Your site on FlowChord

Your site is a site of your own at an address like yourname.flowchord.studio. It shows your brand, the videos and chord sheets you choose to publish, and a button for new students to sign up to FlowChord. Anyone can open it, free and without an account, on a phone or a computer. A site comes with the Creator plan.

Your home has a Your site section of its own: its state and address beside the heading, and what it is waiting for. Once it is up, its visits, viewers and sign-ups are there too, with the period and Site analytics in the heading’s row, and in Site analytics.

Before you start

• Have the Creator plan. Without it, Site shows what a site is and the plan that gives one.
• Give your brand a name in Brand. Your site shows your brand’s name, logo, About text and channels from there: you don’t type them again.
• Have a video to publish on it: a site goes up with at least one video.

Steps

Choose your address

1. Press Site in the bar at the top of any page, or Set up site on your home. (Presets is then in your account menu.)
2. Under Address, type the address you want. It is written as you type it: lower-case, no accents, spaces turned into hyphens. It has 3 to 30 characters.
3. When the line under the field says Available, press Take address.

Some addresses are kept for FlowChord, and an address someone else has, or has just left, can’t be taken.

Choose a template and a banner

Your site has three looks. Under Template, pick one: Palco (Default), every video at once in a grid; Setlist, your pinned or newest video playing large with the others as a numbered list beside it; or Reel, a feed of upright videos with your name around it. They show the same things: only the look changes, and you can change it any time. Every template has a light and a dark version. Visitors who chose a theme in FlowChord’s preferences see that one, on your site and in its practice player; everyone else sees the one their phone or computer is set to.

Your name can have a look of its own. Next to Name font, pick a font: The template’s own keeps the template’s, or choose one of the fonts FlowChord also offers for the words on your videos, each shown in itself. The font is used wherever your site shows your name: at the top of every page, in the big name of each template and in the menu.

Every template opens on your videos. Under your name, a few words and your buttons, the next concert shows as one line, and a menu leads to Videos, Sheets, Courses and Shows, each at its own address. A part with nothing published is left out of the menu. As visitors scroll, the menu stays at the top, and on a phone your buttons stay at the bottom of the screen. On a computer, a video plays without sound in its picture while the mouse is over it, and stops when the mouse leaves; nothing plays on its own, and nothing plays when the visitor’s device asks for less motion or to save data. Under your name, your site counts what you have published (videos, chord sheets, courses); each video says how many times it was watched.

Templates show a song’s first chords as the video draws them, and the colours of your brand’s palette are on its buttons, links and menus, shown a little darker or lighter where that keeps them easy to read.

Under Banner, choose whether a picture of your own goes at the top:

• The latest video’s picture or No banner: no picture at the top. Your site opens on your videos.
• A picture of yours: press Choose a picture and pick a photo. FlowChord keeps the whole photo, made smaller on your device. To choose which part shows, drag the photo in the preview on the right, as in a photo editor: it moves under the pointer and stops at its edges. Zoom with Zoom in and Zoom out, or hold ⌥ (Alt) and scroll, and Centre puts it back in the middle. From the keyboard, the arrow keys move it, + and − zoom and 0 centres it. Where you leave it is saved on its own and used by every template, on a computer and on a phone; a new photo starts in the middle again. Palco shows it at the top of the page, Setlist as a strip above your name and Reel as the first card of the feed. No words are written on the photo.

Say what your site says

Under What your site says, add a Headline and A few words of your own. They are kept when you leave the field. Choose the words of the Sign-up button. Show my About text shows the About text of your brand under your name.

Write in any language you like. Visitors read your site in English, Portuguese or Spanish: in theirs, or the one they pick on the site. Your headline, intro, About text and descriptions are translated for them automatically when you change them, and the site’s menus and labels are in their language too. Song titles and chord sheets stay as they are: they are the song’s.

Publish videos

When you export a video, it goes on your site too: Publish on my site too is ticked each time the dialog opens. Untick it to only download the files. To publish without downloading anything:

1. From Site, press Add video. Tick the projects to publish, or Select all, and press Publish.
2. You publish a project, not one cut: every cut of each project is made as an export makes it, one project after another, and goes on your site with a picture of its opening. Each project shows at the top of Videos at once, with where it stands and how far: Waiting its turn, then made and sent to your site. The videos are made on your device, so you can go to any other page of FlowChord meanwhile, as long as this tab stays open, and the bar at the top says how far they are. If the tab closes before they are done, they pick up where the list left off the next time you open FlowChord. A project that didn’t go on your site says so, with Try again.
3. On your site, a project’s cuts are one video, and visitors choose the shape they want to watch. To publish only some cuts, open the project in the editor, open its menu, press Publish on my site, pick the cuts and press Publish. Whether you export or publish from the editor, the dialog shows the video being made and then sent to your site, and closes once it is there: Project published.

What you say in the video, such as a technique you explain, gets captions in English, Portuguese and Spanish, which students turn on in the player. The song itself is never captioned or translated. The video’s line in Videos says captions ready once they are made.

Your site changes only when you say so. When you change a published cut (a chord, a line, its look, its length), the editor’s bar says Site out of date: the site keeps the video you published. Press it to make the video again and put it on your site in place of the old one; the bar says Updating your site… until it is there. So a change made by accident never reaches your students.

