Most of the general options for your site are available in the Settings tab in the left panel. From here, you can backup your site, edit your site's SEO and more.
Home screen icons, share icons, favicons, and startup images allow you to customize, brand, and polish your user's experience on the site and make it easier for a user to pick your site out from a bunch of tabs or links on their home screen. For more information, see Site Icons.
The site URL is how visitors see your site. You are assigned a default, public URL until you decide to add your own domain.
By default, when the site is unpublished, the settings are mostly grayed out. Publish your site to reveal more settings, such as the ability to edit the site URL.
This preview shows your site, including unpublished changes, as it appears in the editor. Site preview is a great way to share your work with others and preview your site on multiple devices before launching.
To get the site URL for sharing, click Copy next to the preview URL
Site SSL is where you can set up a secured HTTPS connection for your site. HTTPS is great for boosting your SEO and for giving visitors confidence when visiting your pages.
This solution leverages the Let's Encrypt project, which is an open source Certificate Authority that provides free certificates. This solution does require that you have a domain pointed at your site successfully.
To turn SSL on:
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Publish your site.
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Turn on SSL.
For more information about SSL, see SSL (HTTPs).
SEO is what gets your site to first page on Google. You can change settings here to help get a little boost on search engine optimization. For more information about SEO, see SEO: Key Concepts and Tools.
These settings are different from individual page SEO settings. Page SEO overrides global SEO changes made in site settings. For more information, see Site SEO Settings.
Adding Google Analytics to your site enables you to get deep insights into your customers and users through the Google analytics dashboard.
To install Google Analytics, you must first set up Google Analytics on Google's platform . Once you've done that, get your tracking ID and enter it into the Google Analytics tab. For more information, see Google Analytics Integration.
Note
We offer a native integration into Google Analytics, however your website will not load Google Analytics unless you set up the integration with your own Google Analytics ID.
The URL Redirect feature lets you redirect specific URLs on your site to specific pages. For more information, see URL Redirects.
The header HTML is a location for you to add your custom scripts, meta tags and other pieces of code which belong in the <head> section of your site. For more information, see Header HTML.
Only certain types of code can be placed in the header HTML. Incorrect code will be removed.
Warning
Consent management apps are not able to prevent code from running prior to consent when the code is placed in the header HTML. This is because IONOS optimizes the structure and order of how content loads, based on performance best practices on the site. We place scripts and CMP banners lower on the page, in order to improve the performance of primary content. Because of this, it is recommended to place code in the body-end when using a consent management app.
Create a backup of your site that you can restore to at anytime. This allows you to revert changes or restore back from critical mistakes done on the site.
To create a backup, in the left panel, click Settings, and then click Backup Site. Type a new version name for the backup and click Save.
For more information about site backups, Backup Sites.
If you are building a site in a language other than English, the Site Language feature allows you to translate certain elements into your target language. For more information, see Set a Default Site Language.
With the help of the Privacy Settings page, you can ensure that your users are well-informed about the type of data and cookies information collected when they visit your page. The main tools you can enable in Privacy Settings are the privacy page and cookie notification. For more information, see Privacy Settings.
Customize the 404 page for your site. The 404 page is used in case an invalid or unreachable URL is entered as an internal link of the site domain; that is, in lieu of any page that can not be rendered. If a site visitor tries to access a non-existent page on your site, they will see your customized 404 page as opposed to the generic 404 page that we provide by default.
Note
To hide the footer on the 404 page, you must access developer mode and add custom code. To access developer mode, click the Developer Mode () button in the navigation bar, look for the 404 page, and then click page.css. For more information, see Developer Mode.
To customize the 404 page:
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In the left panel, click Settings, and then click 404 page.
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Click Customize page. The 404 page will not display under the Pages menu or the Pages drop-down at the top left of the editor.
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Editing the 404 page is similar to editing any other page on your site. You can drag in any widget or section, and edit content and design. However, to navigate back to the rest of your site, you need to go back to the Home page from the pages drop-down at the top of the page.
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To preview your 404 page, click Preview page. You can always revert back to the original 404 page by clicking Revert to original page.
Note the following:
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Clients need to have full editing capabilities in order to edit the 404 page.
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For multi-language sites, the 404 page will be the same in all languages and can only be customized in the default site language.
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Page background can only be edited using Background for all in the Global Settings because it is not an individual page.