
A template from **Page Templates** replaces the open page's content in every language the page is written in, each language with the template's own copy where it has one. You are asked first, and the confirmation names the languages. A language the template has no copy for gets the template's English or Romanian text; translate it on the **Languages** tab. **History** keeps the previous content of each language.
### Formatting text
Click a text block to type in it. A formatting bar appears above the block, or below it when the block is at the top of the screen: bold, italic, strikethrough, headings, lists, links and alignment. From the keyboard, press **Alt+F10** (**Option+F10** on a Mac) while typing to move into the bar, and **Esc** to return to the text.
## Publishing
**Publish** opens **Publish website?** with the checklist. Required: at least one page, a home page, content on the home page. Recommended: the meta title and description, the logo and the favicon. **Publish now** stays disabled until the required items are fixed. Tick **Also publish … draft pages** to publish the drafts too; otherwise only the home page and the pages already published go live.
Once published, from the ⋮ menu: **Maintenance Mode** (visitors see a maintenance page, with a **Maintenance Message** and an optional **Expected End Time**; come back with **Go Live**) or **Unpublish** (the site goes back to draft).
The site takes bookings **only while it is published**. As a draft or in maintenance, neither the site nor the widget takes bookings.
## Your own domain
In **Domain Settings**:
* **Gridbeds Subdomain** — the `….gridbeds.com` address; **Change Subdomain** changes it (3–63 characters; some names are reserved). The screen says the old address redirects to the new one for a year; do not rely on it, and update old links.
* **Custom Domain** → **Add Custom Domain** opens **Connect Custom Domain**:
For example `booking.yourdomain.com`. We recommend a subdomain (booking., stay., [www](http://www).).
At your domain provider, add the record shown: a **CNAME** with your domain as the name and the value displayed. A root domain (`example.com`) cannot use a CNAME: add it as an **ALIAS** or **ANAME**, or turn on CNAME flattening; if your provider has none of these, use `www`. If the domain is on Cloudflare, leave the record **DNS only** (no proxy). Click **I've added the record**.
Gridbeds checks every 30 seconds (or **Check Now**) the **DNS Configuration** and the **SSL Certificate**. DNS propagation can take up to 48 hours, usually a few minutes.
On the card the domain shows **Pending** or **Active**, and the certificate **SSL Provisioning**, **SSL Active** or **SSL failed**. Once your domain is active, the `….gridbeds.com` address sends visitors to it. **Remove Domain** disconnects it; the site stays at its Gridbeds address. If the domain stops working or the certificate fails, the organization's owner gets an email.
**URL Redirects** keeps visitors and search rankings when you move from an old site: paste one line per redirect, "old path, new path" (optionally with 301 or 302), and **Import redirects**.
## Bookings on the site
The guest picks dates, room and rate, then pays according to **Settings → Payment policy** (Operations group), set per property or as the organization's default: **Pay in full**, **Pay a deposit**, **Card guarantee** or **Pay at property** — see [Payments](/en/payments). With pay at property, the booking waits for your approval and expires if you do not approve it within the window you set.
For an online payment the guest is sent to the secure page of the property's own payment provider — **Stripe**, **PayU**, **Netopia** or **EuPlatesc**, whichever the property uses (see [Payments](/en/payments)) — and comes back to your site. The booking holds the room until the provider confirms the payment, then it is confirmed. If the guest leaves without paying, the room is released after about an hour.
**Card guarantee** needs Stripe, and PayPal cannot take payments on the site. A mode the property's provider cannot take is not offered to the guest; if none of the modes you allowed is left, the guest sends a booking request instead, which you approve as with **Pay at property**. With no payment provider configured at all, the site refuses online payment ("Online booking is not available for this property. Please contact the property directly.") — configure a provider, or allow **Pay at property**.
At checkout the guest can enter a promo code — see [Promo codes](/en/rates#promo-codes). The confirmation page can show your extras, which the guest orders from the portal — see [Fixed charges, packages and extras](/en/fixed-charges).
A rate plan's stay rules — a **minimum stay**, a **maximum stay**, a day **closed to arrival** or **closed to departure**, a night **closed to sale**, set on the plan or by a season — hold on the site and in the booking widget too, and the guest is told before they choose rather than when they pay. A rate whose rules the chosen dates break is not offered; the guest sees which rule, naming the season that sets it (for example "During New Year, this rate needs a stay of at least 2 nights when arriving on 28 Dec 2026."), and the nearest dates that meet it, which they take in one click. When no rate of the room is left, the site says so instead of showing the room as sold out.
## The site's languages
The site can be in Romanian, English and Italian (**Fully supported**), and in Hungarian and German for the pages only (**Pages only** — the booking engine and emails are not fully translated). On the **Languages** tab, **Translate** prepares a page's translation; the statuses are not translated, draft, published and outdated (the original page has changed).
**Coming soon:** adding a new language to the site from the screen. A new site starts in the organization's default language only; meanwhile, for another language contact Gridbeds support.
## The booking widget on another site
Already have a website and only want direct bookings? The **Embed** tab: "Add the booking widget to any website with a copy-paste snippet."
**Inline widget** (the full form in your page), **Book Now button** (opens the form in a popup) or **Search widget** (the guest picks dates and sees which properties are free).
**Button label**, **Brand color**, **Language** and **Properties** — **All properties** or **A single property**.
**Copy** the snippet and paste it into your website's HTML where you want the widget to appear. Bookings flow straight into Gridbeds.
The widget runs on the Gridbeds site behind it: it too takes bookings only while the site is published, and the properties must be attached to the site.
**Coming soon:** recent activity on **Overview** ("Activity tracking coming soon").
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