Using Start Page with Buffer
Start Page is a simple, sleek, easy-to-create microsite for your small business. Set up calls-to-action, direct users to your products and blog posts, and direct them to your social channels. It takes only 5 minutes to customize your Start Page, making it the easiest way to create a branded one-stop shop for all of those “link in bio” callouts.
In this article:
- What is a Start Page?
- Building your Start Page
- Editing and publishing your Start Page
- Deleting your Start Page
- How to redirect or forward your own domain to your Start Page domain
- Scheduling Start Page posts
- Image, video, and GIF specifications for Start Page
- Engaging with Start Page posts
- Start Page analytics
- Start Page error library
What is a Start Page?
Start Page is a standalone aspect of Buffer (it is a full-fledged microsite after all!), but you can also schedule posts to it via your Publishing tab.
Take a look at a sample Start Page and learn about why your business needs one in this short video, and then follow the steps below to make your own!
📝 Start Page counts as a channel just like any other social channel that you have connected to Buffer. If you are on any of our paid plans, publishing a Start Page means you have to pay for an extra channel. On the Free plan, it counts as one of the 3 channels you can have.
Building your Start Page
- Click the blue + New button in the top navigation bar and select Create a Start Page.
- From the "Choose a template" menu, click on one of our pre-designed layouts (you can customize this more later!)
- Give your Start Page a nickname for your own purposes—customers won't see this; it's just for your reference when you're working within Buffer.
- Get creative when customizing! You can add, remove, and edit blocks (including dragging and dropping them to change their order) to set up a website that looks and feels like your company. Add your company's logo and tagline, upload images, add links to your shop and latest blog post, post your latest video content, and link out to all of your social channels.
📝 Notes
- Feel free to create and switch between multiple Start Pages by clicking on the name of your current Start Page in the upper-left corner of your Start Page dashboard.
- At this time, it's only possible to create and edit a Start Page on desktop. However, creating posts for scheduling is available on mobile and desktop.
- Only Buffer users with Admin permissions are able to create and edit that organization's Start Page. Learn more about changing user permissions in your organization.
- Start Pages are deleted automatically whenever the corresponding Buffer account is deleted.
Deleting your Start Page
You can delete your Start Page with a few quick steps:
- Head to the Channels page within Buffer.
- Click the three dots to the right of your Start Page.
- Select Delete Channel from the dropdown list.
- Deleting a Start Page does not automatically remove the paid channel slot. Follow these steps if you’d like to learn more about adding or removing a channel slot from Buffer to affect your payment.
- Removing a Start Page from Buffer will remove all existing posts, analytics, and data. These cannot be recovered.
Editing and publishing your Start Page
Below is a guide explaining how to use your Start Page dashboard
| Areas | Description of each section within your Start Page dashboard |
| Appearance | Create the look for your Start Page by choosing a theme, button colors and font. |
| Layout | Manage the layout of your Start Page. You can drag-and-drop content blocks to reorder them, edit their content by clicking directly on them, and delete or hide blocks (this is handy when you don't currently need a block but might need it again later). |
| Add Block | This is where you add new content to your Start Page! Think of these as content blocks that allow you to fill your Start Page with text, links, images (or an image grid with up to 18 images!), videos, social links, music, updates, and even an email signup form (learn how to set up an email signup for your Start Page for your marketing initiatives with our Mailchimp integration)! Did someone say “updates”? The Updates block is where posts published to your Start Page via the publishing tab will appear. Feel free to jump to the Scheduling Start Page Posts section below. 📝 New content blocks will appear at the bottom of your Start Page, and you can move them up by going to the Layout tab and dragging and dropping the content block to the desired location |
| Publishing/Editing Start Page | Your Start Page isn’t visible to others until it’s published. After editing, click the Publish Start Page or Publish changes button to ensure your most recent version is live. Email verification is required to publish a Start Page. |
| Share your link/Spread the word! | Your Start Page is the story of your brand. Get the word out by copying your Start Page link and adding it to the bio on your social channels, like TikTok, Instagram, and more. |
| Statistics | To view your Start Page stats, jump to the Start Page analytics section below. |
| Settings | Unpublish your Start Page, change its page domain, or change its [internal] name. |
How to redirect or forward your own domain to your Start Page domain
Want a Start Page, but don’t want the domain that comes with it? If you have already purchased a domain (e.g. www.[yourchoice].com), you can use a masked redirect or domain forwarding to redirect/forward your domain to your Start Page.
For instructions on how to redirect/forward your domain to your Start Page, you will need to follow the steps provided by the domain provider that you purchased your domain from. Here are links to the steps from Godaddy, Namecheap, Name and Dynadot. If you are using a different domain provider, you can search their help guides for your domain name provider for “masked redirect”, “stealth forwarding”, “domain forwarding”.
📝 A drawback to using masked redirect or domain forwarding is that in can affect your SEO score, as there are now two domains showing the same Start Page content. Although we don’t have a timeline, we’re currently looking into other solutions to improve this for you.
Scheduling Start Page posts
Schedule posts to be published directly to your Start Page! These will appear in your Updates content block. If you forget to add an Updates block, a feed block will be created automatically for you. However, doing it yourself ensures that you get to choose the placement of it.
| Features & good-to-knows | Notes |
| Scheduling posts | Checkout our step-by-step guide to scheduling posts on any social channel or peruse Start Page-specific details below. |
| Viewing Posts | Start Page will display the five most recent published posts. As a new post is published, the oldest post will be hidden. |
| Removing Posts | To remove a previously published post:
|
| Editing Posts | At this time, it is not possible to edit a Start Page post once it has been published. Instead, you would need to delete the post and publish a new post. |
| Daily posting limit | Unlimited posts per 24 hours. Learn more about Daily posting limits here. |
| Character limit | 5,000 characters per post. |
Image, Video and GIF specifications for Start Page
Start Page supports videos (YouTube links), images and GIFs.
| Videos | Images | GIFs | |
| File types supported | YouTube links | JPEG, JPG, and PNG | GIF |
| File size | - | 10MB | 3MB |
| Dimensions | - | Maximum 1024 x 1024 |
📝 The recommended size for your background/header image is 640 x 200 pixels
Engaging with Start Page posts
Buffer’s engagement features are only available for Facebook and Instagram. It is not possible for visitors to engage with your Start Page posts.
Start Page analytics
Click on Statistics to view your daily, weekly and all time traffic as well as how many link clicks you've received (including your social links). Please republish your Start Page to get the statistics on the clicks on your links.
- Page Views This Week captures traffic from the last seven days, inclusive of today.
- Previously, our Start Page analytics included all traffic, regardless of the source. This sometimes led to inflated page views, as the traffic included numbers for bots and crawlers.
- As of Jan 29, 2024, we’ve added filters to remove traffic from sources like bots and crawlers. This should reflect a more accurate picture of real interactions with your Start Page. The filtered data should reflect on both current and historical analytics.
- There isn't currently a way to download or export your Start Page Statistics.
Start Page error library
We don't currently have an error library for Start Page, but feel free to reach out to our Customer Advocates at hello@buffer.com if you're hitting any errors.
📝Do you have a Start Page feature suggestion? We’d love for you to submit or upvote it here on our feature suggestions board.