What an offer on your account means
An offer is a price held for your account, usually below the list price, and it is already applied to the plans shown below it. Twenty-four accounts that had been past due for years were written off and given one of these. It stands for this account rather than for a period, so there is no clock on it, and taking it does not commit you to anything a normal subscription does not.
An outstanding balance
A balance appears when a payment failed and was not recovered. It is not automatically collected, which means it will sit there until it is cleared, and your site stays up in the meantime. Clear it by updating your card and letting the next payment go through. If the amount looks wrong, email us before paying it rather than after.
Reading your transaction history
Every charge, with its date, amount and status. A settled line is a payment that went through. A declined line is one that did not, and it is worth reading rather than ignoring, because a decline is usually an expired card or a bank refusing an unfamiliar merchant rather than anything to do with your account. A declined payment is retried before anything happens to your site.
Your billing information
The name on the card and its expiration date. Update the expiration before it passes rather than after: a card that expires takes the payment with it, and the first you hear is usually a failed-payment email. We never see or store the card number itself. It goes straight to our payment provider, which is why changing the card means entering it again rather than editing a digit.
Connecting SnippedIt
A SnippedIt connection lets a category from there be pulled in as a page on your website, and it stays connected, so what you write there appears here. Use it for writing you already maintain in SnippedIt. For a one-off page, Website then Pages is faster than setting this up.
Connecting Dropbox
Connect a Dropbox account and you can import photographs straight from a folder rather than downloading them and uploading them again. It is the right way to move a shoot across when a photographer has delivered to a shared folder, and it keeps the full-size files rather than whatever your phone decided to send. We only read the folder you point us at.
Connecting Every Single Blog
Choose which blog feeds your site. This is what makes the Website then Blog page work and what lets AutoBlog put an approved article on your own site. Your posts live in the blogging platform rather than inside a website builder, which is why the connection exists at all: it keeps the writing portable and lets one blog feed more than one site.
Connecting Mailchimp
Paste your API key and choose an audience, and newsletter signups from your website are added to it automatically. Make the key in Mailchimp under Account then Extras then API keys. If you later delete that audience inside Mailchimp, we tell you rather than quietly stopping, and you can choose another.
Connecting SoundCloud
Find your profile and confirm it is you, and your tracks become available to your website and your link.actor page. We only ever read: nothing is uploaded to your SoundCloud and nothing is changed there. If the search finds several profiles with your name, check the artwork before confirming, because connecting the wrong one puts somebody else's music on your site.
Editing and removing forwarders
Each forwarder is listed with where it delivers, and both can be changed. Changing the destination is instant and harmless. Removing one stops mail to that address immediately and anything sent afterwards bounces, so retire an address you have printed on a resume with more care than one you made last week.
Setting up an email forwarder
Pick the part before the at sign, choose which of your domains it belongs to, and mail sent there arrives in the inbox you already use. It starts working within a few minutes. The domain list fills in once a domain is connected, so if it is empty, start on the Domains page. This forwards mail to you; if you also want to reply from the new address, see the article on sending through Gmail.
Changing your password
At least seven characters, and longer beats clever: a passphrase you can remember is stronger than a short string of symbols you cannot. If you have forgotten the current one, do not use this page. Sign out and use the forgotten-password link on the sign-in screen instead. Changing it here does not sign you out anywhere else, so change it on your other devices too if you share the account.
Choosing which emails we send you
Turn off anything you do not want and it stops immediately. A few cannot be turned off, and they are the ones you would be angry to miss: a message left through your contact form, a receipt, a warning that a payment has failed or that your domain is about to expire. If our mail is not arriving at all, check your spam folder before changing anything here.
Sending us feedback
This goes to the people who build the thing, not to a queue. It is the right place for something that is broken, something that is confusing, and something you wish existed. Say what you were trying to do and what happened instead. That one sentence is worth more than a paragraph of description, because it tells us where to look.
Canceling your subscription
Canceling stops future payments. Your website comes down at the end of the period you have already paid for rather than immediately, and your content is kept, so coming back later means subscribing again rather than starting again. If what you want is to stop being billed while keeping the address, cancel here and keep the domain, which renews separately.
What changing your account type does
Your account type decides the words the control panel uses and which sections you are offered. Switching does not delete anything: what you have entered stays where it is, and a section that disappears comes back if you switch back. Change it when your work changes rather than working around a shape that no longer fits.
Changing your contact email
This address is also your login, so changing it changes both. Use an address you will still have in five years rather than the one attached to a job or a school. Everything we send you goes here: password resets, receipts, and the warning that a domain is about to expire. If you lose access to it, the forgotten-password link has nowhere to send you, which is a harder problem than it sounds.
Connecting a Mailchimp audience
Connect an audience under Settings then Integrations and new signups are added to it automatically, so you can write to people from Mailchimp rather than exporting by hand. If the audience is later deleted inside Mailchimp, this page says so rather than quietly stopping, and you can pick another one. Without a connection the names are still collected here and still yours.
Your newsletter subscribers
Everybody who has signed up through the form on your website, with the date and their status. They are yours: export them whenever you like. A short list of people who asked to hear from you is worth more than a long list of people you added, both because they read it and because sending to people who did not ask is how a sending domain gets a bad reputation.
Reading the username check
Type a username and we ask the networks whether it is taken. There are three answers and the third is the one that matters: exists, does not exist, and the site did not answer clearly. The last one usually means the network blocked our check rather than that the name is free, so treat it as unknown and confirm by hand before building anything on it.
Deleting a mention for good
Delete removes a mention permanently rather than hiding it, and it will not be found again by a later scan. Use it for false positives and for anything about a different person with your name. If you are only unsure, leave it as new. Delete is for tidying, not for deciding.
Sending a mention to your press list
One click promotes a mention into a press item, where it becomes part of your website. Check it first: the link should be to the piece rather than to a listing page, and the publication should be named as a reader would recognize it. A press list is only as persuasive as its weakest entry, so promote the ones you would show somebody rather than everything that mentioned you.
New, bookmarked, and in your press
Three states. New is anything we have found and you have not looked at. Bookmarked is something you want to keep but have not decided about. In your Press means you have promoted it into your press list, where it appears on your website. Working through New once a week keeps the list meaningful. Left alone for a month it becomes something you scroll past.
Setting the name we scan for
This is the most important field on the page. We watch the trades and social platforms for the term you set here, so a common name returns other people's news and a stage name spelled differently returns nothing at all. Set it deliberately, check the first results, and adjust. If your name is genuinely common, adding a second word you are usually mentioned alongside is what makes the difference.
Importing an existing address book
Rather than typing people in, you can bring in an address book you already have. Import the working list rather than everything: a contacts page full of people you have never spoken to is a search that returns noise. Anything imported can be edited afterwards, and duplicates are worth clearing on the way in rather than later.
Grouping contacts into categories
Categories are how you find people again: casting, agents, crew, press. Keep the list short and consistent. Two categories that mean nearly the same thing split the people you were trying to gather. A contact can only be somewhere useful if you can guess, months later, where you would have filed them.
Adding a contact
Name, company, role, email, phone and notes. The notes field is searched along with everything else, which makes it the most useful field here: put where you met, what they were casting, who introduced you. Six months later that is what you will search for, because you will remember the circumstance long after you have forgotten the name.
The spam filter on your messages
Obvious junk is held back rather than deleted, and you can look at what was caught. Worth doing once a month, because a filter tuned to catch marketing occasionally catches a short message from somebody real. If you find one, it is not lost. Anything genuinely from a person is better read late than never.
Reading and replying to messages
Everything sent through the contact form on your website lands here. Replying opens your own email client, so the reply comes from your address and continues in your inbox rather than in ours. That is deliberate: a conversation that starts on your website should carry on somewhere you will still have it in two years. Messages stay here as a record even after you have replied.
The images and clips AutoBlog suggests
Media Enhancements offers images and clips to go with an article, drawn from your own media where it can and from stock where it cannot. Look at what it chose. A picture that is nearly relevant is worse than no picture, and it is the part of a generated article most likely to be almost right rather than right.
Why AutoBlog needs the blog connection
AutoBlog can write without a blog connected, but it has nowhere to put the result except this page. Connecting Every Single Blog under Settings then Integrations is what lets an approved article become a post on your own site. Until then, treat what it produces as drafts you could paste somewhere by hand.
Copying an approved article to your blog
An approved article can be copied onto your own blog so it lives on your site rather than only here. That needs Every Single Blog connected under Settings then Integrations first. It is worth doing: an article on your own domain works for your search results, and the same article somewhere else works for somebody else's.
Approving or declining a draft
Read the draft and either approve it or decline it. Read it properly. It is written from what is on your site, which means it is factually yours, but it is a machine's account of your work and the occasional sentence will be wrong in a way only you can see. Declining costs nothing and the next one will be along.
Switching AutoBlog on
Search engines reward a site that changes and ignore one that does not, and most people have neither the time nor the appetite to write about themselves every month. Switch this on and we write articles about your work for you. Nothing is published automatically. Each draft waits here for you to read, and only what you approve goes anywhere.
Hired Actor is not built yet
This page will gather casting notices and filter them to what you can actually be seen for. It is on the list rather than abandoned, and the page will fill in when it is ready. In the meantime the parts of the control panel that get you seen are your reel, your credits and your website being visible, so that is where the time is better spent.
Adding chapters to your reel
A chapter is a name and a start time in seconds, and it lets the person watching jump straight to the scene you want them to see. Name the chapter after what the scene is rather than which project it came from: somebody casting a hard-edged detective is looking for the word, not the title. Casting people decide in the first fifteen seconds, so your strongest material goes first and chapters cover the rest.
Choosing which SoundCloud playlists appear
If you have connected SoundCloud, you choose which playlists show on your link.actor page. Pick one. This page is a signpost and a wall of playlists is not a signpost. If you have a reel and an album, the reel is the one that belongs here.
Restyling your link.actor page
Pick a color and the page takes it. Match it to your website and to whichever social profile the link sits in, so somebody arriving does not think they have landed somewhere else. That continuity is most of what this page is for; it is the step between a profile and your site, and it should look like both.
Your link.actor page
A single page at link.actor, for the one link social profiles allow you. It is built from what is already on your site, so there is nothing to maintain separately: your photo, your links, your reel and your contact details are already there. It is a signpost rather than a website, so the fewer things it points at the better it works.
Dismissing a bad match
Dismiss tells us a profile is not you, and it will not be offered again. Use it freely. The list gets shorter and more accurate every time you do, and a dismissed profile costs nothing to bring back if you dismissed it by mistake.
Confirming a profile is yours
The scan finds profiles that might be you and asks. Confirm the ones that are and its later results get better, because it knows what to follow. Be careful with common names: confirming somebody else's profile imports somebody else's credits, and untangling that afterwards is more work than reading the list carefully now.
Running a scan
A scan goes and looks for your work in the places it is already listed and brings back what it finds. It takes a few minutes. Run it when you first set up, and again after a job goes public, since a credit that is not yet listed anywhere cannot be found. Running it twice in an afternoon will not find more than running it once.
