Running your restaurant website

Your website comes with the Website plan and lives at yourname.postmyplatter.com. Almost everything on it is run from the same app you post with, so there is no separate dashboard to learn. This covers the things people ask about most.

Your web address

You choose it when you set the site up, and it is checked as you type so you know straight away whether it is free. It is included in the plan and there is nothing extra to buy.

You pick it once. Changing it afterwards needs a message to us rather than a setting, and that is deliberate: the address ends up on printed menus, table cards and QR codes, and a link that stops working is worse than a name you have grown out of. Choose your restaurant name rather than a description.

The Website plan does not use your own domain. If you want a site at your own domain name, that is part of our done-for-you Services.

Opening hours and closures

Type your hours once and the page works them out from there. It shows a green Open now or a red Closed, calculated in your own timezone and updating on its own. There is no switch to flip at the end of service.

• Split shifts work, so a lunch service and a dinner service on the same day are both shown.
• Past midnight works, so a bar open Friday until 2am reads as open at 1am rather than closed.
• Days you are closed should be set as closed rather than left blank.

Closing for a holiday? Add a closure notice and give it an end date. You can set it weeks ahead and forget about it: it appears on the page when the closure starts and disappears on its own when it ends.

Your menu

Your menu is sections and dishes, each with a name, an optional description, a price and an optional photo. Prices show in your own currency, which follows your country setting.

You do not have to type it. Up to five photographs of your physical menu board work instead, and they can be used as well as a typed menu rather than only instead of one. For a food truck with one board, photographing it is the whole job.

If you do type it, you start from a sample menu based on your cuisine, so you are renaming real rows rather than starting from a blank screen.

When a dish runs out, flip the sold out switch. It stays on the page, dimmed and labelled SOLD OUT rather than disappearing, so people can see it existed and to come earlier next time. Flip it back when you have it again.

Every one of these edits is a form in the app, and every one shows on your page straight away. You never have to raise a ticket with us or wait on anybody to change a price, and there is nothing to reprint: your QR code points at the page, and the page is what changed.

Which posts appear

Every food post you make lands on your site automatically the moment you save it, newest first. Today’s special is promoted to the top of the page. There is nothing to publish a second time.

The newest twenty posts show. Older ones stay in the app: the site is a window onto what you are cooking now, not an archive.

To keep one post off the site, turn off the “My website” switch while you are creating it. That post is then only in the app and wherever else you share it. Everything else still appears as normal.

The QR code menu card

Your QR code opens your menu, not your homepage, because someone who has just sat down wants to know what the food is and what it costs.

You can download it two ways:

• The code on its own, as an image or as a vector. Use the vector if you are blowing it up to a window decal or an A-board, because it will not go fuzzy at any size.
• A printable table card, which carries your logo, restaurant name, address, phone and web address around the code. It is A6 at print resolution, four to a sheet, in black and white so it runs off the back-office printer.

You do not need to reprint anything when your menu changes. The code points at your page, and your page is what updates.

Style and color

There are four styles and five color palettes. Every combination is checked for text contrast, so there is no pairing that comes out unreadable.

Your cover photo sits at the top of the page and you can reposition and brighten it after uploading, so it does not need to be cropped perfectly on the phone first.

Publishing and unpublishing

Publishing and unpublishing take effect straight away, and so does everything else. Change a price, mark a dish sold out or edit your hours and the page a customer sees updates immediately. There is no queue, no cache to wait out and nothing to redeploy.

If your subscription ends, the page stops being served rather than staying up with wrong information. Your content is not deleted, and resubscribing brings the page back.

On the free Preview plan and on Editor you can still fill in your details and see your real page, built from your own posts and profile. Claiming an address and publishing are the parts that need the Website plan. See what the Website plan includes.

Questions? Email us.