Drafts first.
Pages from a template arrive as drafts, and none is published until you publish it.
BUILD · SITE
Everything a site needs around its pages.
Start from a template, with words written from your own facts. Build your menus against your real header. Group your content so personalization can use it. Fix what search engines cannot see, with AI drafts that wait for your approval. Collect submissions in native forms, and check what crawlers and AI agents read.
Every figure on this page is as of October 2026.
What it does
Site is one room in your admin, with seven screens. Six of them are below. The seventh, Catalogs, holds page types, sections and themes, and is explained with the Composer.
Site setup
Start from a template for your kind of business.
- "How should your site start?" opens on "Choose a template": 29 of them, with a search and a "Staff pick".
- The templates: Local service business · Professional services firm · Portfolio / creator · Blog / editorial · SaaS / product · Creative agency · Nonprofit / charity · Event / conference · Gym / fitness studio · Clinic / medical practice · Restaurant / cafe · Small shop · Accounting firm · Church / faith community · Cleaning services · Coaching / consulting · Construction / contractor · Dental practice · HVAC / plumbing / electrical · Landscaping · Law firm · Marketing / SEO agency · Personal / résumé · Photography studio · Software development agency · Startup one-pager · Veterinary practice · Wedding · and Blank.
- Each template opens a page browser: the pages it will create, in light and dark, with the template's theme choices.
- "Set this site up from the template?" lists every page it will create, as a draft. The same approval fills your navigation with those pages and switches the site's theme, and those two take effect at once.
- The result names who wrote each page's words, lists the empty picture slots to fill, and shows the header button.
- "Undo this setup" moves the pages it created to the Trash, puts your navigation and theme back, and leaves alone anything you have edited since.
- "Add pages from a template" adds more pages at any time, without touching your menu or your theme.
- Site setup shapes the pages, the menu and the theme; your prices, members-only settings and documents are set in their own rooms.
- In a sentence: "Set the site up from the restaurant template".
Copy written from your facts
Your words, from what you tell it.
- "Let AI write the text for your site" asks six things: "What your business does", "Who it is for", "Address", "Email", "Phone", and "Anything else worth putting on the site".
- The screen makes its own promise: "Only what you type here is used. Anything you leave blank is left out rather than invented. Your address and email appear on the site because you gave them, never because they were made up."
- Every page arrives as a draft. Read each one before you publish it.
- The result lists every picture slot to fill with your own pictures.
Front page and header button
- "Front page" decides what your site serves at its home address: a page, or the index of your posts.
- Visitors can search the posts you have published in English. Pages, products and other collections are not searched, and a search box appears only where your site's layout has one.
- "Header button" sets the words and the target of the call to action in your header. It appears only once its target is a published page.
- Each change shows its card and carries an undo.
- In a sentence: "Make About our home page".
Navigation
Build the menu against your real header.
- Pick a menu, or start one. Drag, rename and nest its items, up to three levels deep.
- Add pages, posts, categories, tags, or a link of your own.
- "Where this menu appears": Header, Secondary header or Footer.
- A live preview of your real header, at Desktop and Mobile widths, shows the menu before anyone else does.
- "Publish" puts the whole menu live with one card, and one undo.
- On your site, all three levels render, with keyboard support, and the menu folds behind a button at narrow widths.
- EmDash's own Menus screen edits the same menus directly. The copilot changes menus through this builder, and can also copy a menu for another language once you approve its card.
- In a sentence: "Add a Pricing link to the main menu and publish it".
Catalogs
- Page types and their recipes, the sections library, and themes with the Theme Studio.
Taxonomies
The ways your site groups its content.
- "The ways this site groups its content" lists every grouping, Categories, Tags and your own, with "Applies to", "Values", "Shape", and "Catalog axis", which says whether personalization can use it.
- "New taxonomy" makes one, flat or nested.
- Each value can be added, renamed, described, nested, reordered or removed.
- A grouping used as a catalog axis becomes interests the affinity engine can score, and a value carried by at least two items earns a draft audience.
- This is the one home for categories and tags: their rows are taken out of EmDash's own menu.
- In a sentence: "Create a Recipes category".
SEO
Fix what search engines cannot see, with drafts you approve.
- Two tabs: "Issues & content", and "Site defaults & robots".
- "What needs attention" finds pages hidden from search, missing descriptions and titles, missing social cards, and canonical addresses that point to another site.
- "Fix with AI" drafts the missing words for a page from that page's own words. "Draft all N with AI" drafts up to 20 at a time. Each draft is labelled, waits for your approval, and can be undone.
- For each page: a search preview, the title, the description, the canonical address, the sharing image, the robots line, six social fields, and "Hide from search".
- Site-wide defaults, with "Help me fill it out".
- Search verification codes go in EmDash's Settings › SEO, redirects on Redirects, and the robots policy is set through the copilot.