Writing your answers
Short, specific and honest. This is the one part of an actor's site allowed to sound like a person rather than a resume, which is exactly why it works: everything else on the site is formal and this is the page that makes somebody feel they have met you. Name real things. A specific bad audition is worth more than a general thought about persistence.
Choosing your interview questions
Pick from the stock list or write your own. The stock questions are there because they get interesting answers out of most people, which is harder than it sounds. Choose the ones you actually have something to say about. A question you answer dutifully reads worse than one you skip, and three questions is a perfectly good interview.
Changing or removing a forwarder
Your existing forwarders are listed with where each one delivers, and either can be changed or removed. Removing one stops mail to that address immediately, and mail sent to it afterwards bounces rather than sitting anywhere, so retire an address you have published on a resume with more care than one you made last week. Changing the destination is instant and safe.
Creating a forwarding address
Choose the part before the at sign, pick which of your domains it belongs to, and say where mail should land. It starts working within a few minutes. The domain list fills in once a domain is connected, so if it is empty, start on Settings then Domains. Keep it simple enough to read out over the phone, because you will be reading it out over the phone.
Taking the signature somewhere other than Gmail
HTML Source gives you the markup to paste into Outlook, Apple Mail, a CRM or anything else that accepts an HTML signature. Copy the whole block. Do not edit it by hand unless you know what you are doing, because email HTML is deliberately old-fashioned and the parts that look redundant are usually the parts holding it together in Outlook.
Putting the signature into Gmail
The Add this to Gmail steps are written in Gmail's own words because Gmail moves things around and a paraphrase goes stale. Follow them exactly. The one that catches people is that Gmail wants the signature pasted with formatting rather than as plain text, so use the copy button here rather than selecting the block yourself. Gmail has a size limit; if it complains, remove a link rather than shrinking the photo.
The photo, color and icons in your signature
The photo can be a circle or a square, the accent color drives the rule and the links, and the icon style decides how your social marks are drawn. Match the accent to your website and the two read as one thing. A signature is seen at the bottom of an email on a phone more often than anywhere else, so favor legible over decorative and keep the icon set small.
Choosing an email signature layout
Eight layouts, and the difference between them is where the photo sits and how much room the text gets. A layout with your photo beside the text suits a short signature. One with the photo above suits a longer set of links. Try two or three and look at them in an actual email rather than in the preview, because every mail client renders these slightly differently and Outlook renders them worst.
Pointing a button at any address
Your own link sends the button anywhere: a casting profile, a ticket page, a campaign, a film's own site. Paste the whole address including the https. Check it after saving, because a call to action that goes nowhere is worse than none at all, and it is the one thing on a site nobody thinks to test.
Pointing a button at one of your pages
Pick a page you already have and the button links to it, staying correct even if you rename the page later. The best call to action asks for one thing: watch the reel, read the resume, get in touch. Two buttons asking for the same thing in different words are worse than one. If your design shows no buttons then nothing set here appears, and that is the design's decision rather than a fault.
Drafts and publishing
A post stays a draft until you make it active, so you can leave something half-finished without it appearing on your site. Nothing is published by accident. Turning a live post back to draft removes it from your site immediately, which is the fastest way to deal with something you have thought better of and better than deleting it while you decide.
Writing a post
A title, the body, an image with a caption, a video link if you have one, and tags. Write about the work rather than about yourself. A post about how a scene was built gets read and a post about how excited you are does not. Tags group posts on your site, so keep to a handful and reuse them. Writing regularly is the cheapest thing you can do for your search results.
Why the blog needs connecting first
The blog itself lives on Every Single Blog, so this page does nothing until you have connected an account under Settings then Integrations. That is a one-time step. The reason it is built this way is that your posts stay yours and stay portable: they live in a blogging platform rather than being trapped in a website builder, and they can feed more than one site.
Where your orders arrive
Orders land on the Orders tab and you get an email. Fulfilling them is on you: we take no cut, hold no stock and ship nothing. That is the trade, and it means an order sitting unfulfilled sits there until you deal with it. Check the tab rather than relying on the email, because one email in a spam folder is one customer who thinks you took their money.
Grouping products into categories
Categories split the shop into sections a visitor can navigate. With fewer than about eight products you do not need any, because one list is easier to read than three short ones. They start earning their place when you sell genuinely different things, a course and a print say, where somebody arriving for one has no interest in the other.
Adding a product
Title, description, price and at least one image. A sale price shown beside the full one does more work than quietly lowering the price. Set a quantity where there is a real limit and leave it blank where there is not. The description is where the objection gets answered: what they get, in what form, and how quickly. One good photograph sells better than four ordinary ones.
Adding Clicky
Enter your Clicky site id and we install it. Clicky shows visits as they happen rather than the next day, which is genuinely useful the week you send something out and mostly a distraction the rest of the time. As with Google Analytics it goes in here rather than in Script Tags, and you can run both if you want.
Adding your own Google Analytics
Paste your G- measurement id here and we add the tag to every page properly. You do not need the Script Tags page for this. Google Analytics gives you far more than this screen does and is worth having if you are going to look at it. If you are not, our own numbers are enough, and one fewer tracker on your site is a small kindness to your visitors.
The country and city breakdown
Where your visitors were, by country and by city. The same caveat as the dashboard map applies: it comes from the connection, so it is approximate, and somebody on a VPN lands somewhere else entirely. The question worth asking it is whether the people looking at your site are in the market you want to work in. If they are not, that is about where you are being listed rather than about your site.
Where your traffic came from
The sites that sent people to you. Direct means they typed the address or clicked a link that carried no referrer, which includes most links in emails and messaging apps, so direct is usually larger than it looks and tells you less. What is worth watching is a casting site or a social profile appearing here, because that is the one telling you which of your listings is doing work.
Reading your top pages
Which pages people actually opened, most first. It is the most useful thing on this screen, because it tells you what visitors came for rather than what you assumed they came for. If your reel sits below your contact page, people are arriving already convinced. If a page you worked hard on is at the bottom, the problem is usually that nothing links to it.
What counts as a unique visitor
One person, over the fourteen days shown, however many pages they looked at. Somebody who comes back tomorrow counts once tomorrow as well. It is worked out from the browser, so the same person on a phone and a laptop is two, and a browser that blocks tracking may be none. Treat it as a trend rather than a headcount. The shape over weeks is real even where the exact number is not.
Uploading an HTML file
For a standalone page that is not part of your website: a one-off landing page, a file somebody asked you for, something you were given as finished HTML. It is served from your own domain at its own address, outside the menu and outside your design. If what you want is a real page of your site, with your fonts, your colors and a menu entry, use Website then Pages instead.
Why a new script waits for review
A new script tag is held until we have looked at it, usually within a day. That is not us being precious. A script tag can read everything on the page it runs on, including anything a visitor types, so a bad one is a real problem for you and for us. Send the code your provider actually published rather than something found on a forum and it will go through without a word.
Adding a script tag
Paste the code your provider gave you, whole, exactly as they gave it. It is added to every page of your site. If all you want is Google Analytics or Clicky you do not need this page: enter the id on the Statistics page instead and we wire it up properly. Use this for the things that have no other route, such as an advertising pixel or a chat widget.
Writing your own CSS
Your CSS is loaded after the design's, so anything you write here wins. This is the right place for a small correction: a heading you want tighter, a color the design uses in one spot you dislike. It is the wrong place to rebuild a page. Save little and often, and if something breaks the layout, clear the box and save again to get back to where you were. Nothing here can damage your content, only how it looks.
Choosing what the More page shows
Some designs have a More page that gathers what has no home of its own: past events, reviews, a client list, a gallery. What it contained was never something anybody chose, it was whatever the design's author decided, which ranges from two blocks to eight. Leave it on In your design and nothing changes. Switch to Your choice and you pick the blocks and their order yourself.
Deleting a page
Deleting asks you to confirm and then it is gone, along with whatever was on it. Anything linking to that address breaks, including links you have handed out and any menu item pointing at it. If you only want it off the site, take it out of the menu instead: the page stops being listed and the content survives. Delete is for a page you are certain you will never want back.
Pulling in a SnippedIt category as a page
If you keep material in SnippedIt, a category from it can be pulled in as a page here rather than copied across by hand. It stays connected, so what you write there appears here. It needs the SnippedIt connection under Settings then Integrations first. This is the right route for writing you already maintain somewhere else, and the wrong one for a one-off page, which is faster to write here.
The picture that shows when a page is shared
When somebody posts a link to this page, this is the image that goes with it. Get it right and a shared link looks like something worth clicking. Leave it and the platform picks whatever it finds, which is often your logo at the wrong crop. A landscape image works everywhere. A portrait headshot gets cut top and bottom by every platform there is.
The SEO title and description
These are what Google prints in a search result. We write them for you from the page content and the automatic version is usually fine, so change them only when you have a reason. If you do write your own, put the thing somebody would search for near the front, and treat the description as an advert for the page rather than a summary of it. Neither of them appears on the page itself.
Changing a page address
The slug is the part of the address after your name. Change it and the page moves. Anything you have already handed out pointing at the old address stops working, so change it early or not at all, and never on a page whose link is on a business card or in a casting profile. Use words rather than numbers, keep it short, and put hyphens between words.
Ordering and renaming your menu
Drag pages into the order you want, rename one, or take it out of the menu without deleting it. A page out of the menu still exists at its address, which is what you want for something you link to directly but do not want listed. Keep the menu short. Six items is comfortable and ten is a wall, and the order matters because the first and the last are the two people actually see.
The body font
This is the one that matters. Your bio, your credits and your descriptions are all set in it, and it is the only font on the site somebody reads rather than glances at. Choose for readability and nothing else. If you are torn between an interesting body font and a plain one, take the plain one and put the personality in the headings.
The subheading font
Subheadings sit between your headings and your body text: production names, category labels, the line under a title. Setting it to the same family as one of the other two is a perfectly good answer and often the best one. Three unrelated typefaces on one page is the commonest way a site made by a careful person still looks homemade.
The heading font
The heading font is used for your name, page titles and section headings. It is the one with the most personality and the least text set in it, which is exactly why it can carry a display face that would be unreadable in a paragraph. Pick it for how your name looks, because your name is the largest thing on your site and the first thing anybody reads.
Letting the design use its own background
No Background means the design uses whatever its author intended, which is usually the right answer and always the safe one. Every design here was made to look correct with its own background and most were not tested against yours. Switching back costs nothing and does not delete the image you uploaded, so it is a free way to check whether your background is helping or just present.
Uploading your own background
Use something large and low in contrast. A background competes with your text for attention and it should lose. Around 1920 pixels wide is enough for any screen, and a quiet image at that size looks better than a busy one at twice it. Textures work. Photographs with faces in them almost never do. If your text becomes hard to read once the background is on, the image is the problem rather than the font.
Entering your own color
The swatches are a starting point, not a limit. Enter a hex value and you get exactly that color. Use this when you have a brand color to match, a headshot to pull from, or a poster whose palette you want the site to echo. Paste the six characters with or without the hash. If you are matching print artwork, expect it to look slightly different on a screen. That is the difference between ink and light rather than a fault here.
