Publish Your Site from InstaWP Studio
When your site is ready, publish it from InstaWP Studio (Beta) to InstaWP hosting. Publishing creates a real WordPress site in your InstaWP account, with its own address and hosting plan.
Until you publish, your site is a draft that lives in your browser. It shows the badge Draft · not published.
Before you start
- An InstaWP account. You can sign in or create one during publishing. See Sign in to InstaWP Studio.
- A pay-per-use team. Studio publishes to pay-per-use teams on InstaWP. See Create & Update Team.
- A card on the InstaWP account of the team's owner, for paid plans. Studio never asks for card details itself. See Managing payment methods.
Publish a site
Click Publish in the top bar of the builder, or in Site details. Studio guides you through five steps: Sign in, Address, Plan, Publishing and Live. You can click Cancel at any time before you confirm.
1. Sign in
If you are not signed in yet, choose I have an InstaWP account and click Sign in, or choose New to InstaWP? and click Create a free account. Finish in the small window that opens, then click Choose an address.
2. Choose an address
On the Where should {name} live? screen:
- If you have more than one pay-per-use team, choose the Team the site should belong to.
- Under Free InstaWP address, type a name for your site. If your team has more than one address ending, choose one from the list. Use 3 to 30 letters, numbers and hyphens. Studio checks the name and shows is available · SSL included when it is free.
- Your site runs in North America by default. To pick another data center, click Change, choose a flag, or click Keep it to leave it as it is.
- Optionally, under Your own domain · optional, click Find a domain to buy a domain for the site. It is registered and connected once the site is live. See Add a domain to your Studio site.
- Click Continue with {address}.
3. Choose a plan
On the Hosting for {name} screen, Studio suggests a hosting plan with its price. Plans are InstaWP's plans, billed daily per site. To choose a different one, click Change plan. See Site Plans for what each plan includes.
If you chose a domain, plans that cannot use a domain of their own are not available.
If your team has no card yet, the team owner sees Add a card on InstaWP. Add the card, then click Check again. A team member who is not the owner is asked to contact the team owner.
Click Publish for $N/mo (or Publish on a free plan).
4. Confirm
Studio shows a summary: address, team, data center, plan, and the domain if you chose one. On a paid plan, billing starts today and is charged daily to the team owner's card. A domain is charged once the site is live, renews yearly until you turn auto-renew off on InstaWP, and is not refundable once registered.
Nothing is uploaded until you confirm. Click Publish for $N/mo to go ahead, or Go back to change something.
5. Publishing
Publishing usually takes under a minute. You can leave the page and the site keeps publishing. Studio shows each step as it happens, from uploading your site to Live on InstaWP.
6. Your site is live
The {name} is live screen shows your site's address. From here you can:
- Open site to see it, or Keep editing to go back to the builder
- open WordPress admin, or Site details
- Manage hosting, plan and domain on InstaWP in the InstaWP dashboard
Editing your live site
After you publish, there is no separate draft any more. The builder edits your live site directly, so changes are public right away. Chat, Click to edit and Undo all work on the live site, and the chat shows a reminder that you are editing the live site.
The Publish, Share link, Save as template and Reset this site… menu items are not available once the site is live.
Changes that ask first
Some changes need your approval before Studio makes them on the live site:
- deleting a page or post
- unpublishing a post or making it private
- replacing a whole page
- menu, header or footer changes that remove links
- resetting the whole site, if you ask chat to
- running custom code
The chat shows the change with Approve and Skip buttons. Deletions, page replacements and menu removals are asked one at a time. If you do not answer within 15 minutes, the change is skipped and nothing is changed.
Backups and staging
Studio has no snapshots of its own, and Undo steps back one change at a time. For backups and a staging copy of your live site, use InstaWP: see View and manage backups and Staging environment.
Change the plan later
Open Site details, find the Plan card and click Change plan. Pick the new plan and click Move to {plan}. The new plan applies right away, and InstaWP bills the new rate from today.
Delete a published site
In Site details, click Delete site….
- By default, this removes the site from Studio only. The live site keeps running on InstaWP and keeps being billed.
- To delete it from InstaWP as well, tick Also delete it from InstaWP. The button changes to Delete everywhere. The site goes away and its billing stops. This cannot be undone.
If publishing does not work
| Message | What to do |
|---|---|
| You need a pay-per-use team on InstaWP | Click Create a team on InstaWP, create a pay-per-use team, then click Check again. |
| {address} is taken. Choose another name. | Try a different name. |
| Add a card on InstaWP first: paid plans need one. | Add a card on your InstaWP account, or choose a free plan. |
| Publishing needs attention | Your progress is saved and a second site will not be created. Click Check status. |
| Publishing was interrupted while creating the site. | Check your InstaWP account before trying again, because the site may already exist. |
| The site is live, but the builder could not connect to it for editing | Your site is live. Click Connect for editing in the builder to try again. |
A Studio site is published once, to one InstaWP site. It cannot be published again as a second site.