Taking a site down

One question, then it is gone

Deleting a site asks you once. The menu on the card offers Delete this site, then replaces itself with a question — Delete this site for good? It cannot be brought back — and two buttons. Press the one that agrees and the site is removed there and then. There is no undo, no bin and no holding period. We cannot bring it back for you either, because there is nothing kept to bring back.

That single question is the whole safety net, so it is worth reading rather than clicking past. The control lives on the dashboard, on the card for that site. There is nothing in the editor that deletes the site you have open.

1. Go to the dashboard, where your sites are listed.
2. Press the ··· button on the card for the site you want gone.
3. Choose Delete this site.
4. Read the question. If you still mean it, press Yes, delete it.

Note. The question is the same question every time. A site you started an hour ago and a site that has been collecting leads for a year are asked about in identical words, and nothing counts up what you are about to lose. That is on us rather than on you — until it changes, the counting is yours to do.

What the site takes with it

Everything held under that site goes at the same moment. Most of the list is obvious once it is written down, and two of the entries are the ones people do not think of until afterwards.

• The pages, and the code behind them.
• Every saved version. The history you would revert through goes with the site, so there is no earlier draft left anywhere.
• Every lead that site collected — the names, addresses and phone numbers that came in through its form.
• Its visit history, and the charts drawn from it.
• Any products and prices attached to that site.
• The record of each build turn on it, including what you typed to ask for the change.
• Its search settings, its page scores and the history of every automatic search update made to it.
• Anything the builder had written down about the project while it worked.

Tip. The leads are the ones people regret. They are not archived, moved or held anywhere else, and they are not attached to your account — they belong to the site. If any of them still matter, take what you need out of them before you press it.

What stays on your account

Deleting a site is narrower than it sounds. It removes one site and the things collected under that site. It does not touch the account around it.

• Pictures in the image studio. They are held against your account rather than against a site, so the gallery is unchanged and anything you paid to have drawn is still in it.
• Any agent you have made, with its brief and its training. An agent belongs to the account rather than to a site, so deleting a site an agent built leaves the agent exactly as it was.
• Credits already spent. Nothing is refunded and nothing returns to your balance — the work was done, and deleting the result does not undo the doing.
• The record of any sales taken through that site. It stays on your account with the site detached from it, because it is an accounting record rather than part of the website.
• Your other sites, your plan, and your history of what was spent on what.

Note. Deleting a site does not hand back a free first build. That is counted once for the account and it stays counted, whether or not the site it was spent on still exists.

The live address stops working immediately

A site has a public address from the moment it has anything in it, and that address belongs to that site. Delete the site and the address goes dark at once. Anybody who opens the link afterwards — a client, a customer, somebody following something you sent months ago — sees a short page saying the link is not valid and that the site may have been deleted. They see it whether they got the link from you yesterday or two years ago.

There is no gentler version available. Nothing in the product takes a site offline while keeping it, and nothing changes one site's address on its own. The address is there for as long as the site is, and the only way to stop it is the delete, which is permanent. If what you actually want is for a site to stop being findable for a while, this product cannot do it.

Tip. Check where the address has been put before you confirm — a directory entry, a social profile, an email signature, a QR code on a leaflet. Every one of those points at a page that says the link is not valid the second you press the button.

Copies you have already taken are not ours to remove

The pages of a site that has left here carry on exactly as they were. If you downloaded the zip, pushed to a repository or deployed to your own hosting account, those copies sit in your accounts and on your machines. Deleting the project here does not reach into them. It should not, either: they are not ours to delete, and a button on our site that quietly emptied somebody else's hosting account would be the wrong thing to build.

That includes a site on a domain you own. The domain points at the copy you host, so it carries on serving that copy long after the original here has gone. Taking those down is done where they live.

One part of an exported copy does still depend on the project here, and it is the part that matters most. The contact form and the visitor counter in the code we hand you both send back to us, against the project they were built in. Delete that project and there is nothing left for them to send to. The form goes on telling each visitor their message has been sent, and the message is thrown away as it arrives. Nothing is recorded at either end, so there is nothing to go back for.

• A downloaded zip: delete the folder.
• A repository: delete it, or make it private, in the account it sits in.
• A deploy on your own hosting: remove the project in that hosting account.
• A copy handed to a client: the pages are theirs now. Ask them.

Note. So a site you have handed over is the one case where deleting the project here does break something on the copy somebody else is running. If a client is still getting leads through that form, either leave the project alone or get the form's destination changed to something of theirs first. The page on the live site behaving differently sets out how.

Worth doing first

None of this takes long, and all of it is impossible afterwards.

1. Download the site as a zip if there is any chance you will want it again. Once the site is deleted, that folder is the only copy in existence.
2. Take what you need out of the leads. They go with the site.
3. Change anything that points at the address, or accept that it will start failing.
4. If anybody is running an exported copy of this site, get its contact form pointed somewhere of their own first. Otherwise deleting the project here is what stops that form working.
5. If somebody else is relying on the site being up, tell them before rather than after.

This is not the same as closing your account

Two different controls doing two very different amounts of damage. Deleting a site removes one site. Closing the account removes everything on it, and it is deliberately harder to do by accident: it asks you to type a word rather than press a second button, because a second press in the same place a moment later is exactly the shape of an accident.

Closing the account sits in settings, on the danger zone tab, and again at the foot of the credits screen. It takes every site with all their versions, every agent, every picture in the studio and the files behind them, every lead and visit, your products, your payment connection and your email address.

Two things survive it, and the screen names both before you confirm. The first is the accounting — the credit ledger, and the record of any sales your sites took. That is the record of what was spent and what was taken, not the balance itself, which goes with the account. Those records have a retention period set by law rather than by us, so they are moved onto a blank id with no name, no email and no sign-in attached to it.

The second is your sign-in, and the name and picture on it. That front door is shared with another product, so closing it here would close something you never asked us to close. It is why your own name can still be sitting in the corner of the screen a moment after everything you built has gone.

Note. Closing the account cancels any subscription and detaches a saved card. It does not clear an unpaid pay-as-you-go bill — money already owed is still owed — and we will not hold the deletion up over one. Nothing signs you out afterwards, so the screen you are on stays put and tells you what happened.

Common questions

Can you get a deleted site back for me?

No. Nothing is hidden, flagged or held for a period — the record is removed — so there is nothing inside the product to restore from. The zip you took before deleting is the only copy there is.

Does deleting a site refund the credits it cost?

No. Credits pay for work at the moment it is done, and that work was done. Deleting the result changes nothing about the balance.

Can I take the address offline for a few weeks and put it back?

No. There is no switch for that. A site is reachable for as long as it exists, and the only way to stop it is the permanent one.

Do the leads move somewhere if I delete the site?

No. They belong to the site they arrived through and they go with it. Nothing copies them onto your account first.

I deleted a site that a client is hosting themselves. Have I broken theirs?

The pages are fine — that copy is in their account and we cannot reach it. The contact form is not. It was built to send back to the project you deleted, so messages sent through it now go nowhere and the visitor is still shown a thank-you. Assume none have arrived since the day you deleted it, and get the form's destination changed.

Does deleting a site delete an agent that worked on it?

No. An agent belongs to your account rather than to a site. Delete every site it built and the agent, its brief and its training are all still there.