Where your secondary color is used
The secondary color sits behind headings, dividers and the quieter parts of the design. It is doing supporting work, so it wants to be closer to your background than your primary is: two strong colors fight and neither wins. If you are unsure, take a muted version of your primary. Some designs use it far more than others, so change it and look at the live site rather than assuming it did nothing.
What your primary color does
The primary color carries your buttons, your links and most of the accents. Change it and the whole site follows, which is why it is worth choosing here rather than overriding things later in the CSS editor. If you have a headshot the site is built around, sample a color out of it and the pages hang together without you doing anything else. Very light and very dark primaries both cause trouble, because the design assumes it can put white text on this color.
Asking us to rebuild a site you already have
If you already have a website somewhere else, Import design asks us to rebuild it here rather than making you start again. Send us the address and we look at it. It is a real person doing the work, so it takes days rather than seconds, and there are sites we will say no to. It is worth asking when you have a design you like and a platform you have outgrown. It is not a way to copy somebody else's site.
Adding a client
Clients are the brands and companies you have worked for, as distinct from the productions themselves. A commercial actor, a voice artist or a crew member often has a client list worth showing even when the individual jobs are not worth listing one by one. Add the name and, where a design supports it, the logos are arranged into a wall. Keep the list to work you would be happy for somebody to check.
An award that is not tied to one project
Some awards are for a body of work, a scholarship or a competition rather than a single production. Mark those Not Applicable and the award lists without a project beside it. It is a small thing that stops you inventing a link that is not there, and it keeps the awards list honest for the ones that genuinely belong to a title.
Adding an award
The award, the organization that gave it, the year, and the project it was for. Nominations count and are worth listing as nominations rather than being dressed up. Name the organization in the form a stranger would recognize, because the organization is what gives the award its weight, and an award nobody has heard of from a body nobody has heard of is doing very little work on your behalf.
Putting your credits in order
Drag credits into the order that reads best. The default is chronological, which is the safe answer and rarely the persuasive one: the strongest credit belongs at the top of its category whether or not it is the most recent. Order is saved as you drop it. If your best work is three years old, leading with it is honest, and burying it under newer smaller jobs is the mistake this control exists to fix.
Adding artwork to a credit
A poster or a production still beside a credit turns a line of text into something a reader stops on. Use the poster where there is one and a still you are actually in where there is not. Not every credit needs one, and a resume where every line has artwork reads as a gallery rather than a list. Pick the five or six that carry your case and leave the rest plain.
Tagging a credit with a genre
Genres group your credits so a reader can see the shape of your work rather than a flat chronological list. They also drive the filtering some designs offer. Tag honestly and sparingly: a project tagged with five genres tells nobody anything. The useful question is which genre somebody casting that kind of work would expect to find this job under.
Hiding a credit without deleting it
A hidden credit stays on file and stops appearing on your website. Use it for work that no longer represents you, a production you would rather not discuss, or a credit that is fine but crowds a resume that has moved on. Nothing is lost and it can be shown again in one click, which is the reason to hide rather than delete: a credit you delete in a bad mood is one you retype later.
What the billing field does
Lead, supporting, featured and the rest. It prints beside the credit on your resume and it is what a reader uses to size the job without asking. Be accurate. Inflating billing is the fastest way to lose a reader who knows the production, and it is a small industry. If a job does not fit any of the options, leave it blank rather than reaching for the nearest generous one.
Adding a credit
Project, company, category, your role, the billing and the dates. Category is what groups the credit on your resume, so a film in the television category lands in the wrong block and looks like carelessness. The company is the production company rather than the distributor. If a project has changed name since you shot it, use the name it was released under, because that is the one somebody searching will recognize.
Choosing your video player skin
How your videos are framed on your website: the styling around the player, not the videos themselves, which are added under Media then Videos. Pick a skin and your reels are shown in it everywhere they appear. As with the audio player, some designs impose their own treatment and will override this, so check the live site rather than the preview if the two disagree. The page appears once you have at least one video.
What the audio player preview shows
The preview is the player on its own, on a neutral background. It is showing you the control, not your page: it does not use your site's colors, fonts or spacing, and it does not know where on the page the player will sit. Use it to choose between styles, then open your actual site to see the result. A player that looks wrong in the preview and right on the site is behaving normally.
Choosing your audio player style
Pick a look for the player that appears on your site. The preview shows roughly what visitors will see. Some designs draw the player their own way and will ignore parts of what you choose here, so if the preview and your live site disagree, your live site is right. This page only appears once you have uploaded at least one track, since there would otherwise be nothing to configure.
Uploading your resume file
PDF is the safest choice: it looks the same on every device and cannot be edited by accident on the way to somebody else. You can upload a Word file and we will convert it. Uploading a new one replaces the old, so there is nothing to delete first and no way to end up with two. Replace it whenever you add a credit, because the version sitting here is the version a casting director downloads.
Video titles and descriptions
The title and description appear under the player. Name the production and your role rather than the file: somebody watching wants to know what they are looking at within a second of it starting. Keep the description to a line. If a clip needs a paragraph of setup before it makes sense, the clip is the wrong clip, and no amount of explanation under it will fix that.
Video categories and reels
Grouping clips into categories is what makes separate reels on your site: a drama reel, a comedy reel, a commercial reel. That separation is worth doing even with a handful of clips, because a casting director looking for comedy will not sit through drama to find it. The order inside a category is yours to set, and the strongest thirty seconds you have should be the first thing in the first one.
Searching your own YouTube uploads
If your YouTube account is connected, you can search your own uploads from this page and add one without leaving to find the address. It saves the tab-hopping and it stops the commonest mistake, which is pasting the address of the watch page you happened to have open rather than the video you meant. It only ever shows your own uploads.
Adding a video
Paste a YouTube, Vimeo or TikTok link and the clip is embedded on your site. We do not host video, which is deliberate: those platforms stream better than we could and they handle every device. If a clip is private on the platform it will not play here either, so set it to unlisted rather than private for anything you want on your site but not in public search.
Track titles and descriptions
The title is what shows in the player, so it wants to be the thing rather than the file name. "National radio, insurance, 2025" tells a listener what they are about to hear; "reel_final_v3" tells them about your desktop. The description sits underneath and is the place for the character, the direction or the client where naming the client is allowed. The external link is for sending somebody to the finished piece.
Audio categories
Categories group your tracks, and they are what drives the player on your site, so they are doing more work here than they do for photographs. A commercial reel, a narration reel and a singing reel are three categories, not one list of nine tracks. Somebody looking for one of those will not dig through the others. A track with no category still plays but sits outside the grouped players.
Uploading audio
MP3 is the safe format and the one to use. Upload the reel rather than the whole session: a voice reel that runs past ninety seconds is not listened to past ninety seconds. If a file is rejected for size, export it again at a lower bitrate; 192 kbps is more than enough for speech on a website and nobody will hear the difference over the laptop speakers most people will use.
Replacing an image without losing its place
Replace swaps the file and keeps everything around it: the caption, the category, the position in the order, and any page already pointing at it. Use it when a photographer sends a better scan or a retouched version of something already on your site. Deleting the old one and uploading the new one instead loses all of that and puts the new image at the end of the gallery.
Removing the background from a photo
This cuts the subject out of an image and leaves the background transparent. It is meant for a logo, a prop, or a figure you want to place over a colored panel, and it is very good at hair and very bad at glass, smoke and motion blur. It does not replace a retoucher and it should not be pointed at a headshot: a cut-out face on a flat color reads as a cut-out, and the original is what a casting director wants anyway.
Captions on photographs
A caption appears under the image on your site and is read by search engines, which is the quiet reason to write them. Say what the picture is: the production, the photographer, the year. Leave it blank and the image shows with no caption, which is fine for a headshot and a waste for a production still. The photographer's credit belongs here too, and on a headshot it is often the only place it appears.
Photo categories and galleries
A category is a gallery on your site. Make one, rename it, drag them into order, delete one you do not want. Deleting a category does not delete the photographs in it; they return to being uncategorized and can be filed again. Keep the number small. Three galleries somebody looks through beat nine they scroll past, and "Headshots", "Production" and "Events" covers most working actors entirely.
Importing photos from Dropbox
Rather than downloading images to your machine and uploading them again, you can pull them straight from a connected Dropbox folder. Connect the account once under Settings then Integrations and the folder is available here afterwards. It is the right way to move a shoot across when your photographer has delivered to a shared folder, and it keeps the full-size files rather than whatever your phone decided to send.
Uploading photos
Drag images onto the uploader, one or a hundred at once. Upload the largest version you have; we make the smaller sizes and a file that started small cannot be made sharp later. JPEG and PNG both work. If you want to write a caption as you go, add them a few at a time, because a batch of forty arrives as forty uncaptioned images and captioning them afterwards is a longer job than it looks.
Tying a crew member to a film, or to none
A crew member can belong to one film or to none at all. Leave the film blank for somebody you work with often and they stay available for whatever you make next. Attach them to a film and they appear on that film's site. This is why the list is worth keeping even between projects: a regular collaborator entered once is a person you never type in again.
Adding someone to My Crew
Name, company, role, a short bio, a website and an IMDb link. You enter a person once here and they can be dropped onto any film project website without being typed again. The bio wants to be two sentences about what they do, not a resume. The IMDb link is the field worth chasing, because it is what turns a name on a page into somebody a stranger can verify.
Building the end-credit roll
The roll is built line by line, in the order it plays, and it accepts headings and gaps as well as names. Use the headings the industry uses and put the gaps where a viewer needs to breathe. This is the one part of a film site that has a correct answer: the order of credits is largely conventional, and getting it wrong is noticed by exactly the people you are trying to impress. Copy the order from a film in your genre if you are unsure.
Listing the crew on a film site
Names, roles, short bios and IMDb links, drawn from My Crew so you enter a person once and use them on every film. Credit the people whose involvement a viewer would care about, which is a shorter list than the one that goes in the end roll. Anybody with an IMDb link becomes checkable, which is worth more than a longer list of names nobody can look up.
Adding stills to a film site
Stills come from your Media library rather than being uploaded again here, so add them under Media then Photos first. Caption them and drag them into order; the order is the order visitors see. Six good stills beat twenty. Choose images that show the film rather than the shoot, which means production stills over behind-the-scenes photographs unless the making of it is the story you are telling.
The design of a film project website
An accent color, the fonts and a banner image. The banner is the first and largest thing anybody sees, so it wants to be a still that reads at a glance rather than the poster with text on it, which becomes unreadable at that width. Pick the accent color out of the banner and the whole page holds together. These settings are for this film only and do not touch your own website.
The IMDb page and trailer on a film site
Two links: the film's IMDb page and its trailer. The trailer is embedded rather than linked, so it plays on the page, which is the single thing most visitors came for. Paste a YouTube or Vimeo address and we handle the rest. If there is no trailer yet, leave it empty rather than putting up a clip that is not ready; an empty slot is invisible and a bad trailer is not.
The wording on a film project website
Title, tagline, logline, description, production company and dates. The logline is the one that does the work: one sentence, present tense, saying what happens and to whom. If you cannot write it in a sentence the film is not ready to be pitched, which is useful to find out here rather than in a room. The description is where the detail goes. Leave a field blank and it is left off the page rather than shown empty.
