Create your account
Go to Start your site and fill in four things:
- Name: the name readers know you by. It becomes your site’s title, which you can change later.
- Email address: where your sign-in, your contact-form messages and your exports go. Use one you keep.
- Your site address: the part before .draftmargin.com, such as jane-doe. It can be 3 to 30 lowercase letters, numbers and single hyphens, and you are told at once if it is taken. You can change it later in your Profile, and the old address keeps leading to the new one.
- Password, twice.
Then press Create account. We email you a link to confirm your address; press it, and you are in. If the email has not arrived after a few minutes, look in your spam folder, or press Resend verification email.
The four setup steps
The first time you sign in, four short steps set your site up. Each one can be skipped, and if you leave halfway you carry on where you stopped next time.
- Who are you? Your name as it appears on your covers, and one line about what you write, such as “Dark fantasy with a romantic heart”. You can also list your site on Hosted by Draft Margin, off unless you tick it.
- Add your first book. Its title, cover, blurb, release date, and one shop that sells it. The book goes live as soon as you add it; everything else about it can wait.
- Choose your look. Pick a theme, and say what you write: romance, thriller, fantasy or literary. That picks a colour and fonts to suit, and the preview beside it changes as you choose.
- Your site is live. Your address, ready to copy, with buttons to view your site, share it on Bluesky, or go to your dashboard.
Everything you set here can be changed later: your name and line in your profile, the book under Books, and the look under Appearance.
Your dashboard
After setup, signing in takes you to your dashboard. The New post button at the top opens a blank blog post. Below it:
- Finish setting up: a checklist of seven things that make a site feel complete, from a photo of yourself to your first blog post. Each ticks itself when it is done, and the list disappears once everything is.
- Catalogue: how many books, chapters and series you have, published, scheduled and draft, and the words in all your chapters. Press one to open its list.
- Blog: how many posts are out, scheduled and in draft, and how long ago the last one went out.
- Visits: how many pages your readers opened this month and last month. See visits and search engines.
- Coming up: chapters about to unlock and posts about to go out, soonest first.
Finding your way round
The menu down the side (behind the menu button on a phone) is grouped by what you are doing:
- Dashboard, Appearance and Help, at the top.
- Catalogue: Series, Books and Chapters.
- Writing: blog Posts, and their Tags.
- Site: your Members, and your standing Pages such as About.
Your Profile (your name, photo, bio, newsletter and links) is in the menu under your site’s name, at the top of the side menu. Every page has a Help button at the top that opens the page of this guide about it.
Your account
Your account is separate from your site. Open the menu under your initials, at the top right, and choose Account settings to:
- change your name or the email address you sign in with;
- change your password, under Security;
- turn on two-factor authentication, under Security: press Enable 2FA, scan the code with an authenticator app, and keep the recovery codes somewhere safe, since they are the way back in if you lose your phone;
- delete your account, which deletes your site with it. See exporting or deleting your site first.
Forgotten your password? Press Forgot your password? on the sign-in page, and we email you a link to set a new one.
What next
Most authors add the rest of their books and series next, then link their mailing list. If you want to publish a book chapter by chapter, or keep chapters for readers who join, chapters explains how.
Still stuck, or found something wrong on this page? Contact support.