Getting started

Your first hour

You've installed Timber and you're looking at the dashboard. Here's a sensible order for the first hour. The dashboard's launch checklist tracks the same steps.

1. Name it (5 minutes)#

Go to Design → Branding.

• Set the site name and tagline.
• Upload a logo (SVG or transparent PNG, about 40 px tall). With no logo, themes show your site title as text.
• Add a favicon (square PNG or SVG, 512×512 is ideal).
• Pick your brand colours. Until you do, each theme keeps its own look; once set, every theme follows them.
• Fill in contact details and social profiles. Empty ones are hidden.

2. Make the homepage yours (15 minutes)#

Open the Playground and edit your live version (v0). Every headline, button, image and list on the homepage is a field. Reorder sections by dragging, hide the ones you don't need, and watch the live preview at desktop, tablet and phone sizes.

3. Pages and posts (15 minutes)#

• Edit or delete the sample pages and posts.
• Add your own under Pages and Posts. The Simple editor is a clean rich-text editor; switch to HTML, Coder or Builder when you want more control. See Pages & posts.
• Set a page as the homepage if you'd rather use a page than a theme's homepage design.

4. Menus (5 minutes)#

Menus lets you add pages, posts, forms and custom links, nest them (dropdowns and mega menus), and decide who sees each item. Edit the Header, Footer and Legal menus. See Menus & Blocks.

5. SEO and sharing (10 minutes)#

In SEO & Metrics:

• Set your Site URL so canonical links and the sitemap are right.
• Upload a social share image (PNG or JPG; 1200×630 is ideal).
• Write a default description.

Each page and post has its own SEO title and description with a Google-style preview. See SEO & sitemaps.

6. Email (5 minutes)#

Open Emails, choose how to send (PHP mail, SMTP, Gmail or Brevo), set a from address and press Send a test. Until email is set up, form messages still land in the Forms → Submissions inbox. See Email.

7. Before you go live#

• Switch Allow search engines back on in SEO if you turned it off.
• Visit /privacy-policy and /privacy/data-request, tune the cookie banner in Privacy, and have a lawyer check the policy text.
• Turn on Maintenance → Coming soon if you want a holding page while you finish.
• Take a backup: Admin Tools → Data → Export all. See Backups & data.