Removing a film from My Films
This stops treating a credit as a film you control. It does not delete the credit, which stays on your resume exactly as it was, and it does not delete a project website that already exists. What it removes is the crew, stills and film-specific material attached to the project here. Use it when you marked something by mistake. If you want the credit gone as well, delete it from Credits instead.
Asking for a film project website
A film project website is a separate site for one film, on its own address, built from material you already have here. Ask for it from this page and choose the address you want. We set it up rather than generating it instantly, so there is a wait. It is worth having for a film that is going to festivals or looking for distribution, and not worth having for a short that lives on Vimeo and needs a link rather than a site.
Marking a credit as your own film
This promotes a credit from a line on your resume into a project you control. A film you have marked can have its own crew, its own stills and its own website. Mark the ones you made, not the ones you appeared in: the distinction is whether you would be the person answering questions about the production. Marking a credit does not change how it appears on your resume, so there is no cost to getting it right.
Adding a review or pull quote
Short quotes about your work, from critics, directors or collaborators. Keep each to a sentence or two: a pull quote earns its place by being read at a glance, and a paragraph gets skipped. Add who said it and, where there is one, a link to where it was published, which is what makes a quote believable rather than decorative. If a whole article is worth linking to, put it in Press instead and use Reviews only for the line you want people to actually read.
Hiding the date on an event
Show Date can be turned off for an event that does not want one: a run with no fixed night, something still being scheduled, an ongoing engagement. The event still lists and still sorts, it simply does not print a date. Use it rather than inventing a date you will have to correct, and rather than leaving the event off until things are settled, since an announced-but-undated event is still worth somebody knowing about.
Adding an event
A performance, a screening, a class you are teaching, a festival you are at. Title, a short body, where, a link for tickets and the date. Past events do not disappear; they move into a past list, which is worth having because a year of work is more persuasive than one upcoming date. Write the body for somebody who does not know the show. Two sentences saying what it is beats a paragraph of thanks.
Where your press kit appears
Three choices. Hidden means the file exists and is yours to send by hand, which is what most people want. On the About page puts a download link where a visitor reading about you will find it. In the footer puts it on every page. Hidden is the safe default: a press kit carries your contact details in a form that is easy to copy, so publishing it is a decision rather than a tidiness.
Creating your press kit PDF
The press kit is a single PDF built from what is already on your site: your photo, your bio, your credits and your contact details. You do not write it, you generate it, so fill in your profile first and create the PDF afterwards. It takes a few seconds. Regenerate it whenever your credits change, because the file that exists is the file people download, and it does not update itself when your site does.
Tying a press item to a credit
If a piece is about a particular project, attach it to that credit and it appears on the project's own page as well as in your press list. That is what turns a credit from a line on a resume into something with evidence attached, and it is the single most useful thing you can do with a review. A piece that is about you rather than about one job is better left unattached, where it sits with the rest of your press.
The logo beside a press item
We fill in the publication's logo where we recognize the outlet, which is most of the national and trade press. Where we do not, or where we get it wrong, upload your own and yours is used instead. A small outlet with no logo is not a problem; the item still lists with the publication name. Do not upload a screenshot of the article as the logo. This slot is the outlet's mark, and a screenshot in it makes the whole press list look wrong.
Adding a press article
Title, publication, writer, date and a link. The link matters more than the rest: a quote nobody can check reads as a quote you wrote. If the piece is behind a paywall, link it anyway and let the reader decide. If it has gone offline, look for it on the Internet Archive and link that. A short honest press list of things that really happened is worth more than a long one padded with mentions in listings.
Adding a link that is not a social network
For anything the social list does not cover: a production company, a podcast, a piece of press with no home, a Linktree. You choose the name it appears under, so write the name a reader would click rather than the name of the site. "My audiobook narration reel" beats "SoundCloud". These sit alongside your social links on the site and can be reordered by dragging, so the one you most want opened goes first.
Adding your social links
Paste the address of a profile and we recognize the network and draw its own icon. Add only the accounts you would be happy for a casting director to open today. An abandoned account with four posts from 2019 says something you did not mean to say, and a personal account you forgot was public says more. If a network is missing from the list, add it under Other Links instead. The icons themselves are styled under Website then Design.
Adding colleges and universities
Separate from workshops because a degree reads differently. Enter the institution, the degree, your major and minor, and whether it is finished. An unfinished degree is worth listing when the training is relevant and worth leaving off when it is not; nobody is checking, and a two-year conservatoire course you completed says more than four years you did not. Where you studied is often the fastest thing a reader uses to place you, so put the recognizable name in the institution field rather than an abbreviation.
Adding training, schools and workshops
One entry per class or workshop: what it was called, where, which category it falls under, and the years. The years are years, not dates, so 2018 to 2020 is the shape to use. Category is what groups the list on your site, so keeping it consistent is what makes the difference between a tidy training section and a pile. List the teacher in the class name where the teacher is the reason it is worth listing, which in this industry is often.
Which contact details your website prints
You control which phone number and email address the public site is allowed to show. Anything you leave off is still on your account and still reaches you through the contact form; it simply is not printed for anybody to copy. If you have representation, most actors show the agent and not themselves. If you do not, an email you check is better than a phone number you do not answer, and a contact form is better than either for keeping your address out of scrapers.
Setting the places you work
Add every city you can genuinely be seen in, and mark one as primary. The primary location is the one that appears beside your name and the one casting searches match you on first, so make it the market you actually want work in rather than where you happen to live. The ZIP or postcode is what the map on your contact page centers on. Listing a city you cannot get to at your own expense is worse than not listing it.
Your long bio and your short bio
Two biographies, used in different places. The long one is your About page. The short one is the paragraph that sits under your name on the home page and gets used wherever space is tight. If you leave the short one empty we write it from the first part of the long one, which is usually fine and occasionally cuts mid-thought, so it is worth reading what we made. Write the long one in the third person if you want it to read like a programme note, and in the first if you want it to sound like you.
Inviting people to your referral link by email
Rather than posting the link publicly, you can send it to named people and we keep track of who you have asked. That matters more than it sounds: it stops you asking the same person twice, and it tells you which invitations turned into anything. Write to people who have actually said they need a website. A list of everybody you have ever worked with converts badly and costs you goodwill you might want later.
Requesting a referral payout
When there is enough to collect, Request a payout lets you choose an Amazon gift card, PayPal or a check. Gift cards arrive fastest, checks slowest. Ask once and we handle it; there is nothing to chase. The balance moves out of unpaid and into paid out when the payment goes, so the page is always telling you the truth about what is still owed. If a payout has not arrived when you expected it, email us before requesting a second one.
Reading your referral earnings
Three numbers. How many people have subscribed through your link, what you have earned that has not been paid yet, and what has already been paid out. Earnings appear once the person you referred has actually been charged, not when they sign up, so a new referral takes a few days to show as money. If somebody cancels, their future payments stop counting; what you have already earned is yours.
Your referral link
This is your link, and anybody who subscribes through it earns you a share of what they pay for as long as they stay. Put it where actors who need a website actually are: a class group, a green room noticeboard, the bio of a profile people already follow. It works better attached to a sentence about your own site than posted bare. The link never expires and there is no limit to how many people can use it.
The completed items on your setup list
What you have already done collapses into a list at the bottom, so the open items stay at the top where they are useful. Open it when you want to check something actually saved: if an item is in there, the site has the content, not just the form. It is also the fastest way back to a page you set up months ago and cannot remember the name of. Items move into it on their own; there is nothing to tick.
How the setup checklist works
Every item on the list is something still missing from your website, and each one links straight to the page that clears it. The order is roughly the order worth doing them in, so working from the top is a reasonable plan. Nothing here is compulsory and nothing expires. An item you do not want, such as a press kit or a shop, can be left forever and costs you nothing. The list is generated from what is actually on your site, so an item disappears the moment you fill it in.
Switching your account type
Your account type decides the words the control panel uses and which sections you are offered. An actor gets credits and a resume; a filmmaker gets films and crew; a singer gets audio and a player. Switching type does not delete anything. What you have entered stays exactly where it is, and a section that disappears comes back if you switch back. Change it whenever your work changes, and take the offer of the sections that come with it rather than working around a shape that no longer fits.
The design and add-on tiles on your dashboard
A thumbnail of your live website as it stands right now, so you can see at a glance whether it is what you think it is. Click it to open your site in a new tab. Beside it are the add-ons available to you: a press kit, a headshots page, a reels.link page. A tile you have not switched on shows what it would add. These are shortcuts to pages that exist elsewhere in the control panel, not a separate set of settings.
Your IMDb STARmeter rank on the dashboard
STARmeter is IMDb's own popularity ranking, and a lower number is better. We show the current one and how it has moved. The Boost button puts your profile into the rotation we show across our network, which sends real people to your IMDb page, which is what moves the rank. It is not instant and it is not a guarantee. Nothing you do here changes anything on IMDb directly; we cannot edit your IMDb page and neither can anybody except IMDb.
The map of where your visitors came from
Under the chart is a map and a list of the cities your visitors were in. It is worked out from their connection, so it is roughly right rather than exact, and somebody on a phone or a VPN can land in the wrong place entirely. Read it as a shape rather than a record. It is most useful for one question: are the people looking at your site in the market you are trying to work in. If they are not, that is a sign about where you are being seen, not about your site.
Reading your visitor chart
The chart counts visits to your website over the last fourteen days, from our own counter rather than from Google. Expect the numbers to be small and to move with what you are doing: an audition round, a post that got shared, a mailing. A flat fortnight is not a fault, it is what a site nobody has been pointed at looks like. If you want a longer view or a different definition of a visit, Website then Statistics has more, and you can add your own Google Analytics there.
Media: Resumes
Upload your resume here and it appears on your website as a download, on your About page and anywhere else your design offers it. A PDF is the safest choice, because it looks the same on every device and cannot be edited by accident on the way to somebody else. You can upload a Word file and we will convert it. Replace the file whenever you add a credit rather than letting it drift, since the version sitting here is the version a casting director downloads. Uploading a new one replaces the old, so there is nothing to delete first and no way to end up with two.
Transcript of the video
Resumes is the downloadable file people take away with them. Upload it here and it appears on your website as a download. A PDF is the safest choice. It looks the same on every device and cannot be edited by accident. Replace it whenever you add a credit. The version sitting here is the version a casting director gets. If it is a year out of date, that is the version of you they have.
Settings: Billing
Everything about what you pay and how. The card on file is at the top: replace it here rather than letting a renewal fail, because a declined payment leaves an outstanding balance and that does not collect itself. Transaction History lists every charge, including the declined ones, with the reason the bank gave. If a balance is showing, clearing it is one payment and your site carries on as normal. Canceling a subscription is not on this page: that lives under Settings then Account, next to the rest of what closing an account does.
Transcript of the video
This is where a free account becomes a paid one, and where your billing lives afterwards. There are two plans and they are the same website. Nothing is held back on the cheaper one. The only difference is how often you pay. Yearly works out at two months free, so if you are keeping the site for a year it is the one to take. Enter your card and the account upgrades as soon as the payment goes through. The card details go straight to our payment provider; we never see them. You can cancel at any time from the Account tab, and nothing here is a contract.
