Managing An External Website

When agency features are enabled you will find a tab on the all sites view labeled "External". This is where you can add websites that you've built with another platform or method outside of WebStarts. (For example: You may have created a website using Wordpress and used a host outside of WebStarts.). This allows you to use one app to manage your web design clients, billing, domain names, and mailboxes from a single app.

Note - Although you can manage web design clients, billing, domains, and mailboxes using the WebStarts agency features you will not be able to edit the content of websites built on other platforms through WebStarts.

To add an External website to your WebStarts account you must have Agency Features enabled. You can enable Agency Features by logging into your account, clicking the drop down menu in the top right, select Settings, and then click the button to Activate Agency Features.

Once Agency Features are enabled follow these steps to add an external website for management in your WebStarts account.

1. Click on the tab labeled "External" on the all sites view.

2. Click the panel labeled "Add External Site" and enter the URL for the site you want to add. Note adding the URL does not give WebStarts control over the domain name. To manage your domain name and mailboxes you must first add the domain name to your WebStarts account and update the DNS to ns1.webstarts.com and ns2.webstarts.com.

3. Once your site is added a thumbnail of the site will be displayed under the external sites tab. 

4. With the site added you can add a domain name for the website. Once the domain name is setup in WebStarts you'll be able to add mailboxes using that domain name.

5. You can use the blog app to create blog posts which you can manually link to from your external site or they'll automatically be associated with your domain name provided it's being managed by WebStarts.

6. To associated the website with a client click on the drop down in the top right and select the Clients tab.

7. Under the Clients tab click Add Client and enter their first name, last name, and email address. A password will be generated automatically that will allow your client to manage their own site if you wish to provide it to them.

8. Once a Client has been added you can create invoices and send them to the client. The invoice can contain whatever products you want to bill your client for. (For example: you can bill your client for monthly hosting, and/or one time service.)

Working with domain names with an external website

Just like with a website built on WebStarts you can add a domain name or connect a domain name to a site hosted externally. Lets say for example you built a site using HTML and it's hosted on HostGator. You can add or connect a domain name to the HostGator directory where you site lives. This works using domain forwarding. In another example perhaps you created a website using the Wix website builder. You can add or connect a domain to it through WebStarts as well.

Working with mailboxes with an external website

Once you've added or connected a domain name to an externally hosted website you'll be able to create mailboxes for the domain name you either added or connected. Those domains will appear under the mailbox tab.

Working with the blog app with an external website

The WebStarts blog app generates a unique URL which you can link to from your externally hosted website or in the case WebStarts is managing your domain resolve directly on your domain. (Example: webstartsmanageddomain.com/blog).

Working with the Files and Folders app with an external website

The Files and Folders app allows you to upload content to WebStarts and organize it into files and folders. You can then link directly to this content from your externally hosted website or you can simply use it to organize and store whatever files you want.

Billing your Clients with an externally hosted website

Once you've added a website to WebStarts you can send your Clients invoices and collect payment using WebStarts. Click on the drop down menu, select Clients, assign the external site to a Client, create products if necessary, and send them an invoice. They can click on the link to pay the invoice. Products can be both one-off charges as well as recurring so it's a great solution to bill clients both for design work as well as monthly hosting fees.