Publish a wedding website and connect a domain

Open a wedding’s Website page. The builder belongs to the active business workspace: owners, administrators and staff with full workspace access can edit and publish. A shared-wedding invitation or a crew assignment does not grant private website editing access. Domain ownership and connection controls require an owner or administrator.

Shape the public story

Open the Design area to try nine original starting looks, including Garden party, The Sunday paper, and After hours. Each combines an existing Garden, Editorial, or Midnight color family with bundled typography, accent, texture, date treatment and cover arrangement. Trying a different look preserves every word, photograph and section. Expand the details controls to customize the combination. Hero layouts include centered, split and full-bleed photographs, with horizontal and vertical focal-point controls. Desktop, tablet and phone previews use the same renderer as the published site. On smaller screens, switch between editing and preview instead of scrolling past a long form. Preview edit controls never appear on published websites.

Use the Sections outline to add, arrange, hide, duplicate or remove story, schedule, travel, registry, FAQ, wedding party, gallery and RSVP sections. Open one section at a time to edit its details, or choose Edit section in the private preview. A duplicated section starts hidden so experimenting never adds an extra public section by accident. Cards can also move up or down and be duplicated. Cards provide schedule times, questions and answers, places to stay, registry links, party members and photographs. These are public details you write yourself. They do not pull private guest lists, meal answers, medical details, budgets or invitation tokens from another workspace feature.

The RSVP section explains how guests use their individual invitation link. It does not expose a searchable guest list or collect household responses on the public website. Guest uploads remain in the separate permitted Guest Hub. Ready audio welcomes can be selected with a complete public transcript; prepare recordings in the audio library below the studio.

Select photographs privately

Upload JPEG, PNG or WebP photographs to the wedding’s private Documents area, then select them in the builder. Existing ready AVIF images can also be selected. Choose from searchable image thumbnails, then adjust the horizontal and vertical crop focus against a live photograph preview. Add an image description for accessibility. The selector shows up to 200 eligible private images from this wedding; each website supports up to 100 selected originals.

Publication retains the exact image identities and file checksums. Published website versions keep their originals for restoration, so Documents deletion is blocked while a retained version refers to an image. There is currently no destructive website-history purge. Older external HTTPS images remain supported, but their third-party availability and bytes cannot be frozen by this system; select a private original when you need that guarantee.

Private previews require workspace access. Public image requests recheck the currently published version and any website password. Hidden sections and their images are not publicly served. Images are resized and stripped of embedded metadata; the website does not distribute a permanent public storage URL. An image or page already downloaded by a visitor cannot be recalled.

Save, review and publish

The studio shows whether changes are waiting to be saved. Undo and redo keep up to 50 recent editing groups in this browser session; they do not alter the live publication. Discarding unsaved edits requires confirmation and returns to the latest saved draft. Reloading with unsaved work triggers the browser warning, but draft history is not an offline backup. Save before leaving the page.

The Publish area highlights unfinished visible sections, blank card titles, missing answers and optional finishing touches. These suggestions never rewrite content automatically. For example, a new FAQ question without an answer links you back to that section, while a deliberately type-only cover can remain without a photograph.

Save draft changes the private draft only. Review publication checks the exact saved content, selected images and current password setting. Confirm that review, then choose Publish reviewed draft. If another operator changes the draft, image identity or access setting, review again before publishing.

Published history has its own page navigation. Restoring a version creates a private draft; it never publishes automatically. Unpublish stops new published page and image reads while retaining history. Earlier records without an integrity hash are labeled legacy publications; a new reviewed publication establishes the current checked snapshot without claiming to prove historical bytes.

The hosted /w/your-address link remains available independently of a custom domain. A published slug is locked; unpublish before changing it, and remember that the previous hosted address will stop working.

Change website access explicitly

The Live website access control is separate from draft editing. Setting, replacing or removing a password takes effect immediately after its own confirmation and invalidates earlier website sessions. Unpublishing also invalidates those sessions. Password protection applies to new image requests as well as page reads.

A successful unlock lasts up to twelve hours. Password attempts are limited per website to thirty in ten minutes. If the shared limit is reached, guests must wait and confirm the password with their hosts. Protected websites have generic social metadata and no search indexing, even for a visitor who has unlocked the page.

Share the published site

Download the QR code after publication. It encodes the current verified sharing address without a password or guest token. Previously printed QR codes keep their encoded address; download a fresh one if you later change the address. An unprotected site has a generated social card containing only its published title, date and public location. Search indexing is off unless explicitly allowed in a published draft.

Verify and connect a custom domain

Domain activation remains part of the coordinated final setup. Creating a request is available during development, but it does not establish ownership or route traffic. The development demonstration uses an in-memory DNS and hosting simulator; simulated connections cannot activate a live hostname.

1. Enter an exact domain or subdomain you control. Wildcards, application-owned names, ports and URL paths are rejected.
2. Add the exact TXT ownership value shown for that request. It is bound to this website and expires after two days if it has not been verified. Keep the verified proof in place for ongoing checks.
3. After hosting-provider setup, choose Check ownership proof. Once verified, a durable job connects the hostname to the configured hosting project and checks its configured DNS targets, provider verification and TLS.
4. Review the connection’s ready state, then choose Activate verified address. Ownership verification alone never activates routing. One current custom domain is supported per website.

Provider routing targets are configured for the actual project, not guessed from a universal DNS value. Vercel’s project-domain API has separate add, verification and removal operations. The adapter was checked against those official contracts on September 30, 2026; live DNS, certificates and provider credentials have not been activated or externally certified by the local rehearsal.

Recover or disconnect

Connection and ownership histories have independent page navigation. A lost provider response is reconciled with the original project’s domain record before another change. If hosting-project credentials change, restore the original configuration to recover the retained operation; the application does not silently adopt another project.

Active connections receive periodic ownership, routing and TLS checks. A missing ownership proof suspends custom routing. The hosted website link still works if the website is published. A deployment or workspace pause also stops custom routing while leaving hosted links and reviewed domain removal available.

Suspend routing now stops custom-domain access. Disconnect address stops routing and queues provider removal; the hostname reservation remains until removal is confirmed. Retries and old worker responses cannot reactivate a later disconnected generation. A new owner cannot displace an active connection merely by creating another unverified request.

Custom hosts serve only the wedding website’s narrow public routes. They do not expose the business dashboard, billing, signing, general APIs or account routes. Secure, host-specific password sessions are separate from application sessions.