Social: Contacts
Your own address book of industry people, kept where the rest of your career already lives. Add a contact with as much or as little as you have: a name and an email is enough to start. Categories are what make it useful later, so group people the way you actually think about them - agents, casting, crew, class - rather than alphabetically. The notes field is the part that pays off. Where you met somebody, and what they were working on, is exactly what you cannot recall two years later.
Transcript of the video
Contacts is your own address book of industry people, kept where the rest of your career already lives. A name and an email is enough to start. Everything else can be filled in later. Categories are what make it useful. Group people the way you actually think about them: agents, casting, crew, class. Use the notes field. Where you met somebody and what they were working on is exactly what you cannot recall two years later. A contact list you can search beats a phone full of names you no longer place.
Tools: Signature
An HTML email signature built from what is already in your profile: your name, your photo, your links and your site. Pick a layout, a photo shape and an accent color, and the preview updates as you go. When it looks right, Copy for Gmail and paste it into Gmail's own signature box - the steps are on the page, in Gmail's words, because that setting moves. If you use something other than Gmail, take the HTML source instead. Every casting email you send is an advertisement for your site, so this is worth ten minutes.
Transcript of the video
Your email signature is built from what is already in your profile. Your name, your photo, your links and your site. Pick a layout and a size, and the preview updates as you go. Choose the photo shape, the accent color and the icon style to match the rest of your presence. When it looks right, copy it for Gmail and paste it into Gmail's own signature box. The steps are on the page. Every casting email you send is an advertisement for your website. This is ten minutes well spent.
Settings: Integrations
The outside accounts your website can pull from, each connected once and then left alone. Instagram puts your feed on your site. SoundCloud brings in your tracks and playlists. Mailchimp receives the people who sign up for your newsletter. Every Single Blog is where your blog posts live and has to be connected before the Blog page will do anything. Dropbox lets you import media from a folder instead of uploading file by file. Connecting one changes nothing on your site until you also switch on where it appears.
Transcript of the video
Six services can be connected here, and each one adds something to your website that you would otherwise be keeping up to date by hand. A card tells you whether it is connected before you touch anything, so you can see the state of everything at a glance. Two of them want an API key, which is a long string you generate on their site and paste here. The card tells you exactly where to find it. A connected service shows what it is connected to, so you can check it is the right account before you rely on it. We only ever read. Nothing is posted to your accounts and nothing there is changed.
Settings: Emails
An email address on your own domain, which reads as more professional than a free one and costs you no extra inbox to check. Create a forwarder, choose the address you want, and point it at the mailbox you already use. Mail starts arriving within a few minutes. Make as many as you find useful. If you also want to reply from that address rather than only receive at it, see the article on sending your mail through Gmail, which walks through connecting it once.
Transcript of the video
An address on your own domain reads better on a resume than a free one, and it does not mean another inbox to check. Pick the part before the at sign. Your first name, or hello, or booking. Keep it simple enough to read out over the phone. Then choose which of your domains it belongs to. This list fills in once a domain is connected, so if it is empty, start on the Domains page. Create it and mail sent to the new address arrives in the inbox you already use, usually within a few minutes. Make as many as you find useful. This forwards mail to you. If you also want to reply from the new address, there is a separate article on sending through Gmail.
Settings: Account
Your account rather than your website. The email here is also what you sign in with, so changing it changes both, and the new address takes effect at once. Account Type reshapes the control panel around what you do, which is why a filmmaker sees sections an actor does not. Below that is your subscription and, at the bottom, the danger zone. Canceling stops the billing and takes your site down at the end of the period you have paid for. Deleting removes everything, permanently, and we cannot get it back.
Transcript of the video
This page holds the three things that are about your account rather than about your website. The first is what kind of performer you are. It decides the words the rest of the control panel uses, and which sections you are offered, so it is worth getting right even though you can change it whenever you like. The second is the address you sign in with. Changing it here changes your login, so use an address you will still have in five years rather than the one attached to a job. The third is the one at the bottom. Deleting your account removes your website, your media and your credits, and we cannot bring any of it back. Nothing else on this page is dangerous. If you are only trying to stop being billed, cancel under Billing instead. That leaves everything here intact.
Website: Fonts
Three typefaces, and they do different jobs. The heading font is seen first and can have character. The subheading font sits underneath it and should agree with it rather than compete. The body font is the one people actually read, so choose it for legibility and nothing else. Two families across a whole site is plenty, and one is not too few. If you are unsure, leave the design's own choices alone: they were picked to work together, and a swapped font is the quickest way to make a good design look wrong.
Transcript of the video
Three typefaces, and they do different jobs. The heading font is seen first and is allowed to have character. The body font is the one people actually read, so choose it for legibility and nothing else. Two families across a whole site is plenty, and one is not too few. If you are unsure, leave the design's own choices alone. They were picked to work together, and a swapped font is the quickest way to make a good design look wrong.
Making your website visible
Your site stays private until you switch this on, which is deliberate. It gives you time to add your photos and credits without anybody arriving halfway through. While it is off, visitors see a coming-soon page rather than an error, so a link you have already given out still leads somewhere reasonable. Switch it on when your headshot, your bio and a few credits are in place. Waiting for the site to be finished means waiting forever.
The icons your links are drawn with
Every social link on your site is drawn with an icon, and this is where you choose the set. They differ in weight and in shape, so pick the one that suits your design rather than the one you recognize: a heavy icon set under a delicate design looks borrowed. The choice applies everywhere your links appear, including your email signature and your link.actor page, so it is worth setting once and leaving alone.
Your website's preloader
The preloader is the short animation shown while your page is still loading. Pick one from the list and Show me plays it full size so you can see it properly before choosing. It is drawn in your own colors, so it belongs to your site rather than sitting on top of it. None is a perfectly good answer: on a fast connection your pages arrive before an animation has finished, and a visitor sees a flash rather than a flourish.
Your website's favicon
The favicon is the small icon in a browser tab and on a phone's home screen. You have three options. Follow my design uses whatever the design provides, which is the safe default. Use my initials draws your initials in your own colors, which reads better than most logos at sixteen pixels. Or upload your own, in which case use a square image with one strong shape in it. A headshot does not work here: at this size a face becomes a smudge, and a letter or a mark stays readable.
Website: Design
The design decides everything about how your website looks, and switching is safe: your photos, credits and text stay exactly where they are, and only the presentation changes. Browse the catalog, pick one, and preview it before you commit. Nothing goes public until Make your website visible is switched on, so you can try several while the site is still private. If you already have a website elsewhere, or you have seen one you like, use Import design and tell us about it rather than trying to rebuild it yourself.
Transcript of the video
The design decides everything about how your website looks, and switching is safe. Your photos, credits and text stay exactly where they are. Only the presentation changes, so you can try several before you commit. Nothing is public until Make your website visible is switched on, which means you can browse the whole catalog in private. On the right are the settings that apply whichever design you pick. Your social icons, your preloader, and the small icon in the browser tab. Pick one that gets out of the way of your work. The design is the frame, not the picture.
Settings: Password
Change your password here. It must be at least seven characters, and longer is better than clever: a passphrase you can remember beats a short string of symbols you cannot. If you have forgotten the current one, do not use this page. Sign out and use the forgotten-password link on the sign-in screen instead, and we will send you what you need. Changing your password does not sign you out anywhere else, so change it on your other devices too if you share the account.
Settings: Notifications
Which emails we are allowed to send you. Turn off anything you do not want and it stops immediately. A few cannot be turned off, and they are the ones you would be angry to miss: a message left through your contact form, a receipt, a warning that a payment has failed or that your domain is about to expire. Everything else is optional. If our mail is not arriving at all, check your spam folder before changing anything here.
Social: Newsletter
Everyone who has signed up through the form on your website, in one list. If you connect a Mailchimp audience under Settings then Integrations, new signups are added to it automatically and you can write to them from there. Without that connection the names are still collected here and are yours to export. If the audience you connected is later deleted inside Mailchimp, this page will say so rather than quietly stopping, and you can pick another one.
Social: Presence
Type a username and we check whether it is free across the networks, which is worth doing before you settle on one. There are three answers, and the third matters: exists, does not exist, and the site did not answer clearly. The last one usually means the network blocked our check rather than that the name is free, so treat it as unknown and confirm by hand. Using the same handle everywhere makes you findable, which is the whole point of choosing carefully now.
Social: Mentions
We watch the trades and the social platforms for your name and collect what we find here. The term we scan for matters more than anything else on this page: a common name returns other people's news, and a stage name spelled differently returns nothing at all, so set it deliberately. New mentions are unread, bookmarked ones are kept, and anything genuinely about you can be pushed into your Press list in one click, where it becomes part of your website. Delete removes a mention for good.
Transcript of the video
We read the trades for your name and keep anything that mentions you. Deadline, Variety, the Hollywood Reporter, IndieWire and The Wrap. This field decides everything. A common name brings back other people's news, and a stage name spelled differently brings back nothing at all, so set it deliberately and check the first results. Scan now goes and looks. What it finds lands underneath, and it keeps looking afterwards without being asked. Each mention can be bookmarked, dismissed, opened at the source, or copied straight into your Press page, where it becomes part of your website. Nothing reaches your site unless you put it there.
Tools: AutoBlog
Search engines reward a site that changes and ignore one that does not, and most people have neither the time nor the appetite to write about themselves every month. Switch AutoBlog on and we write articles about your work for you. Nothing is published automatically: each draft waits here for you to read and either approve or decline, and only what you approve goes anywhere. Approved articles can be copied onto your own blog, which needs Every Single Blog connected under Settings then Integrations first.
Tools: Hired Actor
Casting notices, gathered and filtered to what you can actually be seen for. This one is not built yet. It is on the list rather than abandoned, and this page will fill in when it is ready. In the meantime the parts of the control panel that get you seen are your reel, your credits and your website being visible, so those are where the time is better spent.
Tools: reels.link
One shareable address for your reel, with chapters, so the person watching can jump to the scene you want them to see. Add a chapter for each moment worth naming and give it a start time in seconds. Casting people watch the first fifteen seconds of a reel and decide, so your strongest material should be first and the chapter names should say what the scene is rather than which project it came from.
Tools: link.actor
A single-page link hub at link.actor, for the one link social profiles allow you. It is built from what is already on your site, so there is nothing to maintain separately: your photo, your links, your reel and your contact details are already there. Pick a color to match the rest of your presence. If you have connected SoundCloud, you can choose which playlists appear. It is a signpost, not a website, so the fewer things it points at the better it works.
Tools: Repopulator
Rather than typing your credits in one by one, the Repopulator goes and looks for them. It searches the places your work is already listed, brings back what it finds, and offers each one for you to accept or reject. Nothing is added to your site until you say so. Confirm the profiles that are genuinely yours and dismiss the ones that are not, and the ones you dismiss will not be offered again. A scan takes a few minutes, and it is worth running again after a job goes public.
Transcript of the video
Rather than typing your credits in one by one, the Repopulator goes and looks for them in the places your work is already listed. At the top are the profiles it watches, each with the date it last checked. Those are the sources; if one is missing, connect it under Settings. Rescan goes and looks again. It takes a few minutes, so it is worth running after a job goes public rather than twice in an afternoon. Everything it finds waits here for you. Add puts it on your site. Dismiss rejects it, and a dismissed item is not offered again. Nothing is added automatically. Every item on this page is a suggestion until you accept it.