Pin videos

Pinned videos come first on your site, the one you pinned last at the top, and it is the one your site shows large (Setlist’s player, the first reel in Reel). You can pin up to 3 videos.

1. In Videos, find the video and press Pin. Its line says Pinned, and on your site it moves to the front with a pin on its picture.
2. To let it go back to its place, press Unpin.

A project is pinned whole: all its cuts go first together. Taking a video off your site unpins it. To pin another once you have pinned 3, unpin one first.

Publish chord sheets

A chord sheet is published apart from its video and its download, so you can publish one, the other or both.

1. From Site, press Add chord sheet. Tick the projects, or Select all, and press Publish. Each project’s chord sheet goes on your site as it stands.
2. Or open the chord sheet of a project (the chord sheet PDF) and press Publish on site. Nothing downloads; Download stays for the PDF.

On your site, the chord sheet is a page of its own. It opens with the song’s name, then Composition (the Composers from the song’s details), Reference performance (the Artist) and the key, with the capo beside it; the time signature, tempo, album and year follow in a smaller line. A line the project doesn’t know is left out. Then come the chord shapes and the lyrics with their chords: on a narrow phone the lyrics wrap only between words, and every chord stays over its syllable. To correct the credits, change them in the song’s details and publish the chord sheet again; the page changes only then.

Add your courses

A course you sell elsewhere shows in Courses on your site, as a card that opens its page in a new tab.

1. In Courses, press Add course.
2. Paste the course’s address and press Read page. FlowChord reads its name, description and picture from its page. If the page can’t be read, check the address, or press Fill in by hand and write them yourself.
3. Change the name or the description if you like, and press Add course.

When the page has no picture, the card shows the platform’s name instead.

Add your concerts

Your concerts show in Shows on your site, the next one first, and the next one also shows under your name.

1. In Concerts, press Add concert.
2. Write What it is, the Day and the Time. Local time at the venue starts as your device’s time zone: change it when you play somewhere else, so visitors read the time on the venue’s clock.
3. Add the Venue, City and Country, and the Tickets page if tickets are sold online. Visitors open it in a new tab.
4. Check the row under On your site: it is the concert as visitors will see it. Press Add concert.

A concert leaves your site the day after it plays. Change changes one.

Preview and publish your site

1. Look at your site beside the cards: it changes as you type. Computer and Phone show it on each screen, Light and Dark in each theme. Open in a new tab opens it in a tab that only you can open, for an hour.
2. Press Publish. The dialog shows your address, what goes public (your brand, banner, channels and what is on the site now) and what stays private: your business name, e-mail and phone are never on your site. Press Publish site.
3. Press Copy address to share your address.

Options

• Take something off your site: in Videos, Chord sheets or Courses, press Take off. It stays in the list, and Put back publishes it again. Remove takes it off for good. Your project stays as it is either way.
• Change your address: press Change. Links to your old address keep working for 90 days. A published site changes its address once in 30 days at most.
• Delete a project: its videos and chord sheets leave your site with it. The delete asks first and says so.
• Unpublish your site: press Unpublish. The address stops answering at once and your videos’ public links stop working. Everything stays ready to publish again.

Tips

• Anyone with a FlowChord account can follow you with Follow, beside your sign-up button, and like your videos with the heart under each one. How many follow you and how many liked each video show on your site, for everyone: each video’s likes sit beside its views on its picture, from its first like. A video’s formats share one count. Your own site offers neither to you.
• Your site’s numbers, what each counts and the insights about them are in Your site’s analytics. A video counts as watched once someone plays at least 3 seconds of it: opening its page is not a view. A press on the sign-up button is not an account: only sign-ups are.
• Every video on your site shows its views to visitors, from its first one: the people who played at least 3 seconds of any of its cuts, each once, however often they watch it. Your own plays are never counted, and the number on your site catches up within a few minutes. Videos shows each video’s views too.
• Visits are measured by FlowChord with no cookie and nothing that says who visited. You see totals only, each as its number, however small.
• Once your site has 4 videos and chord sheets, visitors can search it, by song, artist, chord or the words of a chord sheet.
• If you are in FlowChord’s creator program, the sign-up button carries your creator link, so new students who sign up count for it too.
• Students who don’t know you yet can find you in FlowChord’s Play: turn on Appear in the showcase on Build, and each video’s In Play button sets its level and where its preview starts — read Be found by students in FlowChord’s showcase.
• Your site holds up to 50 videos and chord sheets. A published video uses your storage like any file.

Common problems

The address I want is taken

Someone has it, or has just left it. Try another: add your city, your instrument or a word of your own.

Publish is greyed out

Your site needs an address, your brand’s name and at least one video on it. The meter beside Publish shows how ready your site is: point at it to see what is missing.

My site is offline

Your Creator plan ended. Your site, its videos and its chord sheets are kept, and the site is back as it was when the plan starts again.

A video says Upload didn't finish

Its file started on its way to your site and never arrived: the page was closed or the connection dropped while it was uploading. Publish the cut again from the editor and the new file takes its place, or press Remove. While a video says Uploading, keep the editor open until it is on your site.