The admin panel

The admin panel is your website’s control room. It is where you change what the public sees: your prices, your photos, the words on any page.

Only people you invite can get in. Visitors never see it.

You do not need to know any code. If you can use email, you can do this.

Getting in

1. Open your web browser.
2. Click the address bar and type your website’s address.
3. Add /_emdash/admin to the end. Like this: yoursite.com/_emdash/admin.
4. Press Enter.
5. Sign in.

You land on the Dashboard. Think of it as home base: every visit starts here, and you can always get back to it.

Tip

Bookmark the panel now, while you are looking at it. Press Cmd+D on a Mac, or Ctrl+D on Windows. You will use this address a lot.

Your first look around

The Dashboard. The four numbered things stay put on every screen.

1. Your site name. Click it from anywhere to come back to the Dashboard. If you ever feel lost, this is the way home.

2. The menu. Every job starts with a click here. It is split into groups, and this manual uses the same groups in the same order. The screen you are on and the page that explains it always sit in the same place.

3. View Site. Opens your live website in a new tab, exactly as visitors see it. It is the fastest way to check your work after a change.

4. The version number. When you contact us for help, tell us this number. It saves time on both ends.

One more control up top: the small screen icon next to View Site switches the panel between light and dark. It changes nothing on your website, only your view of the panel.

The row of buttons across the top of the Dashboard are shortcuts. Each one jumps straight to creating something new: a page, a service, a photo upload. Below them, one panel counts what you have, and another lists what changed recently.

The menu, group by group

Dashboard is home base, the screen you just met.

Content is everything people see on your website: your pages, photos, services, reviews, and business details. Price changes, new photos, and new text all happen here. You will spend most of your time in this group.

Manage is the wiring around that content. The menu at the top of your public website lives here, and so do visitor comments.

Admin is the deep settings: who can sign in, and which features are turned on. Most businesses touch it about once a year, usually to add a new employee.

Plugins holds the extra features built for your site, such as an inquiry inbox, a schedule, or photo folders. Every site gets its own set, so your list may not match another site’s.

Important

Some pages in this manual cover features your site may not have. Each of those pages says so at the top. If you do not see it in your menu, your website does not use it, and nothing is wrong.

Lists and one-of-a-kind entries

Click anything under Content and you get a list of entries. There are two kinds of screens here, and telling them apart is the best habit you can build in the panel.

A list holds many entries: one per service, one per review, one per page. You add to it and remove from it freely.

A one-of-a-kind entry holds exactly one, because your business only has one. One street address, one set of opening hours. Business Profile works this way. You never add a second entry. You open the one that exists and edit it.

Warning

On a one-of-a-kind screen, leave Add New alone. The button still works, and it will create a second entry. Your website then has to guess which one is real, and it may not pick yours. If the list shows a single entry sitting alone, that is the one to open. Click its title.

On a normal list, Add New is exactly the button you want. It opens a blank form for a new entry.

What a list screen looks like

A list screen. Number 3, the title, is how you open an entry.

1. Add New. Starts a new entry. It is the right choice on a normal list. See the warning above before using it on a one-of-a-kind screen.

2. The All and Trash tabs. All shows everything you have. Trash holds the entries you have moved there. Nothing in Trash is gone: think junk drawer, not shredder.

3. The title. Click it to open and edit the entry. Nine times out of ten, this is the click you want.

4. The action icons. Shortcuts, left to right: view the entry on your live site, edit it, make a copy, or move it to Trash.

The search box and the filters only change what you see on this screen. They never change your website, so you can use them freely.

The yellow Pending changes tag in the picture means someone edited that entry but did not press Publish. Saving and publishing explains why that matters.

What an edit screen looks like

The edit screen. Fields down the middle, controls on the right.

Open any entry and you get the same layout: the form runs down the middle, and the controls sit on the right.

1. Saved. Your work saves on its own while you type. This word flips to Saving…, then back to Saved. When it reads Saved, your work is stored. There is no save button to forget.

2. Live View. Opens this exact entry on your live website in a new tab.

3. Publish. Puts your saved changes on the live site. The last section on this page is about it.

4. Slug. The last part of this entry’s web address. Read the warning below before you ever change it.

A few more controls on the right are worth knowing.

Status shows whether the entry is Published, which the public can see, or a Draft, which only you can see.

Unpublish hides a published entry from the public. Nothing is deleted. The entry waits, exactly as you left it, until you publish again.

Revisions is your safety net, a time machine for the entry. It keeps the older versions, so you can always look up what something said before you changed it.

Move to Trash, at the very bottom, removes the entry. It goes to the Trash tab on the list screen, so you can still get it back.

About the fields: a field marked (optional) can be left empty. Empty means “we do not have one”, and your website simply leaves that detail out. A blank field is always better than a made-up answer.

Warning

The Slug is the last piece of the entry’s web address. If the slug is water-heater-repair, the page lives at yoursite.com/services/water-heater-repair.

Change the slug on a published entry and that address changes with it. Every old link to the page stops working: bookmarks, search results, links you shared. They all land on nothing.

Set the slug once, when the entry is new. Then leave it alone.

Saving is not the same as publishing

These are two different steps, and the difference matters.

Saving stores your work. It happens on its own while you type. Nothing reaches the public.

Publishing puts your saved work on the live website. It happens only when you click Publish.

So when you edit a page that is already live, your changes wait. The public keeps seeing the old version until you publish. A blue Publish button appears in the right panel whenever changes are waiting, and the list screen marks the entry with a yellow Pending changes tag.

Important

Finished editing? Check the top right. If a blue Publish button is sitting there, your work is saved but the public cannot see it yet. Click it, then click Live View and read the page. That is how you know it worked.

That is the whole tour

Every screen from here on is a variation of what you just saw: a list, an edit form, a Publish button. When a page in this manual says “open the entry, make the change, publish”, you will know exactly what that means.

Next, read Saving and publishing. It is the one page worth knowing by heart.