Tools: You! Backstage
A short interview on your own website. Pick questions from the list or write your own, then answer them in your own voice. This is the one part of an actor's site that is allowed to sound like a person rather than a resume, so keep the answers short, specific and honest, and it will do more for you than another paragraph of biography. Three or four good answers beat a dozen thin ones. You can change or remove any of them at any time.
Tools: Actor Emails
An email address on your own domain, which reads as more professional than a free one, without another inbox to check. Mail sent to the address you create here is forwarded to the inbox you already use. Set up as many as you find useful. A forwarder starts working within a few minutes of being created. If you want to reply from the new address as well as receive at it, see the article on sending your mail through Gmail.
Website: CTAs
The call-to-action buttons your design shows, usually near the top of the page and in the footer. Point one at a page you already have, or at any address you like. The best ones ask for one thing: watch the reel, read the resume, get in touch. Two buttons that ask for the same thing in different words are worse than one. If your design shows no buttons, nothing you set here will appear, and that is the design's decision rather than a fault.
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These are the call-to-action buttons your design shows, usually near the top of the page and in the footer. Point one at a page you already have, or at any address you like. The best ones ask for one thing. Watch the reel, read the resume, get in touch. Two buttons asking for the same thing in different words are worse than one. If your design shows no buttons, nothing set here appears, and that is the design's decision rather than a fault.
Website: Blog
Posts on your own site, written here. The blog itself lives on Every Single Blog, which is why you have to connect it once under Settings then Integrations before this page will do anything. After that, write the post, add an image and a caption, tag it, and save. A post stays a draft until you make it active, so you can leave something half-finished without it appearing on your site. Writing regularly is the single cheapest thing you can do for your search results.
Website: Shop
Sell something from your website: a course, a download, prints, tickets. Add a product with a title, a description, a price and at least one image, and it appears in a Shop page on your site. A sale price shown beside the full one does more work than simply lowering the price. Set a quantity if there is a real limit, and leave it blank if there is not. Orders arrive on the Orders tab and by email, and it is on you to fulfill them; we take no cut and hold no stock.
Website: More Page
Some designs have a More page that gathers whatever does not have a home of its own: past events, reviews, a client list, a gallery. What it contains has never been something anybody chose, it was whatever the design's author decided, which ranges from two blocks to eight. This page is where you say. Leave it on In your design and nothing changes. Switch to Your choice and you pick the blocks and their order yourself.
Website: HTML Upload
For a standalone page that is not part of your website's structure. A one-off landing page, a file somebody asked you for, something you were given as finished HTML. Upload it and it is served from your own domain at its own address, outside the menu and outside your design. If what you want is a real page of your site, with your fonts, your colors and a menu entry, use Website then Pages instead: the result is part of the site rather than a visitor's dead end.
Website: Script Tags
Third-party snippets: analytics, an advertising pixel, a chat widget. Paste the code your provider gave you and it is added to every page of your site. New scripts wait for review before they go live, usually within a day, because a script tag can read everything on the page it runs on and we would rather be slow than sorry. If you only want Google Analytics or Clicky, you do not need this page: enter the ID on the Statistics page instead and we wire it up for you.
Website: CSS Editor
Your own CSS, loaded after the design's, so anything you write here wins. This is the right place for a small correction: a heading you want tighter, a color the design uses in one spot you dislike. It is the wrong place to rebuild a page. Save little and often, and if something breaks the layout, clear the box and save again to get back to where you were. Nothing here can damage your content; only how it looks.
Website: Pages
Which pages your website has, what the menu calls them, and how they read on Google and when somebody shares a link. Drag pages into the order you want, rename one, or take it out of the menu without deleting it. Add Page creates a page of your own with your own content. The SEO title and description are written for you and are usually fine, so change them only when you have a reason. If you set a custom slug, the address changes, so update any link you have already given out.
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Pages decides what your website has, what the menu calls each one, and how they read on Google. Drag them into the order you want, rename one, or take it out of the menu without deleting it. Add Page creates one of your own, with your own content. The search title and description are written for you and are usually fine. Change them only when you have a reason. The social card image is what appears when somebody shares a link to you, so it is worth setting once.
Website: Background
The image or texture behind your pages. Leave it as No Background and the design uses whatever its author intended, which is usually the safest answer. If you upload your own, use something large and low in contrast: a background competes with your text for attention and it should lose. Around 1920 pixels wide is enough for any screen, and a quiet image at that size will look better than a busy one at twice it. You can remove it at any point and the design goes back to its own.
Transcript of the video
The background is what sits behind your pages. No Background lets the design use whatever its author intended, which is usually the right answer. Or upload your own. Use something large and quiet: a background competes with your text for attention, and it should lose. There are ready-made sets too, dark, light, patterned and transparent, that are made to sit under this design. You can take it off at any point and the design goes back to its own.
Website: Colors
Every design is built from two colors, and this is where you set them. The primary color carries your buttons, your links and most of the accents; the secondary sits behind headings and dividers. Change one and the whole site follows, so it is worth choosing here rather than overriding things later in the CSS editor. Pick from the swatches or enter your own hex value. If you have a headshot you want the site built around, sample a color from it and the pages will hang together.
Transcript of the video
Every design is built from two colors, and this is where you set them. The primary carries your buttons, your links and most of the accents. The secondary sits behind headings and dividers. Change either one and the whole site follows. Pick from the swatches, or enter your own value if you have a color you already use. If you have a headshot you want the site built around, take a color out of it and the pages will hang together.
Credits: Clients
Brands and companies you have worked for, as distinct from the projects themselves. A commercial actor, a voice artist or a crew member often has a client list worth showing even when the individual jobs are not worth listing one by one. Add the name and, where a design supports it, the logos are arranged into a wall on your site. Keep the list to work you would be happy for a casting director to check, and leave off anything you cannot stand behind.
Transcript of the video
Clients is for the brands and companies you have worked for, as distinct from the projects themselves. A commercial actor or a voice artist often has a client list worth showing even when the individual jobs are not worth listing one by one. Add the name, and designs that support it arrange the logos into a wall. Keep it to work you would be happy for somebody to check, and leave off anything you cannot stand behind. A short honest list reads better than a long one nobody believes.
Media: Video Player
How your videos are framed on your website: the skin around the player, not the videos themselves. Add and organize those under Media then Videos. Pick a skin and your reels are shown in it everywhere they appear. As with the audio player, some designs impose their own treatment and will override this, so check the live site rather than the preview if the two do not match. This page appears once you have at least one video.
Media: Audio Player
This page only decides how your audio looks and behaves on your website; it does not hold the audio itself, which lives under Media then Audio. Pick a player style and the preview shows you roughly what visitors will see. Some designs draw the player their own way and will ignore parts of what you choose here, so if the preview and your live site disagree, your live site is right. The page is hidden until you have uploaded at least one track, since there would be nothing to configure.
My Crew
The people you work with, kept in one place so you do not retype them for every project. Add a name, a role, a short bio, a website and an IMDb link. A crew member can belong to a particular film or to none at all: leave the film blank for someone you work with often and they stay available for whatever you make next. Anyone listed here can be dropped onto a film project website without being entered again.
Your film's own website
A film project website is a separate site for one film, on its own address, built from the material you already have here. The editor is in sections. Wording covers the title, tagline, logline and description. Links holds the IMDb page and the trailer. Design sets the accent color, the fonts and the banner. Stills pulls images out of your Media library, and Crew lists the people who made it. The end-credit roll is built line by line, in the order it will play, and accepts headings and gaps as well as names.
My Films
If you make films rather than only appear in them, this is where you say which of your credits are yours. Mark a credit as your film and it becomes a project you control rather than a line on a resume, which means it can have its own crew, its own stills and its own website. Removing a film from this list does not delete the credit; it simply stops treating it as yours. Marking a credit here is also what makes the film project website option available for it.
Profile: Reviews
Short quotes about your work, from critics, directors or collaborators. Keep each one to a sentence or two. A pull quote earns its place on a page by being read at a glance, and a long paragraph gets skipped. Add who said it and, where there is one, a link to where it was published, which is what makes a quote believable rather than decorative. If a whole article is worth linking to, put it in Press instead and use Reviews only for the line you want people to actually read.
Transcript of the video
Reviews are the short quotes about your work that go on your site. Keep each one to a sentence or two. A pull quote earns its place by being read at a glance, and a long paragraph gets skipped. Add who said it, and where it was published if there is a link. That is what makes a quote believable rather than decorative. If a whole article is worth linking to, that belongs in Press. Reviews is for the one line you want people to actually read. Two strong quotes beat six weak ones.
Profile: Press Kit
A press kit is a single PDF built from what is already on your site: your photo, your bio, your credits and your contact details. You do not write it, you generate it, so it is worth filling in your profile first and creating the PDF afterwards. Once it exists you choose where it appears. Hidden means it is yours to send by hand, or you can offer it as a link on your About page, in your footer, or both. Regenerate it whenever your credits change; the old file is replaced.
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A press kit is a single PDF built from what is already on your site: your photo, your bio, your credits and how to reach you. First decide where it appears. Hidden means the file is yours to send by hand, which is what most people want, because a press kit carries your contact details in a form that is easy to copy. Then the bio, written in the third person, which is the convention for a press kit. The guidance underneath is worth reading; it is four paragraphs and it tells you what belongs in each. Create PDF builds the file from everything above. It takes a few seconds. Regenerate it whenever your credits change. The file that exists is the file people download, and it does not update itself when your site does.
Profile: Press
Anything written about you belongs here: reviews, interviews, festival coverage, a mention in a trade paper. Add the title, the publication, the writer, the date and a link to the piece. We fill in the publication's logo for you where we recognize it, and you can upload your own image instead if we get it wrong or the outlet is a small one. If the article is about a particular project, attach it to that credit and it will appear on the project's own page as well as in your press list.
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Press is anything written about you. A review, an interview, festival coverage, a mention in a trade paper. Add the title, the publication, who wrote it, the date, and a link to the piece. We fill in the publication's artwork where we know it, and you can upload your own if we get it wrong or the outlet is a small one. If the article is about a particular job, attach it to that credit and it appears on the project's page as well. One good review, quoted and linked, is worth more than a paragraph describing yourself.
Dashboard: Referrals
You have a referral link, and anyone who subscribes through it earns you a share of what they pay for as long as they stay. This page holds the link, how many people have used it, what you have earned, and what has already been paid out. When there is enough to collect, use Request a payout and choose an Amazon gift card, PayPal or a check. If you would rather send the link to particular people than post it publicly, Invite by email does that and keeps track of who you have already asked.
Transcript of the video
Send somebody your link. If they subscribe, you earn a dollar a month for as long as they stay, and there is no cap. This is your link. Copy it and put it where actors who need a website actually are, which is usually a class group or a profile people already follow. Underneath is what it has earned: how many people subscribed, what is unpaid, and what has already been paid out. Earnings appear once somebody is charged rather than when they sign up. When there is enough to collect, Request a payout offers an Amazon gift card, PayPal or a check. If you would rather ask particular people than post it, Invite by email does that and remembers who you have asked.
