How do I use the built in website builder? Print

Every station comes with a ready-made website, with your live player built in. It shows what's playing now and the songs played recently, plus your logo, an "About" section and links to your social pages. It works on phones and computers, and you can put it on your own domain.

Create your website

1. Open Website in your radio panel. If you have several stations, pick the station at the top first.
2. Click Create website. It stays private until you publish it.
3. Fill in the settings on the left:
   • Theme: the design. More themes are on the way; your content carries over when you switch.
   • Content: site title, a short tagline, an About text (a blank line starts a new paragraph), the site's language and an optional description for Google.
   • Look: dark or light style, your accent colour (also used for the player), and your Logo and Header image (click Upload).
   • Player: big or small player, the visualizer (real-time, animated or off) and its style, the cover image (your logo or the cover from the Player page) and its shape, whether to always show the cover instead of album art, the font, text size, start volume and scrolling titles. A new website starts with the settings from your Player page; changes here only affect the website.
   • Sections: show or hide Recently played, About the artist, Listen anywhere (playlist files and stream link) and About.
   • Links: your website, Facebook, Instagram, X, YouTube, TikTok and contact email, shown as icons at the bottom.
4. Click Save. The Preview on the right shows the saved version on a desktop or a phone.
5. When you're happy, tick Published and save again. Your site is now live at the address under Your address.

You can change the last part of the address (for example /s/my-radio) under Publish > Address.

Artist photos and biographies

Your site looks up each artist automatically: Recently played shows the artist's photo next to every song, and About the artist shows the artist on air right now with their photo, where they're from, when they were born, genres, Spotify followers, similar artists, links to Spotify and Last.fm, and their biography. Long biographies open with Read more. Visitors can click any song in Recently played to read about that artist. On a network website, each station's card also shows a photo of the artist it is playing now. If an artist isn't known, the section simply stays hidden. For the best match, keep the Artist field of your uploaded songs tidy (you can fix it with Edit on the Media page).

Song requests

If your station takes song requests (the Requests page), tick Song requests among the sections and your site gets a request box in its own colours, where listeners search your music and ask for a song. See Song Requests: Let Listeners Pick the Music.

Use your own domain

There are two ways. Pick one.

Option 1: Redirect (easiest)

Your domain sends visitors to your site. The address bar then shows your SmartStream address.

1. Sign in at the company where you bought your domain (GoDaddy, Namecheap, Squarespace, IONOS and so on) and open its Forwarding or Redirect settings.
2. Forward the domain (and www, if offered) to the address shown under Your address.
3. Choose Permanent (301) and without masking / framing. Masked forwarding hides your site from Google and can stop the player from working on phones.
4. Save. It can take up to an hour to start working.

Option 2: DNS (your domain stays in the address bar)

Your site opens directly on your domain, with a free security certificate (https) that SmartStream sets up and renews for you.

1. On the Website page, open the DNS tab, type your domain (for example myradio.com) and click Use this domain.
2. The page shows the records to add. At the company where you bought the domain, open its DNS settings and add them. For a subdomain (like radio.mysite.com) that is one CNAME record. For a whole domain it is a CNAME for www and an ALIAS (also called ANAME or CNAME flattening) for @, all pointing to the host name shown. If your DNS company has no ALIAS option, use a subdomain such as radio.myradio.com instead, and forward the bare domain to it in your domain company's Forwarding settings.
3. Delete any other A, AAAA or CNAME records for the same names (for example a "parked" page). If your domain uses Cloudflare, set the records to DNS only (grey cloud).
4. Wait a few minutes (sometimes up to a few hours), then click Check DNS & activate. When it shows Live, your site is on your domain.

If the check says the domain points somewhere else, the DNS change hasn't reached the internet yet, or a record is still pointing to the old address. Wait a little and check again.

Network website (resellers)

If your account has several stations, open the Network website tab to build one site for all of them. Each station gets a card with its logo, what it's playing now and a Play button. Under Stations on this site, tick the stations to show and use the arrows to order them; the first one plays when the page opens. A network website has all the same settings and domain options as a station website.