Settings

Settings is where you manage how your organisation is found and how its public site behaves — your directory categories, your web address, whether search engines can index you, coming-soon and maintenance mode, the announcement bar, embed widgets, your parent affiliation, and the danger zone. You'll find it in the admin sidebar under System → Settings.

Your organisation's identity — name, description, contact email, timezone, legal details and address — is no longer here. It moved to Business details, which is now the single page for who you are and where you're based. If you've bookmarked Settings → Organisation details, that's where it went; a bookmark to a section of a page can't be redirected for you, so there's a pointer at the top of Settings instead.

Who can use this

You need to be an admin for most of this page. Settings opens for both admins and moderators, but the save actions for site visibility, the web address, parent affiliation and the danger zone are admin-only — moderators are blocked if they try them.

The one exception is Categories: both admins and moderators can add and remove them.

There's no extra feature flag or permission to switch on — Settings is part of the platform core and is always available.

What's on the page

A stack of cards, each handling one job:

• Site visibility — whether registrations are open, and whether search engines may index your public site.
• Site mode — put your public site in coming-soon or maintenance mode, with an optional time it goes live again by itself.
• Announcement bar — a short notice across the top of every public page, shown between the times you choose to the people you choose.
• Categories — directory tags so your club shows under the right filters.
• Web address — your organisation's URL slug.
• Embed widgets — copy-paste snippets that show your membership options (and donation buttons) on a website you run elsewhere.
• Parent affiliation (or re-affiliation) — join or leave a parent organisation.
• Scrape protection — who can see your member directory and contact details, whether AI training crawlers are asked to stay away, and the harvesting we've detected on your site. It has its own page: Scrape protection.
• Danger zone — request deletion of the whole organisation.

Step by step

Control who can see and join you

1. Under Site visibility, tick or untick Registrations open to control whether people can register.
2. Tick or untick Allow search engines to index this site to control whether your public site appears in search results (paid plans, or the Free plan with a founding place — see the field reference below).
3. The floating save pill (top right) flags your unsaved changes as you type — click Save site visibility to apply.

Put your site in coming-soon or maintenance mode

1. Under Site mode, pick Coming soon (before your site launches) or Down for maintenance (a short outage).
2. Optionally set Go live automatically at. The time is in your organisation's timezone, shown beside the field. When it passes, your site is live again on the next visit — you don't need to come back and switch it off.
3. Write a Message for visitors. For coming soon you can also pick one of your published pages to show instead of the built-in page.
4. Click Save site mode. Use the Preview links to see exactly what visitors will see.

While the mode is on, visitors see that one page at every address on your site, including your custom domain. You still see the whole site when you're signed in as an admin or moderator, with a dark strip across the top reminding you that the public can't. Sign-in, your members' account pages, legal pages, unsubscribe links and your robots.txt and sitemap keep working.

Switch your website back on after ClubHelix switched it off

ClubHelix staff can switch a website off — usually while a concern about it is looked into. While it's off, every admin page shows a yellow banner: "Your website is switched off." Visitors see a "This website is switched off" page at every address, including your custom domain, and your images are hidden too. You and your team can still sign in and work in the admin.

1. Read the banner at the top of any admin page.
2. If you're an admin, click Switch website back on. The banner disappears and visitors see your site again. Moderators see the banner without the button; ask an admin.

A suspended website is different: the banner is red, has no button, and only ClubHelix can restore it. Use the Contact us link in the banner.

Show an announcement bar

1. Under Announcement bar, write the Announcement (up to 280 characters). Add Link words and a Link address if you want a link — a page on your site starting with /, or a full https:// address.
2. Choose Show from and Show until (both optional, in your organisation's timezone). Leave both empty to show it until you remove it.
3. Choose Who sees it — everyone, members only (anyone signed in with a role in your organisation), or signed-out visitors only — and a Colour.
4. Leave Visitors can close it ticked if people may dismiss it. A closed bar stays closed in that browser until you change the wording or the dates.
5. Click Save announcement. Remove announcement takes it down straight away.

