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Publishing & domains

Publishing

Press Publish in the editor to put your draft live. Publishing renders the whole site and serves it from Vashana's global edge network — changes are visible within seconds.

Every creation gets a free address on vashana.com, shown under Open site in the editor and View on the dashboard. Drafts are private; only published content is reachable.

Publish again whenever you've made changes you want live. Publishing never interrupts your visitors.

Publishing does more than copy pages across. Each time you publish, Vashana also:

  • takes a backup of the version that was live (see Backups & restore),
  • refreshes product data from your shop provider,
  • regenerates sitemap.xml and page metadata (see Getting found on Google),
  • rebuilds the AI chatbot's knowledge of your content,
  • syncs your bookable items, prices and availability rules.

That is why the answer to "I changed X and nothing happened" is almost always publish.

Custom domains

Your site can live on your own domain instead of the free vashana.com address. On the dashboard, open Custom Domain on the creation's card. It has two tabs:

  • Purchase — search for a domain and buy it right there. Registration, DNS and the security certificate are all handled for you, and the domain is registered in your name — you are the owner, not Vashana.
  • Use Own Domain — enter a domain you already own. You'll be shown two DNS records to add at your registrar: a CNAME that routes traffic to your site, and a TXT record that proves the domain is yours. Both are required — the domain stays pending until each one is visible.

How long activation takes

The card shows the status while the domain activates: registering it, configuring DNS, then issuing the security certificate that lets browsers load it over https.

How long that takes depends on which route you took:

  • A domain you already own usually activates within minutes of your DNS records becoming visible.
  • A domain you just bought has to be published by the registry that runs its ending (.com, .co, and so on) before anything else can happen, and that part is outside anyone's control. Expect 15 minutes to a couple of hours, occasionally longer. Nothing is wrong during that wait.

Your site stays reachable on its free vashana.com address throughout, so nothing goes offline while you wait.

Your domain and its www version are certified separately, so one can start working before the other. Seeing www.yourdomain.com load while the plain version doesn't (or the reverse) is normal for a while and sorts itself out. If a domain is still not loading a day later, get in touch.

After changing your domain, publish the site again so all generated links use the new address. This matters most if you take bookings: payment and pickup links are baked in at publish time and would otherwise still point at the old address.

Most domains are bought a year at a time. A few endings — .ai is the common one — cannot be registered for less than two years, so the price you see covers the whole term. The panel says so when that applies.

Confirm your email address — don't skip this

When you buy a domain, the rules that govern every domain name require you to prove your email address actually works. Shortly after your purchase you'll get an email from our domain registrar with a link in it. Click the link — that's the whole task. It is not a signup, and there is no account to create.

You have 15 days. If the address is never confirmed, the domain is suspended: it stops working and your site will not load on it until you click the link. This is not something Vashana can do on your behalf — the confirmation has to come from the address on the registration.

If you can't find the email, check your spam folder. While the confirmation is outstanding, the Custom Domain panel keeps showing a reminder, and we'll email you if the domain does get suspended or if the registrar's email bounced and never reached you.

Renewing

Domains do not renew themselves. We'll email you before yours expires, and you can renew from the same Custom Domain panel. If a domain does expire, your site stops loading on that address — it stays reachable on the free vashana.com address in the meantime.

The domain stays yours

Because the domain is registered in your name, you can take it elsewhere whenever you like. Open the domain in the Custom Domain panel to see its transfer code (sometimes called an EPP or auth code) — that's what another provider asks for. Removing a domain from a creation only disconnects it from the site; it does not give up the registration.

Analytics

Published sites collect visitor statistics automatically — no setup, no third-party scripts, no cookies. Open Analytics on the creation's card, which becomes available once the site has been published. See Analytics & cookie banner.