Hosted sites
If you are on one of our plans, we look after the hosting for you. This page covers your address, your own domain, storage, backups and email.
Everything else (pages, blocks, portfolio, being found on Google, style kits) is covered in your website.
---
Your address
Choosing your address
When you create a site you choose the name that sits in front of meridianphotographers.com. Entering elowenhale gives you elowenhale.meridianphotographers.com.
Just the name. No .com, no .com.au, no www.; those belong to a domain, which is a separate thing you connect afterwards. Use letters, numbers and hyphens, between three and thirty characters.
If you type a full web address by mistake, we say so and suggest the part that will work, so it is nothing to worry about.
Your site is live on that address within a couple of minutes of signing up, and the address keeps working even after you connect your own domain.
Connecting your own domain
Your own domain (such as elowenhale.com.au) is included on Sites and Studio. It is not available on the free plan.
- In your studio, go to Website → Your address. (You can also press
Add your domain on the Your sites page of your Meridian account.)
- Under Use your own address, type your domain in Your domain, without
http:// or www., and press Use this one.
- A table called The records to add appears. Each row is a setting to copy
into the company you bought your domain from (your registrar), usually in a section called "DNS" or "DNS records".
- Wait, then press Check them now. We also check every few minutes by
ourselves.
The table shows:
| Name | Kind | What it does |
|---|---|---|
@ |
ALIAS / ANAME / CNAME flattening |
Points your bare domain at your site. Use this if your registrar offers it; it keeps working even if we move servers. |
@ |
A |
The same job, for registrars that do not offer the option above. Use one or the other, not both. |
www |
CNAME |
So www. reaches the same site. Visitors are moved to your bare domain automatically. |
_meridian |
TXT |
Proves the domain is yours. You can delete it once your site is live. |
Changes like these can take a few minutes or most of a day to take effect, depending on your registrar, and nothing can speed that up. Once they do, the secure padlock (https) is set up for you automatically.
Nothing breaks while you wait. Your meridianphotographers.com address keeps working throughout, and afterwards.
Two registrar quirks worth knowing: some want the Name box left blank instead of @, and some add your domain on the end for you. If you end up with www.example.com.example.com, enter just www.
To stop using your domain, go back to Website → Your address and press Go back to the Meridian address.
---
What it costs, and what is included
There are three plans. Plans compares them in full and explains how to move between them.
- Free: client galleries, up to 2 galleries, on an address we give you.
- Sites ($16.50 AUD a month): your website on your own domain, with every style kit and block, the secure padlock, daily backups and updates.
- Studio ($39 AUD a month): the website and the whole business behind it, with 200 GB of storage.
You change plan on the Your sites page of your Meridian account, and nothing is deleted when you do.
Storage
Every plan has a storage limit. It counts the photographs and films in your galleries: the files you upload, plus the smaller copies made for viewing on the web. Your website's own text and settings are not counted.
The full-size original files in a gallery are removed 30 days after it is delivered, so older galleries take up very little room.
On Studio, the Galleries screen and Billing show how much you have used. Free and Sites are sized for what they are for (a couple of galleries, or a website's own photographs) and do not show a figure.
If you run out
An upload that would go over is refused with a plain message, before anything is stored. Nothing is deleted, nothing breaks, and your site stays online.
The usual fix is a tidy-up: old proofing galleries are almost always the biggest thing on a photographer's site and the least missed. Moving up to Studio gives you 200 GB. If you need more than that, raise a ticket.
---
When a site is suspended or deleted
Suspended means the site is offline and visitors see a holding page. Your content, photographs and settings are untouched. A site is suspended when its plan ends or is cancelled; paying again brings it straight back by itself.
Deleting a site is done by us, at your request: raise a ticket. It goes offline straight away, but it is not erased straight away. A deleted site is held for 30 days, during which we can put it back complete (pages, settings and photographs) if you ask. After that it is erased for good and cannot be recovered by anyone.
That waiting period is a safety net for a mistake or a change of heart, not a backup. If a site holds work you cannot lose, take your own copy before asking for it to be deleted.
---
Backups
Your site is backed up every night, automatically, to separate storage. That is a safety net in case something goes wrong on our side, not a substitute for your own copy.
Take your own copy before anything big, such as a redesign or a big clear-out: go to Website → Site settings, open the Site details tab, and press Download a copy under Take a copy of everything. See backups.
---
Email from your site
Every enquiry is saved in your studio before any email is sent, so an enquiry is never lost to an email problem.
Your site sends its own mail, through your own email provider. We host your website, not your email, so enquiry notifications and automatic replies go out under your own domain and your own good name. Postmark, Fastmail, Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 all work.
Set it up under Website → Site settings, on the Email tab, then send yourself a test with Send one under Does your email work?. The step-by-step is in email & enquiries.
If Send through is left on This machine, notification emails very often land in spam or vanish, because the mail does not come from anywhere connected to your domain. The enquiry itself is safe either way, saved in your studio, but you may not be told it arrived.
---
Updates
We keep the software up to date for you. There is nothing to download or install. New versions are tried on our own sites before they reach yours.
---
When something is wrong
Raise a ticket. We can see more than you can: support can run a check on your site that looks at whether it is reachable, whether its files are intact, how much storage you are using, and whether your domain and padlock are working. It usually finds the answer faster than a back-and-forth would.
Two things worth checking first:
- A new domain not working? Domain changes can genuinely be slow. Give it a day before assuming something is broken.
- An upload refused? Your storage is full. See if you run out.
---
Closing your site for a while
To show visitors a "back shortly" page while you work on your site, go to Website → Site settings, open the Maintenance tab and switch on Hide the site. You can change What it says and And underneath. Your studio keeps working for you while visitors see the holding page. See maintenance mode.
We may also show that page for a few seconds while an update is applied. Nothing is lost.