Add a directory category

1. Under Categories, choose a top-level option from the Add category dropdown (e.g. Sport).
2. Optionally pick a Sub-category (e.g. Hockey) — this stays disabled until you've chosen a category with sub-categories.
3. Click Add. The new tag appears as a pill above. To remove one, click the × on its pill.

Rename your web address

1. Under Web address, type your new slug into New slug (lowercase letters, digits and hyphens). Use the ? for a reminder of the format.
2. Click Rename. Renaming creates a 301 redirect from your old address and is allowed once every 30 days.

Embed widgets on your existing website

Embed widgets are a Standard plan feature — on the Free plan the card shows a plan note.

If your club keeps its own website elsewhere, you can still take memberships and donations through ClubHelix — embed a small widget where your visitors already are:

1. Under Embed widgets, click Copy next to the Join widget snippet (or the Donate widget snippet — it appears once donations are enabled on Donations).
2. Paste the snippet into your website builder's embed/HTML block (most builders have one — look for "Embed", "HTML" or "Code" when adding content to a page) and publish.
3. The widget shows your public membership types with prices (or your suggested donation amounts). Every button opens the full ClubHelix join or donate flow in a new tab — payments always happen on your ClubHelix site, never inside the widget.

A few things to know:

• The widget updates automatically — change your membership types or donation settings here and the embedded copy follows.
• It always carries a small "Powered by ClubHelix" line on every plan — even on Pro and Enterprise, whose own websites carry no visible ClubHelix branding. The widget lives on someone else's site, so the line is what tells visitors where the join flow will take them.
• If donations aren't enabled, the donate widget shows a neutral "Donations aren't open at the moment." message rather than an error.

Join or leave a parent organisation

• If you have no parent, pick one in Apply to join a parent and click Submit application — it enters the parent's approval queue.
• If you already have a parent, click Leave parent to detach. Members, content and billing stay put.

Request organisation deletion

1. In the Danger zone, type your organisation's slug into the confirmation box — this guards against accidental clicks.
2. Click Request organisation deletion. Your public site is hidden and custom domains are released immediately, and a 30-day grace period starts. An export is emailed 24 hours before data is removed.
3. Billing stops straight away. If you were on a paid plan, we set it to finish at the end of the period you've already paid for — so no further payment is taken during the grace period. You keep your paid features until that period ends.
4. The Danger zone now shows the scheduled deletion date. To change your mind, click Cancel deletion any time within the grace period — your public site and custom domains come straight back, your subscription is restored exactly as it was, and nothing is lost.

Field reference

Your name, description, contact email, timezone, legal details, address and country are on Business details.

Tips & FAQ

• Coming soon or maintenance — which should I use? Coming soon is for a site that hasn't launched: search engines are asked not to list it until you go live. Maintenance is for a short outage: search engines are told to come back later and keep your existing listing, so don't leave it on for more than a day or two.
• Our website says it's switched off — what happened? ClubHelix staff switched it off. Visitors see a "switched off" page and your images are hidden, but your admin keeps working. An admin can click Switch website back on in the banner at the top of any admin page. If the banner says your website is suspended, only ClubHelix can restore it — use Contact us in the banner.
• I switched modes but a visitor still sees the old page. Public pages can be cached for a few minutes, so a switch can take up to about fifteen minutes to reach everyone.
• Why does my announcement not show on the coming-soon page? The coming-soon page and landing pages deliberately have no header or bar. Visitors see the announcement once the site is live.
• Where did Organisation details go? To Business details. Your name, description, contact email and timezone are the first card on that page, alongside your legal name, business number and address.
• My slug rename was refused. It's limited to once every 30 days, and the new slug can't be reserved or already taken — pick another.
• Where do my categories show? On the public directory's filters. With none set, your club only appears under "Any category".
• Is someone copying our member list? The scrape-protection card is where you check, and where you take the member directory and contact details out of anonymous requests. Scrape protection explains what it detects and — just as importantly — what it cannot prevent.
• Registrations toggle here is the master switch — see Registrations for the full flow.
• Can't start a subscription? Check your country is set on Business details — it sets your currency and prices, and checkout won't run without it.
• Changes here are recorded — review them in the Activity log.
• Related: Roles & positions, Domains, Legal & policies, Subscription & billing.