Site Builder from Thinkific lets you quickly build a beautiful, customized website including homepage, course landing pages, and additional pages containing any content you’d like.
As a course creator, Site Builder allows you to create on-brand sites (including custom pages) with ease, and without coding.
Site Builder also allows you to create compelling bundle landing pages, and gives you the ability to do things such as adding additional prices for bundles, and implement social sign on for your students (from Facebook for instance!) among other cool things. And it looks so good! This overview includes everything you need to launch your site with Site Builder. Read on for more!
In this article:
Build Your Product Landing Page
Choosing a Theme
The first thing you want to do is choose your site’s theme. Choosing a theme with Site Builder is simple. Each theme is fully mobile responsive and has been created and refined to look great with many different types of content — it’s like having your own designer on staff! This guide will give you a full breakdown of the available themes and styles, plus help you install your chosen theme.
Thinkific’s Site Builder offers three beautiful and responsive themes; Vision, Empire, and Vogue, each with 3-4 styles. This gives you tons of choice, and freedom to customize your pages to suit your brand. Styles are defined color and font selections within a theme. While changing a theme resets content, changing a style doesn't — it simply changes the mood of your theme.
Check out some example landing pages we’ve created with our themes and styles at the link on our Sample Theme site. You can use the toggle at the bottom to switch between different themes and styles.
Note on Changing Themes
We generally recommend that you choose your theme and stick with it, as content can be tricky to transfer between themes. When changing a theme, you will have the option of copying your settings and content from your existing theme; however, it is always a good idea to double-check that things look the way you expect after changing themes. In addition, any customizations you may have made to the theme code will not transfer over.
Unlike changing themes, changing the style of your site does not require copying (or clearing) content.
Learn more about choosing a theme here: Explore Themes
Build your Home Page
A home page is the main page a visitor navigating to a website from a web search engine will see. It can also serve as a landing page to attract visitors and convey information to your audience. Your site URL will take users to your homepage.
A striking homepage is a great way to draw potential students to your site. It’s acts as a digital storefront for your site visitors and should provide information and build trust with your audience. At the very least it introduces who you are and what your online courses are about.
With our new Site Builder, customizing your home page is easier and better than ever, allowing you to build a beautiful homepage that looks just the way you want it. This article shows you how with Site Builder: Building your Home Page.
Not sure what to include on your homepage? We recommend that you check out our blog for some great articles that include helpful hints and ideas on what to include. These articles meant for course landing pages also have suggestions that can also apply to your home page’s design.
Build Your Product Landing page
Every product (course, community or bundle) that you sell through Thinkific will have its own sales landing page. This is your opportunity to showcase your product and leave leads in no doubt as to why they should hit that sign up button!
You can use the Thinkific Site Builder to create your landing pages; customizing colours, adding sections, and crafting copy that will convert.
Check out:
Build Your Course Landing Page
Build Your Bundle Landing Page
Build Your Community Landing Page
Want to learn some design tips for high converting landing pages? Head over to our blog for some helpful guides and articles on landing pages!
Custom Pages
Need an FAQ or an About Me page? Want to make an FAQ for those enrolled in a specific course or bundle? Or pages available to those who log in only? You can with Custom Pages and with Site Builder you can take something functional and make it beautiful too.
You can really customize these pages to further personalize your site, provide information and build trust with your audience. Here’s how with Site Builder: Custom Pages
Frequently Asked Questions
When I install a Site Builder theme, will this replace my current, live theme immediately?
Nope! When you install a Site Builder theme, the theme will be available as an inactive theme in your theme library so you can design your site pages before publishing it for your audience to see.
I just accidentally published my Site Builder theme and now all my landing pages are blank! Help!
No worries! You can revert back to your pre-Site Builder theme by scrolling down to your inactive themes, then selecting Publish on your previously published theme. Publishing a Site Builder theme does not wipe out your pre-existing content, that content simply stays within the your pre-existing theme.
Can I add custom CSS and HTML to my site?
Editing your theme code is available for advanced users that are looking to customize their sites even further and who have access to a developer or designer to handle those changes. Our team is unable to support troubleshooting code edits or code changes for your Site Builder site. Learn more about custom themes here.
More About Site Builder