--- title: "Building Your Community Website" description: "Publish a public website for your community, arrange its sections and pages, share public forms, and see how many people visit." url: https://support.communitrak.com/en/articles/53-building-your-community-website collection: "Community Website for Leaders" updated: 2026-10-14 language: en --- # Building Your Community Website Publish a public website for your community, arrange its sections and pages, share public forms, and see how many people visit. Every Communitrak community can have a public website: a place where prospective buyers, neighbors, and residents can learn about your community, meet the board, fill out public forms, and find your contact details without logging in. The **Website** tab is where you build it. ## **Who can do this** Editing the website requires the **Update Community Website** permission. Taking the site live, or taking it offline, also requires **Publish Community Website**. The Website tab only appears for roles with Update Community Website, so Publish Community Website is only useful alongside it. Some options may be unavailable or appear differently depending on your level of account access. > **Info:** **Note:** If your community's Communitrak subscription is in a read-only state, every control on this page is disabled, including publishing. Your site stays online, but you can't change it until the subscription is resolved on the Billing tab. If the subscription is canceled, the public site goes offline. ## **Open the Website tab** 1. Log in to Communitrak at [https://app.communitrak.com](https://app.communitrak.com). 2. In the main navigation menu, expand **Community** and click **Website**. The page is organized into five categories, listed down the left side on a desktop and in a dropdown on a phone: - **Publishing**: status, domain, and URL. - **Design**: fonts and typography. - **Layout**: sections, hero, and content. - **Pages**: custom pages. - **Insights**: forms and analytics. ## **Building your site for the first time** If you're starting from scratch, this order works well: 1. Under **Publishing**, choose your **Public URL Slug** and switch the status to **Preview Mode**. 2. Under **Layout**, fill in the Hero, About, and Contact sections, then add any others you want. 3. Open the preview link from the Website Status card and check how it looks on a computer and a phone. 4. Share the preview link with your board for feedback. 5. When everyone agrees, switch the status to **Published**. 6. Optionally, connect your own domain name. ## **Publishing** ### **Website Status** Three options control who can see your site: - **Unpublished**: not available. No one can view it. - **Preview Mode**: only people with the private preview link can view it. Use this while you build. - **Published**: live and accessible to anyone on the internet. Click an option to switch to it. Once the site is out of Unpublished, its address appears at the top of the card as a link you can open. In Preview Mode, that link _is_ the private preview link: it ends in **/preview/** followed by a code. Copy it from there to share it. > **Info:** **Heads up:** A new preview code is created every time the status changes. If you switch to Published or Unpublished and later come back to Preview Mode, any preview link you shared earlier stops working. Share the new one from the card. > **Info:** **Note:** Moving the site from Unpublished into Preview Mode needs only Update Community Website. Every other status change, including moving a Published site back to Preview Mode, needs Publish Community Website. If the options look dimmed, that permission is what you're missing. ### **Public URL Slug** The slug is the last part of your site's address on sites.communitrak.com. For example, the slug **oak-hollow** gives you sites.communitrak.com/oak-hollow. Type the slug you want and Communitrak checks it as you type, telling you whether it's available before you save. Then click **Save Slug**. A slug must: - Be 3 to 120 characters long. - Use only lowercase letters, numbers, and hyphens, and start with a letter or number. - Not already be used by another community. A few words, such as admin, app, and www, are reserved. Changing the slug changes your site's address right away, and the old address stops working. Update any links you've shared, such as in newsletters or email signatures. A custom domain is not affected. ### **Custom Domain** You can point a domain you own, such as www.yourhoa.com, at the site. That takes a few DNS steps, so it has its own article: see "Using Your Own Domain Name." ## **Design** Under **Typography**, set two fonts by typing the name of any font from [Google Fonts](https://fonts.google.com): - **Accent Font** for headings. Defaults to Playfair Display. - **Body Font** for paragraph and interface text. Defaults to DM Sans. A **Preview** box below shows both fonts with sample text, so you can see the pairing before committing. Click **Save Fonts**. To go back to a default, clear the field and save. Type the font name exactly as Google Fonts spells it, such as "Lora" or "Source Sans 3." If the preview shows a plain, generic-looking font, the name probably isn't an exact match. Your site's logo (or community name) and brand color aren't set here. They come from the **Preferences** tab, and the website picks them up automatically. ## **Layout** Your homepage is a single scrolling page made of sections. The **Sections** card at the top of Layout lists them in the order visitors see them. Below it, each section that's turned on has its own card for editing its content. ### **Arrange your sections** - **Reorder**: drag a section by its handle. The Hero is always first and can't be moved. - **Turn on or off**: use the switch beside a section. A section that's off disappears from your site, and its editing card disappears from this page. Turn it back on to edit it again. Nothing you wrote is lost. - **Add**: click **Add Section** and choose a type (see below). - **Remove**: click the trash icon and confirm. This only appears on sections you added. Removing a section deletes its content. Every site comes with five built-in sections: **Hero**, **About**, **Amenities**, **Gallery**, and **Contact**. These can be turned off but not removed. You can add four more types, and you can add more than one of each, for example two Content