Website builder

Overview

The Website builder is where you design and maintain your outfitter’s Mallard Bay–hosted marketing website from the dashboard. You work on a visual canvas: multiple pages, ready-made sections and blocks, global theme settings (colors and typography), and per-element settings and style controls.

What you build is stored as your outfitter website. Save stores your latest work in Mallard Bay. Publish saves and then pushes that version live so guests see your updates.

The builder is tightly linked to listings: starter layouts and blocks can pull trip marketing details from listings you already manage elsewhere. Booking and request a quote blocks connect visitors to Mallard Bay flows so interest turns into bookings or quote-related leads, which you continue to handle in the dashboard—not inside the page editor.

You open it from the dashboard at /web-builder (navigation label Website Builder).

Prerequisites

• Active outfitter context — The screen expects an outfitter to be selected. If you are logged in as an internal Mallard Bay admin without impersonating an outfitter, you may see a prompt to select one instead of the editor.
• Website Builder on your subscription — Access is gated by the Website Builder feature on your plan. If it is not enabled, you will see paywall content instead of the editor.
• Listings (recommended) — You can use the builder without listings, but listing-backed pages and blocks only reflect trips that exist under Manage listings. More listings generally mean richer default navigation (for example a Listings menu grouping links to listing pages).

Exact team-member permission rules for every outfitter role are not fully described in this codebase; if someone cannot reach Website Builder or lacks expected page actions, verify their outfitter access and plan with Mallard Bay support.

Step-by-step: Using Website builder

1. Open the builder

1. Sign in to the Mallard Bay admin dashboard.
2. Select your outfitter if prompted.
3. Open Website Builder.

On first use, Mallard Bay creates your website record automatically when you load the page—you do not need to create an empty site manually.

2. Learn the layout

• Canvas (center) — Live preview of the page you are editing. You can switch device widths (large desktop down to mobile portrait) to check responsive layout.
• Top bar
  • Undo / redo
  • Site settings (gear) — Favicon, optional snippets for the HTML head, and—after the site has been deployed at least once—your public site URL field.
  • Theme settings (palette) — Global colors and fonts that drive the site theme.
  • Save — Saves the current site (success message when the website is updated).
  • Publish — Saves without that standalone save toast, then runs publish so the live site matches the editor.
• Right sidebar — tabs
  • Pages — Pick the page you are editing, add pages, duplicate or delete (where allowed), and open page details.
  • Blocks — Drag prefabricated sections and components onto the canvas.
  • Settings — Options for whatever is selected (copy, links, images, listing picks, etc.).
  • Style — Spacing, colors, typography, and responsive tweaks; selecting something on the canvas moves focus here automatically.

There is also a Feedback mode control at the bottom of the builder. That mode is for internal notes about the site design inside the builder—it is not the same as guest reviews elsewhere in the dashboard. Entering feedback mode swaps the sidebar and hides the usual editing actions until you exit.

3. Work with pages

1. Open the Pages tab.
2. Select a page to edit it on the canvas.
3. Add a page — Choose a title and optionally a template (for example blank or listing-focused). For listing-specific templates, you must choose which listing the page belongs to.
4. Edit a page — Rename pages where allowed; listing-linked pages keep their listing association.
5. Duplicate or delete using the page card menu where available.

How URLs work on the live site — Paths are derived from the page name: spaces become hyphens and the path is lowercased. The home page path is /. After the site has gone live, the builder’s address bar can reflect your full public URL for the current page.

Home page and advanced SEO fields — For the Home page, only certain users see Edit in the page menu; others may only duplicate it. An advanced meta tags panel in the page dialog is limited to Mallard Bay admin accounts in the UI; routine saves still send standard page metadata to the backend, but fine-grained SEO editing through that panel may require Mallard Bay assistance if you do not see it.

4. Add content with blocks

1. Open the Blocks tab.
2. Browse categories such as Page section, Heading, Text, Media, Navigation, Layout, Form, Modal, Component, and Variables.
3. Drag a block onto the canvas.
4. Select the block and use Settings for content and behavior, and Style for appearance.

Connections to the rest of Mallard Bay

• Listing sections — Showcase listing marketing content using data from Manage listings (titles, descriptions, imagery, etc.). Keeping listings accurate keeps the site accurate.
• Booking (“Book now”) modal — Opens Mallard Bay’s booking experience embedded from the public web app’s /embed-content/widget URL (scoped to your outfitter and, when relevant, a specific listing). Resulting bookings appear under Bookings.
• Request a quote modal — Embeds the /embed-content/request-a-quote flow for visitors who are not ready to book; follow-up aligns with your quotes and leads workflows.
• Form blocks — Tie into forms configured in the dashboard (guest intake, questionnaires, waiver-style flows depending on your setup).

These embed paths are different from the standalone script + widget div embed documented under website widget integrations for your own external site; both can coexist if you use Mallard Bay hosting and a separate marketing domain.

5. Site-wide settings

Site settings

• Favicon
• Custom snippets — Each row must be a valid full <script>…</script> tag or a single <meta …> tag (for example verification tags). Invalid rows block saving until corrected. Snippets are saved with head placement.
• URL — Shown only after the website has been marked deployed (is_deployed in product data). How DNS or custom domains are provisioned for your account is not defined in this dashboard codebase—use Mallard Bay support or your onboarding materials for that.

Theme settings

Adjust global theme so new and existing blocks follow your brand consistently.

6. Save and publish

• Use Save often while drafting.
• Use Publish when guests should see changes. Publishing performs a save step and then the publish action.

7. Optional: Feedback mode

Use Enter feedback mode / Exit feedback mode to leave internal design feedback. If you have unsaved undo history, the product may warn you before switching modes.

Common pitfalls

• Guests do not see drafts — Only published updates appear on the live marketing site.
• URL field missing — The editable site URL in Site settings appears after the first deployment/publish milestone tied to is_deployed, not on a brand-new unpublished record.
• Listing pages need a listing — Listing-template flows require choosing a listing before the page is created.
• Menus do not auto-update — New pages get paths from their titles, but header/footer navigation are part of the design; add or adjust links when you add routes.
• Custom snippets fail validation — Fix or remove malformed script/meta rows; the Site settings save stays disabled until validation passes.
• Paste is plain text — Rich text pasted into the editor strips external formatting by design.
• Paywall or empty state — Usually subscription access or missing outfitter selection, not a broken editor.

Related workflows

What this codebase does not spell out

The following are not fully documented in the dashboard repository: subscription tier matrix for Website Builder, DNS and custom-domain provisioning, CDN or hosting details behind publish, exact permission maps for every outfitter team role, and any feature flags controlling visibility of Feedback mode in production. For those topics, rely on Mallard Bay support or official ops documentation.