Opening your profile
Your profile is in the menu under your site’s name, at the top of the side menu: choose Profile. Change what you like and press Save changes. Every field can stay empty; the theme simply leaves out what is not there.
The site
- Site title: shown at the top of every page and in search results. It starts as the name you signed up with.
- Site address: the part before .draftmargin.com, with the same rules as when you signed up. Change it and your whole site moves to the new address, and so does this panel. The old address keeps sending readers, shared links and search engines to the same page on the new one, and nobody else can take it while it does. Your last 5 addresses are kept this way, and you can go back to any of them. Members are signed out by the move, and sign in again on the new address.
- Language you write in: phones hyphenate your chapters by it, and screen readers pronounce them by it, so set it to the language of your books.
- List my site on Hosted by Draft Margin is off to begin with. Turn it on and, once a book of yours is published, Hosted by Draft Margin shows your name, tagline and newest cover, linking to your site, for readers browsing it to find you. Turn it off and you leave the list.
About you
- Name on the site: your pen name, if you write under one. Leave it empty to use the site title.
- Tagline: one line on what you write, up to 160 characters. It appears on your home page, and search engines and social networks show it when a page has no description of its own.
- Photo: a bright, recent photo of you, up to 4 MB.
- Bio: a few paragraphs about you, with bold, italic and links.
Social links
Press Add a link, choose the Platform and paste the URL: Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, X (Twitter), Bluesky, Threads, Goodreads, your Amazon author page, or another website. Drag them into the order you want. Link the two or three where you actually talk to readers.
The links page
Instagram and TikTok allow one link in your bio. Your site’s links page, at your address followed by /links, is made to be that link: it lists your newest book, your newsletter, your contact page and your social links, then the links you add here.
- Show the links page is on to begin with. Turn it off and the page is gone.
- Your own links: up to 20, each with a Label (such as “A free short story”) and a URL.
Weekly digest
Mail me a weekly digest is on to begin with: a short email on Monday mornings saying how your week went. See visits and the weekly digest.
The newsletter signup
The Newsletter section puts a signup block on your home page, book pages, posts and links page, headed “Get the newsletter”. Your list stays with your own newsletter service: the platform never sees it, and never emails your readers on your behalf. Choose one of three:
- No newsletter block: nothing is shown. This is where every site starts.
- A button to my signup page: paste the address of your service’s signup page into Signup page, and readers get a Sign up button that goes there.
- A signup form, from my newsletter service’s embed code: paste the embed code from MailerLite, Mailchimp, Kit, beehiiv or Buttondown into Embed code, and readers sign up without leaving your site.
Why sign up is the line above the button or form, up to 160 characters, such as “New books first, and a free short story when you join.” Say what readers get; if you leave it empty, the block says “New books first, straight to your inbox.”
How the embed code is used
Only the form’s address and the names of its fields are kept from the code you paste. None of it runs on your site; your theme draws the form in its own style. That is why only those five services are accepted, and why the form must send signups to one of them. If the code is refused, the message says why: there is no form in it, the form has no email field, or it sends signups somewhere else. Copy the code again from your service’s “embed form” or “HTML form” option and try once more.
If you would rather not paste code, the signup-page button works with any service.
The contact form
Every site has a contact page, linked as Contact in your site’s menu and from the links page. There is nothing to set up, and it cannot be turned off.
- Readers fill in Your name, Your email and a Message, and press Send.
- The message is emailed to the address you sign in with, with the subject “Message from their name, via your site”. Press reply and your answer goes straight to the reader.
Each message is kept under Messages too, in the side menu, newest first:
- The menu shows how many you have not opened yet, and the bell at the top of the page rings for each new one.
- Open a message to read it, then press Reply to answer it from your own email.
- Delete removes a message for good, and deleting your site removes them all. Messages keeps your last 1,000; an older one leaves it, though not your email.
Spam is kept out by a hidden trap field that only robots fill in, a human check, and a limit of 5 messages an hour from one connection.
Still stuck, or found something wrong on this page? Contact support.