sections: - **Board Members**: your community leaders, with photos and titles. - **FAQ**: frequently asked questions with expandable answers. - **Content**: a freeform section with a heading and rich text. - **Forms**: your public forms, shown as clickable tiles. ### **How saving works** There is no single save button for the whole site. - **Saved instantly:** section order, turning sections on or off, adding or removing a section, choosing a layout, uploading or removing a hero, amenities, or section image, and the navigation settings below. - **Saved with a button:** everything else. If a card has a Save button (**Save Hero**, **Save Content**, **Save Contact**, **Save Gallery**, or **Save Section**), click it before you move on, or your changes won't reach the site. ### **Navigation settings** Every section except the Hero has these settings at the top of its card: - **Show in navigation**: whether the section gets a link in your site's header and footer. A section can be on the page without being linked. - **Nav Label**: the link's text, up to 40 characters. It appears when Show in navigation is on. If you clear it, it goes back to the section's default name. The header shows up to four links. Any more, including your published custom pages, go under a **More** menu. Sections are listed first, in page order, followed by custom pages. ### **Hero** The Hero is the banner at the top of your site and is always shown. Choose a layout of **Full Photo** or **Split**, enter a **Hero Title** and **Hero Subtitle** (up to 80 characters each), and upload a **Hero Background Image**. Images can be JPG, PNG, GIF, or WEBP, up to 10 MB. The image saves as soon as it finishes uploading. Click **Save Hero** to save the title and subtitle. ### **About** Introduce your community. Choose a layout of **Default**, **Centered**, or **With Image**; an image upload appears only with the With Image layout. Enter a **Section Heading**, which saves when you click out of the field. Write the text in the **Content** editor and click **Save Content**. ### **Amenities** Describe what your community offers. Enter a Section Heading, optionally upload a background image, write the text, and click **Save Content**. ### **Gallery** Click **Upload Photos** to add one or more photos at a time (JPG, PNG, GIF, or WEBP, up to 10 MB each). You can add an optional caption to each photo, which visitors see when they hover over it, drag photos to reorder them, and remove photos. Click **Save Gallery** after any change. Uploaded photos don't appear on your site until you do. ### **Contact** Enter your community's address, phone number, and email address, plus links to any of your Facebook, Instagram, X (Twitter), Pinterest, and YouTube pages. Click **Save Contact**. ### **Board Members** You don't type anyone in here. The section lists everyone marked as a community leader in your community, with their profile photo and title, so it stays current as your board changes. From the section's card you can: - Drag leaders into the order you want. - Use a leader's switch to hide them from the website. - Change the Section Heading. Click **Save Section**. Someone newly marked as a leader is added to the end of the list and shown automatically. To change who is a leader, or a leader's title, edit their role on their profile under **Members**. ### **FAQ** Click **Add Question**, type the question (up to 200 characters), and write the answer. Drag questions to reorder them, or use the trash icon to delete one. Click **Save Section**. ### **Content** A general-purpose section with a heading and rich text, using the same Default, Centered, and With Image layouts as About. Click **Save Section**. ### **Forms** Lists your public forms as tiles visitors can click to fill out. You can add a heading and an optional description, drag forms into order, and use a form's switch to hide it from this section. Click **Save Section**. A form appears here when its audience is set to **Public (Website Visitors)** in the **Forms** module. Visitors don't need to log in to submit a public form. ## **Pages** **Custom Pages** are separate pages with their own addresses, which suits longer material such as rules and regulations, architectural guidelines, or a history of the community. 1. Click **New Page**. 2. Enter a **Title** and an optional **Subtitle**. 3. Write the page in the **Content** editor. 4. Click **Create Page**. New pages start **Unpublished**, so you can draft in your own time. The buttons beside each page let you edit it, publish or unpublish it, and delete it. Deleting a page can't be undone. Published pages are added to your site's header and footer automatically, in alphabetical order by title. When you edit a page, the **Regenerate slug** switch updates the page's web address to match a new title. Links to the old address keep working either way, so turn it on whenever you want the address to read cleanly. ## **Insights** ### **Public Forms** Lists every active form with the Public (Website Visitors) audience, each with its direct link. Click the copy icon to copy a link to share, or the pencil to edit the form. Which forms are public is decided in the Forms module, not here. ### **Website Views** Four counts, **Today**, **Last 7 Days**, **Last 30 Days**, and **All Time**, with a bar chart of the last 30 days below them. Hover over a bar to see that day's count. A view is counted each time someone opens your site, not for every page they click to once they're there. Visits through the preview link count too, so expect some views from your own board while you build. ## **Things to know** - If a card has a Save button, click it before you move on. Only layout, navigation, and image changes save on their own. - Turning a section off keeps everything you wrote. Removing an added section deletes it. - Preview Mode is the safe way to work. Build the whole site there, share the preview link with your board, and switch to Published once everyone agrees. - Your public website is separate from the resident app. Anything on it is visible to the world, so keep resident directories, documents, and anything else private in the app instead. - Every page of your site has a **Member Login** button that takes residents to the Communitrak app. If you have questions or need help, chat with Communitrak Support from any page using the messenger icon in the bottom-right corner.