- "What this site publishes for crawlers and agents" explains twelve files, one by one: what each is, who reads it, and why it matters.
- In a sentence: "Write meta descriptions where they are missing" · "Hide the thank-you page from search".
Forms
Native forms, with an inbox.
- Three tabs: "Forms", "Submissions" and "Settings".
- "Create a form": draft it with the copilot, start from the Contact, RSVP or Feedback template, or start blank.
- Eleven kinds of field: text, email, phone, web address, number, date, long text, a drop-down, one choice, several choices, and an agreement box.
- A file-upload field lets visitors send you a file with the form. Coming soon.
- Each form has its own success and error messages, its own spam setting, "Release a PDF after submit", "Placements" showing where it appears, and notifications with templates and a test send.
- "Submissions" is an inbox, with "Received", "Spam" and "Unverified" filters, a CSV of up to 1,000 rows, and erasure. Admins read it.
- "Delivery" counts what was sent and what is waiting, with "Dispatch queued now", and every submission is kept in the inbox. Every form's notice is sent, through the platform's own mail when the site has none, and the inbox says when nothing went out. Coming soon.
- On your site, a visitor who sends the form reads "Thank you. Your submission was received.", and a PDF you attached is released straight away: "Access unlocked".
- In a sentence: "Add a contact form to the Contact page" · "Who submitted this week?"
Spam protection
- On "Settings": "Challenge provider", none or Cloudflare Turnstile; "When verification fails", accept and flag, or reject; a hidden trap field; and a minimum time to fill the form.
- Once protection is on, the server checks every submission on your site: the trap, a signed fill time, and Turnstile if you chose it.
- Spam protection is on from a site's first form.
- In a sentence: "How much spam did we block?"
Readiness
What crawlers and AI agents find when they arrive.
- "Readiness report" gives an "Overall score" out of 100, from ten weighted checks: crawlability, policy, HTML completeness, structured data, accessibility, extraction, freshness, feeds, task readiness, and defensive risk.
- Each check shows its weight, its contribution and its evidence. "Rescan" runs the report again, and it downloads as CSV or JSON.
- The "Bot & agent access policy" sits beside it, read-only. Changing it is a request to the copilot, behind its own card.
- The report scores your home page, as crawlers and AI agents read it.
How it works
A site from a template, start to finish
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Choose.
A template, and its theme from the choices it offers.
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Tell it about you.
Answer any of the six questions, or none. Only what you type is used.
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Read the card.
It names every page, says each arrives as a draft, and says what it replaces: your navigation and your theme.
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Watch the pages land.
Each page's words come from their own call to the model, and the screen shows each page as it arrives.
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Keep it, or take it back.
The result says who wrote the words and what is left to fill. "Undo this setup" restores the menu and theme and puts the new pages in the Trash.
A form submission, start to finish
- The visitor's form posts to the site's own submission address. Once protection is on, the server checks the trap, the signed fill time and, if you chose it, Turnstile.
- The submission is stored in your site's own database and appears in "Submissions". Spam and unverified entries are kept apart, by filter.
- Notifications are queued and sent through the email connection, and a PDF set to release is unlocked on the page.
What keeps it safe
One card, one undo.
A setup, a menu, the front page and the header button each change behind a card, with an undo.
Search fixes you approve.
Every AI draft in the SEO workspace is labelled, waits for your approval, and can be undone.
Spam checked on the server.
Once protection is on, the trap, the signed fill time and Turnstile are checked where the visitor cannot reach them.
Submissions stay yours.
They live in your site's own database. Only Admins read them, and any one can be erased.
Crawler rules behind a card.
The bot and AI-crawler policy changes only through the copilot, behind "Apply this bot-access policy?", with an undo.
Common questions
Does the AI write my whole site?
It can write the first draft of every page from your answers. Anything you leave blank is left out, not invented. Read every page before you publish it.
How do pictures get onto the pages?
You add your own, and site setup lists every picture slot to fill.
Will setting up a template change my live site?
Its pages arrive as drafts. The same approval puts them in your menu and switches your theme in one step, and "Undo this setup" puts both back.
Can I add pages from a template later?
Yes. "Add pages from a template" adds them without touching your menu or your theme.
How deep can my menus go?
Three levels, in the header, a secondary header or the footer.
Where are categories and tags?
On Site › Taxonomies, with any groupings of your own.
Will every form submission be emailed to me?
Each form can notify people by email, with templates and a test send, and every submission is kept in the inbox. Every notice is sent, through the platform's own mail when the site has none, and the inbox says when nothing went out. Coming soon.
Is my site ready for AI agents?
The readiness report scores your home page on ten weighted checks and shows its evidence. It is a measure, not a promise.
Can I keep AI training crawlers out?
Yes. Ask the copilot to apply a bot policy that blocks training, and the card shows the change before it goes live.