Dashboard: Tasks
Your setup checklist. Every item is something still missing from your website, in roughly the order worth doing it, and each one links straight to the page that clears it. Work down the list and your site fills itself out. Nothing here is compulsory and nothing expires, so an item you do not want can simply be left. Finished items move into the completed list at the bottom, which is worth opening if you want to check something was actually saved.
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Tasks is the checklist of everything still missing from your website. They are in the order worth doing them, and each one links straight to the page that clears it. Nothing here is compulsory. If a task does not apply to you, dismiss it and it stops asking. What you have already finished collapses into the completed list at the bottom, which is worth opening to check something actually saved. Work down the list and your site fills itself out.
Dashboard: Home
This is the first page you see after signing in, and it is a summary rather than a place to edit anything. The chart at the top counts unique visitors over the last two weeks, and the map below it shows the cities they came from. Beside that you will find your current IMDb STARmeter rank, a thumbnail of your live website as it stands right now, and the add-ons available to you. If your site is still hidden, or you have not chosen a design yet, this page will say so before anything else.
Transcript of the video
This is the first thing you see after signing in, and it is a summary rather than somewhere to edit. The chart counts unique visitors to your website over the last two weeks, and the map underneath shows where they came from. Beside it is your IMDb STARmeter rank, and the button that puts your profile into our viewing rotation. Underneath is the design your site is wearing right now, with the add-ons available to you. Nothing here needs doing. It is the page you check, not the page you work on.
Settings: Domain
This feature is available to actors with a premium membership. If you already have a domain name and want to add your domain name to the website you will find the appropriate steps here. Some domain hosts may not be listed, while others may have gone through a redesign and the instructions we provide may be out-of-date. We try our best to always keep up, but if you ever get stuck, feel free to contact us and we will help you out with it. If you do not have a domain name and would like to purchase one from us, click the "Purchase domain with Web For Models" button and follow the steps on the screen.
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Your website already works at a Web For Actors address. This page is for putting it on a name of your own. Type the name you want and we check whether it is free. Your own name is the one worth having, and dot com is still the one people guess. If it is available, I want this domain registers it and points it at your website in one step. There is nothing to configure afterwards. If you already own it, somewhere else, use the other button instead. We show you exactly what to change at your registrar, and the change takes a few hours to travel. Either way your old address keeps working, so nothing you have already handed out stops working.
Website: Design, Colors and Background
These were one screen once and are three tabs now. Design is where you pick the design itself and preview it against your own content. Colors sets the two colors everything else is built from, so changing one carries through the whole site. Background is the image or texture behind your pages, and leaving it on None lets the design use its own, which is usually the right answer. Everything saves as you go; there is no step to finish.
Profile: Representation
This feature is available to actors with a premium membership. This section is used to add your representing agent or manager. If your manager is not yet on Web For Models, fill out your manager's email and he or she will be invited to join free of charge. Once the manager receives your invitation, the contact information on your website will be replaced with his or her information. Submission of the contact form on the "Contact" page will still go to you, but all of the phone numbers and email addresses that will be listed will belong to your manager instead.
How do I redirect my domain to Web For Models?
This option is the last resort for connecting your domain name to your website, please review this topic for other options. If you choose this option you will still be responsible for renewing your domain and you will lose any SEO value that Web For Models offers. Here's a video explaining how to point your existing domain name to your actor website.
How do I point name servers to Web For Models?
With this option, you will still be responsible for renewing your domain. This option will point your domain name to us and we will manually connect it to your website. We recommend transferring your domain name to Web For Models instead, but if you prefer this method, here's an example video explaining how to update your name servers on GoDaddy.
How do I remove my account?
First of all, if there's anything that we can do to improve your Web For Models experience, please contact us and we'll do our best to help you. If you are a premium member, you first need to cancel your premium subscription on your Settings page. Otherwise, you can click "remove everything" in the bottom right of the Settings page. This action is irreversible.
Will you notify me of updates to the services?
Whenever there are significant changes to the service, new templates or improved features, we will certainly post it in our blog so make sure you stay subscribed to receive important notifications. You can also view all current and previous versions and updates on our Current Version page. Also, don't forget to follow us on Twitter.
How do I hide my age?
Simply leave your date of birth blank, and the website will adjust itself not to show your age anywhere. For your convenience, we also have an option of "Age from" and "Age to" fields. You can still leave those blank if you chose to do so. If your age was populated when your website was created, simply log into your control panel and update it.
Do you offer more than these three templates?
Far more than three. Five designs are free on any plan, and there are around ninety-five in total once you are a premium member. They are not a scale from bad to good either: the free ones are finished, deliberate designs, and some members stay on one by choice. Browse the whole catalog under Website then Design, preview any of them against your own content before you commit, and switch as often as you like. Your photos, credits and text stay where they are; only the presentation changes.
How do I get a domain name?
Web For Models offers domain name connectivity with the Premium package. Learn more about Web For Models features to understand what is included in the Premium package. Once you are ready to go Premium, click here and you will be redirected to the checkout page. Upon completion, you will receive guidelines on how to get your domain name.
What forms of payment do you accept?
We currently accept payments via PayPal, credit and debit cards. All recurring payments are processed securely via Braintree Payments, a PayPal service. For more information about prices visit Pricing Plans page. We do not store any financial information in our databases. All payments are processed securely via PayPal.
What if I already have my own domain?
If you purchased a domain outside of Web For Models you have 3 options. If you are not very attached to your current domain name, you can pick a brand-new one, and let the other one expire. If you want to keep it, we recommend unlocking your domain name and transferring it to us. In some cases, we make exceptions and allow you to point your name servers to Web For Models.
Why do I need a website?
Take a look at the blog post titled: Actor's Needs Vs Actor's Should Haves. All casting directors and their approaches vary. Some will google you to find out more about you. Indie film directors will almost certainly do so as well. The question is: do you want them to find your Facebook page or your professionally designed actor website instead?
Who can benefit from a personalized website?
Well, while "Actor" is in the name, Web For Models's personalized websites can easily improve the web presence of Actors, Dancers, Stand-Up Comedians, Models, and any other creative. Web For Models websites make it easy to showcase your film and TV work by importing and maintaining your credits, photos and videos alike. Check out few reasons for an actor website few reasons for an actor website.
Can I preview other designs before I pay?
Of course! If you currently have a free profile, log into your control panel and visit the Website page. From there, click Designs to see all available designs. There you can try different templates for one day to see if you like them. Chose different colors and backgrounds to further customize your design. If you like what you see, click on the "Go Premium" button and you'll be on your way to having your own actor website linked to your own domain.
How to unlock my domain for transfer?
If you already have a domain name and you are a premium member of Web For Models, we can take over the payments for your domain for you. Note: if you already have an email set up with that domain, you will lose access to your older messages. Here's a video explaining how to unlock your domain name and get the transfer authorization.
Where can I find my billing information?
Billing information is available on the settings page here. You can update your payment information and / or stop all payments by downgrading to a freemium profile. Keep in mind that once the payment is stopped, you will not be able to resume subscription at the same price point you originally accepted and any discounts you may be receiving will no longer be offered. If you're unsure of something, let us know if we can help you in any way as this action cannot be reversed.
Can I add a page to my website?
This feature is available to actors with a premium membership. You can add a new custom page here. Custom pages are purely content pages that you can update with your own content that will match the rest of your website design. If you need a page with functionality that you believe is missing from our system like a shop page or an autograph request form, feel free to reach out to us and we will be happy to provide you with all available options.
How do I delete my account?
You can completely delete the website on the settings page. In the bottom right you have a section that will prompt you once more to make sure that you understand that this action cannot be reversed. When you delete your account, we remove your website and every single detail related to you from our system, so please make sure you have everything you need before deleting your account.
How do I list press articles?
You can list all of your press releases here. {Company} also allows you to write your own press item which can be handy for anyone who needs to demonstrate that they have press articles available via You Backstage integration. This is done incognito, and nothing on the site discloses that the interview was created by you. Feel free to add your own questions or use some of the questions we prepared for you.
Social: Messages
This section is used to view all the incoming messages from your website. If a visitor fills out the contact form on the "Contact" page of your website, the message will be sent directly to this section. You will also be alerted that you have a message via email. You may then ignore and delete the message or you can respond to it using your email client.
Transcript of the video
Everything sent through the contact form on your website arrives here. You are emailed as well, so you do not have to keep this page open to know somebody wrote. Read it, reply from your own email client, or delete it. Anything the filter thinks is spam is held back rather than thrown away, and Show Removed brings it into view, so nothing real is lost if it gets one wrong. A message here is somebody who found you and wanted to talk. Answer it the same day if you can.
Website: Statistics
This feature is available to actors with a premium membership. Use this page to view the graph of unique visitors over the past 2 weeks, as well as to see which pages were viewed and how many times. You can also see which websites have referred visitors to you and how many times. Finally, you can see where your visitors are coming from geographically by seeing the number of total views and city and state of your visitors, or city and country for international visitors.
Transcript of the video
Statistics is who visited your website, where they came from, and what they read. The count at the top is unique visitors over the last two weeks, not page views. Top Pages tells you what people actually came for, which is often not the page you expected. Referring Sites shows who sent them, and Visitor Locations shows where in the world they are. If you want your own analytics as well, add a Google or Clicky ID and we wire it up.
Credits: Awards
This section is used to advertise any awards you might have received within your profession. If you do not have any awards, simply skip this page completely. If you do have one or more, you can list them in here by populating the name of the award, organization offering this award and year that this award was obtained. If this is related to a project that you were a part of, also list the name of the project. All of your awards will be shown on the "More" page of your website.
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Awards is for wins and nominations. Add the award, the organization that gave it, the year, and the project it was for. If it was not for a particular project, mark it not applicable and it still appears. Awards are one of the few things on a website nobody argues with, so list them even if they feel small. A festival nomination is worth putting up. Somebody thought your work was worth naming.
Credits: Your Credits
This may be the biggest part of your website. Here you should add the list of all the projects that you were a part of. We recommend adding all projects, no matter how small. If you do not want the project to show on your website, you can always hide it, but if you then want to build a resume with an option to show this project, you will be able to do so. Populate all fields to the best of your ability, but if you do not know something, just leave it blank. The only mandatory fields are "Title / Role", "Project" and "Dates", but we recommend at least adding the director's name and the category of the project.
Transcript of the video
Credits is the body of your work, and it may be the biggest part of your website. Add every project you have been part of, however small. Title, project, category, role, billing and the dates. Only the title, project and dates are required, but the director and the category are worth adding, because that is what people search on. Anything you would rather not show can be hidden rather than deleted. It stays on file, and it is still there when you build a resume. Add them all. You can always take one off the site later, but you cannot list a job you never wrote down.
Media: Audio
This section is used to add any audio files that could be used to represent your vocal abilities. Whether you want to show off your singing voice, your talking voice, foreign language skills, or your accent — this is the place to do so. Simply fill out the title of your audio file and a description and upload the file to your website.
