Customize and publish your website

Why can you see a recipe that your readers cannot? A recipe and its publication have separate publishing controls. You can publish a recipe while keeping the whole publication private.

Make your first recipe public

1. Open the recipe, check the ingredients and instructions, and save your draft.
2. Choose Preview recipe to see it on your website. Save further edits before previewing again.
3. Choose Publish and review the publishing dialog, including the email announcement choice. Use public visibility and free access for a recipe you want every visitor to read.
4. Return to the dashboard. If you see Publish website, choose it when you are ready.
5. If you see Subscribe to go public, open your Crumb plan and complete checkout. When payment is confirmed, choose Make publication public. Paying does not launch it automatically.
6. Open the public recipe link in a signed-out browser to check what a reader sees.

Creating, editing, and previewing is free. New publications subscribe for $15 USD/month when they go public. Existing publications keep their publishing terms. You can cancel checkout and keep working on your saved drafts. See pricing.

What does each status mean?

• Draft recipe: saved for you to work on and preview; not a published recipe for readers.
• Published recipe: ready for readers, subject to its visibility, access setting, and the publication being public.
• Private publication: your website is not publicly accessible, even if it contains published recipes.
• Public publication: readers can visit. Private recipes and drafts remain hidden; paid recipes still require the appropriate access.

If public access is paused because your Crumb subscription ended, check Crumb plan to restore access. Your content and dashboard remain available. If you set a website password, readers also need that password.

Choose View website on the dashboard to open your public publication, then copy the homepage or recipe address. A URL containing a preview token is not a public sharing link. Share your first recipe after checking it.

What you can customize

In Website settings, you can manage:

• your publication name and crumb.so address;
• profile name, image, biography, and full About text;
• homepage headline and supporting copy;
• signup message;
• logo, favicon, cover image, and social sharing image;
• Instagram, social, and external links;
• site title and description used by search and sharing surfaces.

Use Categories to create the sections readers browse and to decide which recipes belong in each one. Recipe titles, writing, photos, videos, ingredients, and instructions are edited from Recipes.

Choose your Crumb address

Every publication includes an address such as your-name.crumb.so. You can change the your-name part in Website settings, subject to availability.

Changing an address after you have shared it will break old links. Pick something short, easy to spell, and close to the creator name your audience already knows.

Understand the current design controls

Crumb keeps the recipe layout optimized for reading and cooking. In the website editor, you can choose a theme, colors, typography, imagery, and supported homepage sections. Arbitrary custom code, plugins, and unrestricted navigation layouts are not available.

This also means you do not need to maintain a theme, install plugins, or update website software.

If a color stops you saving

An incomplete color value or text that is too close to its background color can block publishing design changes. Open the color warning to find the field that needs attention. You can finish the color value or reset the custom colors to the theme defaults. Your recipe content stays in place.

You can keep the current design and return to it later. Theme changes are optional before launch.

Publish when you are ready

The dashboard guides you through the launch steps above. Website access is also managed from Website settings. Your Crumb subscription is separate from charging readers for memberships or cookbooks; you do not need to start selling to publish a free recipe.

Publishing does not lock the design. You can continue editing the site and recipes afterward, and you can make the entire publication private again if you need to do larger work away from readers.

Next guideHelp readers find and return to your recipes →