If you want to send your clients links to pre-shoot-prep and/or what-to-wear guides, one easy way to do this is to add them to your website as a page or blog post and then email them the link. There are several ways you can do this. One way lets them be accessible to everyone who visits your site, while the other is password-protected and you can control who can view them.
Let’s look at how to add guides to your website if you use Squarespace, Showit, WordPress, and WIX.
Adding Pre-Shoot Guides to Your Website
First up, if you simply want to add these guides as blog posts or pages to your website and you want them to be visible to all visitors, you can create a post or page as usual and then simply add the blog post link to your pre-shoot emails.
However, if you do not want these guides to be visible to all website visitors and only visible to your clients, you can add them as password-protected pages to your website. Here are the steps to do that on a few of the most popular website platforms.
Creating Password-Protected Pages to Your Website
When you password-protect a page or post on your website, it allows you to host information, like PDFs, blog posts, pages, and videos, that you only want to share with certain people. Doing this also gives you an easy way to host documents on your website without having to set up a different service to do so.
Tip: While you can password-protect blog posts and pages on most websites, it’s easier to do it with pages rather than blog posts so that you can keep them out of your blog feed and hidden from regular visitors to your site. OK, let’s get started!
Password Protecting Pages on WordPress and Showit
If you have a WordPress or Showit website, these instructions will be the same, as your pages and posts are hosted and edited via WordPress.
Open the WordPress editor for the piece of content that you want to add password protection to.
Find the Visibility option in the sidebar on the right-hand side.
Click on it.
Select Password Protected and enter the password that you want to use to unlock the post.
You can then send the link to this post and the password to unlock it to whomever you like.
Password Protecting Pages and Posts on WIX
Start by going to the page settings panel of your website.
Select Pages & Menu in the Editor menu on the left.
Select the page you want to password-protect.
Click the More Actions icon.
Click Settings.
Open the Permissions tab.
Select Password holders.
Enter a password of your choice for the page.
Press the Enter
Your page is now password protected and you can share the link to it and the password to unlock it.
Password Protecting Pages on Squarespace
Open the Pages panel.
From the Pages panel, click a page to protect with a password.
Click the to the right of the page title to open page settings.
Scroll down to Password and enter a password in the field.
Click Save.
Once you've saved your password, a lock icon will display next to the page title in the pages panel.
Important Notes:
A few things to keep in mind…
If you password-protect a page on any website or blog, this also prevents search engines from crawling and indexing that page. This means that password-protected pages do not appear in search results. So, if you want to use your guides to get traffic to your website do not password-protect them.
Never use the same passwords that you use for your website (or anything else) as a password for your password-protected posts or pages.
When you send your link and password to people, be sure to let them know that the password is case-sensitive. Save yourself a headache and make passwords all caps.
Once your pages and posts are password protected, go ahead and test them for yourself to make sure they work before you send the password and link out.
If you don’t want random visitors to your website to see locked pages, add them to a separate category, for example, “locked pages” or “locked guides” and do not add this category to your navigation menus.
Add Guides To Google Drive
If you don't have a website yet, you can simply upload it to a Google Drive folder and send them the link that way! This article can help you there!
We hope this was helpful and gave you an easy way to send out pre-shoot prep and/or what-to-wear guides as links in your “thanks for booking” or “pre-shoot prep” email automations! Still need some more help? Send us a message in-app or via our contact page.