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Audio is for voice reels, songs, and anything else that plays. Upload a file, or several at once, and give each one a title and a description. Group them into categories on the right. That grouping is what drives the player on your website, so it is worth doing properly. A playlist collects tracks into a reel somebody can listen to end to end. Once you have a track, a Player tab appears under Media where you choose how it looks.
Media: Videos
Adding videos could not be simpler. Enter the title and the description of your video and then paste in the link to your video. Currently we support YouTube video embedding and Vimeo video embedding. Any non-supported link formats will be added to the system and listed in the "More" page under the "Links" section. If you need other service support added to the Videos section, please send us a request and we will do all the research necessary to see if it is possible to add this feature.
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Videos is where your reels and clips live. Paste a YouTube, Vimeo or TikTok link and the clip is embedded on your site. You can also search your own YouTube uploads without leaving the page. Group them into categories and each becomes its own reel. A demo reel, commercials, theater, whatever suits your work. Give each one a title and a description, because that is what appears underneath the player. Lead with your strongest thirty seconds. That is usually all anyone watches.
Media: Photos
Adding photos is simple: drag them all onto the uploader at once, or upload them one at a time if you want to write a caption for each as you go. You can edit any caption later. Each image can also be marked as your Profile Photo, a Headshot or part of the Slideshow. There is only ever one profile photo, and it is the one used on your resume, inside the control panel and on your website. Headshots and slideshow images are given more prominence by designs that have somewhere to put them. To change the order, click Enable Sorting above the list first, then drag an image into place; it saves as you drop it. Leave a caption blank and we write one for you.
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Media, then Photos, is where every image on your website lives. To add pictures, drag them onto the uploader, or use Upload a File to add them one at a time and write each caption as you go. These switches decide where an image appears. There is only ever one Profile Photo, and it is the one used on your resume, in here, and on your website. Group your images into categories on the right, and each one becomes its own gallery. Headshots, production stills, whatever suits your work. To change the order, click Enable Sorting above the list, and then drag an image into place. It saves as you drop it. Put your strongest work first. Most people look at the first few and stop.
Set main photo
To select which image is your primary image, simply go to your gallery, open any specific image by clicking the "pen" icon, and select the toggle that says "Profile Photo". Once you do that, you will see the notification that says "Profile Photo" show up on the image you selected next to the image label. The change is instant and there's no need to press the save button.
Profile: Events
Only available to actors with a website plan. Do you have an event coming up and want people to know about it? This section is used to list all of your upcoming and past events alike. If the event is taking place in the future, this event will be advertised on your homepage with optional location, link, date and time. If the event happened before, but you still want it to appear on your website, keep it toggled to "Show Event" and it will be shown on the "More" page of your website.
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Events is for anything with a date on it. A screening, a performance, an opening night. Add the title, where it is, a link if people need to book, and the date and time. An event still to come is advertised on the front of your website, so people arriving find it first. One that has already happened does not disappear. Leave Show Date on and it moves to your More page, which is where a body of work accumulates. Keep adding them. A site with something happening on it reads as a working actor.
Profile: Links
This feature is available to actors with a premium membership. This section is used to connect your website to your social media pages, your IMDB page, and any other link that you may be interested in advertising. Social media links will show up in different locations, depending on your website layout (usually in the footer), while all of your custom links will be added to the "More" page of your website within the "Links" section.
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Links is every profile of yours worth pointing at from your website. The networks we know draw their own icon automatically. Add the address and we do the rest. Anything else goes underneath as an other link, with whatever name you give it. Use Enable Sorting to put them in the order you want people to try them, strongest first. Which icon set they are drawn with is set once, under Website then Design, and applies everywhere they appear.
Profile: Training
This section is used to populate the list of schools you graduated from or are currently a part of. This includes actual schools such as colleges and professional training/classes you might have partaken in. For schools, add the school's name and ZIP code, your major, and years attended. If you obtained a degree from this school, select the option from the list. For training, there is an additional option to add teacher names and category. Select the primary category for the class you attended. If the class was focusing on two different categories (i.e. dance and theater), add the class twice with different categories. If you do not remember teacher names, just leave it blank.
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Training is where you say who you have studied under, which matters more than where. List your classes and workshops with the school and the years. A well known teacher's name does more work for you than the name of the studio. Colleges and universities go underneath, with the degree and the major. Then skills. Add everything you would be willing to do on camera, and feature the strongest so they lead. A hidden skill stays on your record without appearing on your site, which is useful for something you can do but would rather not advertise.
Profile: Skills
This section is used to list all of your professional and non-professional skills. Do not forget to rate yourself on those skills on a scale from 1 star to 10 stars (1 being the weakest and 10 being the strongest). Whatever you feel are your strongest abilities, mark them as "Featured". Those actors with a website plan will be able to see these skills listed on the home page. Skills marked as "Standard" will be listed below the languages section on your "Experience" page, while those marked as "Hidden" will not show on the website, but will be taken under consideration for search purposes.
Profile: General
This section is used to edit your basic information. Populate your name, title, date of birth and physical attributes. Change your password and contact information and write out a few words about yourself in the bio section. If you do not want certain information to be listed, simply leave it blank, or in case of numeric values set it to 0, and the information will not be shown anywhere. Location can also be added on this page. Simply enter the ZIP code of the location where you are available for work — one ZIP code per city is recommended. Then you can toggle your choice of primary location. This is the location that will be shown on the map on your website.
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Profile, then General, is the material every design on your website draws from. Start with your name and the physical details casting asks for. Anything you would rather not publish, leave blank, or set to zero, and it is left off your site entirely. Your biography sits underneath. Write the long one, and if you leave the short one empty we will write it from the long one for you. On the right is your representation. Add an agent or a manager, and their contact details replace yours on the website. Nothing here is wasted effort on one page. Fill it in once and every page of your site is built from it.
Profile: Languages & Ethnicity
This section is used to update the list of the languages you speak and to claim your ethnic background. You can select how well you speak a given language on a scale from 1 to 10 (1 being the weakest and 10 being the strongest). If you want to list your accent, do it in the "Skills" section instead. As far as ethnicity goes, some people may look like they may belong to other ethnic groups. If you want to advertise that, you may select multiple ethnicities and select "Native" for your own.
Video: Sending your mail from Gmail
Once you have an email address on your own domain, Gmail can send from it as well as receive at it, so your replies come from your domain rather than your personal address. It is a one-time setup inside Gmail's own settings, under Accounts, Send mail as. The video is an earlier recording and shows a previous version of the control panel; the steps above are current.
Video: Actor website reviews
A walk through real actor websites, saying what works on each one and what does not. Worth watching before you spend an evening on your own: most of the mistakes are the same few, and nearly all of them come down to burying the reel and the contact details. The video is an earlier recording and shows a previous version of the control panel; the steps above are current.
Can I see how many people visited my website?
You can see basic analytics for your website from your Dashboard. Here you can see a graph demonstrating how many visitors your website received in the last two weeks, as well as where the visitors came from. This feature is available to premium members only.
What's the purpose of hidden skills?
Hidden skills are skills that may not be necessary to have visible on your website, but you'd still like to have a record of them. A good example would be "driver's license." You probably don't want it listed on your website or resume, however, if someone does a search for "actor with New York state driver's license" you still want to show up in results.
Can I have a social media feed on my website?
Not every template currently supports social media feeds, but as a premium member, you have access to a few templates that do. Simply populate your social media usernames in the links section, enable the social media feed on the settings page and our algorithms will populate your latest tweets and posts right on your website!
How do I create thumbnail images?
All thumbnails are created automatically. We want to ensure that every single website is fully optimized to the maximum so we enforce resizing of the images to match the size that's being used by a website. In addition, most images will be converted to the ".webp" format which are smaller in size and load up much faster. If you need help creating a specific thumbnail images for your website, contact us and we will gladly crop the images for you so that everything looks exactly the way you need it to.
Video: Transferring a domain from GoDaddy
Transferring moves the domain to us completely, so renewals and hosting sit in one place. Unlock the domain in your GoDaddy account first, request the authorization code, and give us that code. A transfer takes up to seven days and cannot be started within sixty days of registering the domain, which is a registry rule rather than ours. The video is an earlier recording and shows a previous version of the control panel; the steps above are current.
Video: Forwarding your domain to your website
Forwarding is the simplest option and the weakest: the domain sends visitors to your site rather than becoming your site, so the address in the bar may change and you get none of the search benefit. It is fine as a stopgap. Transferring the domain to us, or pointing its name servers, both give a better result. The video is an earlier recording and shows a previous version of the control panel; the steps above are current.
Video: The YouTube banner generator
A free tool that makes a correctly sized YouTube channel banner. YouTube crops the same image differently on a phone, a laptop and a television, so a banner that looks right when you upload it often loses its text on two of the three. This sizes it so the important part survives all of them. The video is an earlier recording and shows a previous version of the control panel; the steps above are current.
Video: Changing name servers on GoDaddy
Pointing name servers keeps the domain registered with GoDaddy and hands us the hosting. In your GoDaddy account, open the domain, find Nameservers, choose to enter your own, and replace both with the ones we give you. It takes anywhere from a few minutes to a day to take effect. GoDaddy moves this screen from time to time, so if it does not match, search their help for nameservers. The video is an earlier recording and shows a previous version of the control panel; the steps above are current.
Can I upload a resume to my website?
Yes. Go to Media then Resumes and upload the file. A PDF is the safest choice: it looks the same on every device and cannot be edited by accident. Word files are accepted too and are converted for you. Your resume appears on your website as a download, and it is worth replacing it whenever you add a credit rather than leaving last year's version in place. If a casting director downloads a resume that is missing your newest work, that is the version they have of you.
How do I update my Union Status?
You can change your union status right from your profile page. If you are a member of more than one union, you can choose a second union to be listed on the website. Unfortunately, we do not offer listings of three or more unions. If you need help selecting a union or you do not see your union listed, please contact us and we will review and add missing items as needed.
Can I transfer Nameservers / DNS?
All nameservers and any other DNS settings are set by our team internally. We do not offer to host external websites, nor do we allow our code to be used externally. If you need to change your domain hosting and transfer nameservers, please downgrade your account or shut down your website and you will receive domain transfer-out details via email.
Do I get a domain name for my website?
A custom domain for your website (for example: yourname.com) is available to all premium accounts (renewal fees are included in your membership fees). All renewals are done automatically and you don't have to worry about remembering to renew your domain. The only way your domain can expire is due to non-payment, but we will not let your domain expire without notifying you first, so rest assured your domain is safe with us. If you need to transfer your domain out, you can downgrade your account or shut down your website and you will receive domain transfer-out details via email.
Can I sort my media?
Yes, and by hand rather than by date. Open your photos, videos or audio, click Enable Sorting above the list, and drag an item into the position you want. It saves as you drop it, and it is the order visitors see. Click the button again when you are done. Sorting works inside a category, so if your work is split into galleries you order each one separately, and the button is unavailable while you are looking at hidden items. Put your strongest material first: most people look at the first few and stop.
Nothing matches that. Ask us directly and we will answer, and probably add it here.
Still stuck?
The help center walks through the control panel section by section, in video and in writing. Anything it does not cover, write to us.