Skip to content
Back to BiteTheMenu Site

Home page builder

By default your home page is generated for you: a hero photo from your menu and a rail of recommended dishes. It works, but it’s the same shape as everyone else’s.

The rule

Add one block and your custom page replaces the automatic one. Remove them all and the automatic version comes back. Nothing here is permanent.

The blocks

Every block shows you a small moving picture of what it puts on your page. You can see what you are choosing before you choose it.

  • Hero — the big banner. A headline, a subhead, a photo or video behind, and a button.
  • Image — one photo. Full width, or in the middle with round corners.
  • Video — a short clip with a caption.
  • Carousel — photos and clips that change on their own.
  • Featured menu items — dishes you pick, shown as a grid of cards.
  • Text section — a heading and a paragraph. Your story, your news, a press quote.
  • Picture and words — a photo on one side, your words on the other. Pick which side the photo sits on. On a phone the photo is always on top.
  • Photo wall — many photos at once. A grid of squares, or one row that slides sideways. It needs two photos before it shows.
  • Questions and answers — the questions people ask you, with your answers. See Questions and answers.
  • Where you are — your address, a map, and a button that opens it on your guest’s phone. It reads your address from Settings, so you change it in one place.
  • Offers — your lunch set, your happy hour, your set menu. See Your offers.
  • Call-to-action banner — a headline and one button. “Book a table”, “Call us”, “See the menu”.
  • Opening hours — your week. It reads the times from Settings, so you change them in one place.
  • What’s on — your next nights. It reads your events, so a night that has passed goes away on its own.

How to use it

  1. Open Web Pages → Homepage builder.
  2. Press + Add another block and pick a type. It appears at the bottom of the list ready to edit.
  3. Fill it in, then drag to reorder. The number on each row is where that block sits on your page, counted from the top.
  4. Click a row anywhere on its picture or its name to open it.
  5. Hide anything that is not ready instead of deleting it. A hidden block keeps what you wrote and stops showing on your page.
  6. Save.

Scroll films

A scroll film holds the screen and moves forward one frame at a time as the visitor scrolls. It’s the effect big brands use for a product reveal, and it works well for an oven, a pour, or a plate being finished. The visitor is the play button.

You can put one on the header at the top of your page — your headline and button sit over it the whole way — or on a Video block further down.

You fill it with a film you’ve already made. There’s nothing to upload here and nothing to pay.

Pick one of your films

Any film you’ve finished in Films shows up in a list on the block. Pick one and it’s on your page straight away — those pictures already exist, so it costs nothing.

Haven’t made one yet? The block says so and gives you a Go to Films button.

If a film was already playing at the top of your page, the one you pick for the header replaces it. Turn the header’s film off and the other comes straight back. To swap it later, use Use a different film.

How much scrolling it takes is the only dial, and it’s the speed: there’s no play speed on a film you scroll, so spreading it over more screens makes it slower and more deliberate.

Good to know

  • Turning a film off never deletes it — putting it back later is free.
  • Putting a film on your header borrows the top spot from your photo. Turn the film off and your photo comes back.
  • Anyone who has asked their phone or computer to reduce motion sees a single still photo, and downloads none of the rest.
  • On a tall phone screen, a film made in both shapes shows the tall version — not a wide one with the sides cut off.

How each part arrives

Open any part and the last control is How this part arrives — appear, slide in from a side, grow, or wipe down. Two or three parts with their own way in reads as a designed page. All of them reads as a page that twitches. See How your page moves.

Watching it change

Your real page sits beside the block list, so you never have to open a second tab to check a change. Switch it between Desktop and Phone, and between your languages, to see exactly how each reader gets it. It refreshes a moment after each save — while you are still typing, it keeps showing the page as it stands, because that is still the page your visitors have.

When nobody is seeing this page

The name at the top of the screen carries a Live or Not live tag, and when it reads Not live an amber bar stays pinned there while you scroll, saying which of three things is in the way:

  • Your link goes straight to the menu. One button on the bar — Make this my landing page — fixes it without leaving the screen.
  • Your look has no home page at all (Text menu, Photo menu). Change the look in Web Pages → Website Settings; the bar links there.
  • Your whole site is switched off. Nothing is public until you put it back.

You can still build it, and still see it. The preview beside the block list draws your home page as it will look, even while your link sends people somewhere else — so you prepare the page first and switch it on when it’s ready, rather than publishing a half-built page to see it. Everything you build is saved.

The one exception is a site that is switched off. Nothing is public then, so there is nothing for the preview to draw either.

Good to know

  • Visitors see blocks in your order, top to bottom, with hidden ones skipped.
  • A hero video is usually stronger than a hero photo, but keep it short and silent — it autoplays muted.
  • Featured dishes pull live from your menu, so a dish you hide from the menu disappears from the home page too.