The control panel is your website address with /admin/ on the end. Bookmark it, or add it to your phone home screen so it opens like an app.

The first time you sign in, the site insists you replace the temporary password before it lets you do anything else.

There is no automatic reset, which is deliberate — it is one less way in for anyone else. If you are locked out, contact us.

Someone deciding whether to trust you with their pool wants to see a pool exactly like theirs, fixed. This is the most valuable section on the site.

1. Open Case Studies and add a new one.
2. Project title — what the job was. “Green pool restored to swimmable” beats “Pool job 4”.
3. Project location — the suburb. This is what makes you appear in local searches.
4. Short summary — a line or two for the listing.
5. Cover image — tap to choose or drag a photo in. Use your best “after” shot.
6. Narrative — what the pool was like, what you did, how long it took.
7. Service tags — tick which services the job used.
8. Add the remaining photos, then save.

Deleting a case study removes its photos too and cannot be undone. If you are unsure, edit it instead.

Each service gets its own page, so someone searching for one specific thing lands on a page about exactly that.

• Service title — the name a customer would use, not the trade term.
• Category — which part of the business it belongs to.
• SEO title — what Google shows. Include the area, e.g. “Pool cleaning in Manor Gardens”.
• Short blurb — one line for the services listing.
• Full description — what the work involves and what the customer gets.
• Who this is for — the situation a customer would recognise themselves in.

The quotes on your home page. Add one whenever a customer says something worth repeating — a WhatsApp message is usually enough.

• Their name — as you would like it shown.
• What they said — paste it in their own words.

Hide rather than delete if you only want one off the site for a while. Deleting is permanent.

Short updates: a service you have added, an area you now cover, seasonal advice before the summer rush. A site that never changes looks closed.

1. Title and Date.
2. Excerpt — the one-line teaser on the listing.
3. Body — the post itself.

Four sentences is a perfectly good post. One a month is plenty — two good ones a year beat twenty abandoned drafts.

Anyone with a login can set their own name and photo, and each case study is credited to whoever added it — so work appears under the name of the person who actually did it.

• Set your display name — the name customers should see.
• Add a photo. A clear face in daylight beats a posed studio shot.

Adding someone new. If you are the main account holder you will see a Login accounts panel further down this page. Type their name, and the site creates a username and a temporary password for them. Write that password down — it is shown once and cannot be looked up afterwards. They will be asked to set their own the first time they sign in.

Up to five people can have logins. You can remove anyone except yourself and the main account, so nobody can accidentally lock the business out of its own website.

Everything sent through the contact form lands here and is saved permanently, so nothing is lost if an email goes astray or a phone is replaced.

You are also told the moment one arrives — by email, and by a message straight to your phone. You do not need to sit watching this screen.

Finding a particular enquiry. The list opens on the last seven days. The buttons along the top switch that to 30 days, 3 months or everything, or set your own From and To dates and press Apply. You can also narrow it to a single status — new, contacted, quoted, won or lost.

The count on the right tells you what you are looking at. Longer lists are split into pages of ten, with Newer and Older buttons underneath.

Marking progress. Change the status on any enquiry as you work through it. If you are filtering by status at the time, that row will disappear from the list — that is correct, it has moved to a different status.

These show across the whole site, so changing one here changes it everywhere it appears. There is no second place to remember.

• Phone — header and footer, tappable on a phone.
• Email — where enquiries and replies go.
• Business hours — when you are contactable.
• Instagram — leave blank and the link will not appear.
• WhatsApp number — puts a WhatsApp button on every page of the site. Leave it blank to remove the button entirely. Any format works.
• Demonstration data notices — a switch that shows the "this is sample data" notices while the site is still being demonstrated. Turn it off once the sample enquiries and news posts have been cleared.
• Tagline — the line under your name at the top.
• About copy — the paragraph describing the business.

• After every job — add it as a case study while it is fresh. Ten minutes on your phone in the van is enough.
• Once a week — check Enquiries. The alerts are reliable, but phones get put on silent.
• Once a month — a short news post, and a look over Services to see whether anything you now offer is missing.

• A change has not appeared — refresh properly: hold the reload button and reload without the cache.
• A photo will not upload — it may be very large. Try one at a time, or on a stronger signal.
• Signed out unexpectedly — normal. Sessions expire for security. Sign in again.
• Password will not work — type it rather than letting the browser fill it. If it still fails, contact us.

Stuck on anything at all, get in touch — digitalelevation.co.za