Your SGEN first hour checklist
⏱ ~5 min read · five concrete steps — skim the bold lead-ins for the fast path.
The 60-second answer. Five steps take you from a fresh account to a previewed page: create your sandbox (free, private, no time limit), set brand basics (name, logo, colors), build your first page in SG-Builder, preview it on desktop and mobile, then choose a plan only when you're ready to go live. Nothing here costs anything until step 5, and even then only if you want a live public site.
On this page: Create your sandbox · Brand basics · Build your first page · Preview · Choose a plan
Five steps from a fresh account to a previewed page. Work through them in order.
1. Create your sandbox
Every account starts with a free Sandbox — a complete SGEN workspace where you build and test privately. It is the same platform your live site will run on, not a stripped-down demo, so anything you learn here carries straight over to a real site. Nothing in the Sandbox is public: it runs on an SGEN subdomain and is hidden from search engines, so you can experiment without anyone stumbling onto half-finished work. There is no time limit and no cost — the only thing to remember is that a Sandbox left completely idle is archived after roughly a month, so sign in occasionally if you are pacing yourself.
Why start here: you get to make every beginner mistake in private, for free, before a single visitor sees the result.
→ SGEN sandbox walkthrough → First time signing in? Account setup and first login
2. Set your profile and brand basics
Before you build, set the basics that every page inherits: your site name, logo, and brand colors. The order matters here. If you set these first, your very first page already picks up your colors and logo as defaults — so you are styling from your brand instead of restyling away from SGEN's. Skip this step and you will find yourself recoloring buttons and links page by page later.
You do not need the final polished version of everything now. A site name, a logo file, and a primary and secondary color are enough to make the rest of the hour feel like yours. You can refine fonts and the full brand kit any time.
Why do it now: five minutes here saves an afternoon of find-and-replace styling later.
→ Set up your brand kit — colors, fonts, logo → SGEN dashboard tour if you want to see where everything is first
3. Build your first page
Open SG-Builder and build a page. Drag components onto the canvas, edit text and images in place, and arrange your sections into the layout you want. This is the heart of the work, and the linked guide walks you through every step from a blank canvas to a finished page.
A few things that help on the first try: start with a single section and get it looking right before you add the next, edit text by clicking directly on it rather than hunting for a separate field, and do not aim for perfect — aim for on screen. You can rearrange, restyle, and rewrite freely, and nothing is public yet. Your page title, address, and SEO live on the page record in SG-Admin; SG-Builder owns only the visual layout, so you can switch between the two without losing your place.
Why this is the big one: everything before this was setup. This is where your site starts to exist.
→ Build your first page with SG-Builder → New to site builders entirely? Building your first site ever
4. Preview your page
Before anything goes live, preview it. Check how it looks on a desktop, then on a phone — most visitors will see your site on mobile first, and a layout that looks great on a wide screen can crowd or overflow on a narrow one. Previewing now, while you are still in the Sandbox, means you catch those issues before they ever reach a visitor.
Look for the usual first-build culprits: text that runs too wide to read comfortably, images that get cropped awkwardly, and buttons that sit too close together to tap. If something looks off at a given screen size, go back into SG-Builder and adjust — the preview is there to be used in a loop, not just glanced at once.
Why preview before anything else: it is far cheaper to fix a layout you can still see privately than one a visitor already saw.
5. Choose a plan
Pick a plan only when you are ready to take a site live — the free Sandbox stays free for as long as you are building. When you do go live, two things shape the cost: a base plan scaled by how many live sites you run, and optional Module Suites you add for the capabilities your site needs (Forms, Page Builder, SEO & Performance, Attributions, and more). Every plan — Sandbox included — already carries the Foundation Pack: hosting, SSL, CDN, the web firewall, security patching, and the multi-site dashboard, at no extra cost. So you are not stitching together hosting, a security service, and a builder from different vendors; the platform is one piece, and you add suites à la carte on top of it.
You never have to get this right on day one. Start with what your live site needs now, and add a Suite or move up a plan later as your needs grow.
→ Choose your SGEN plan → Why the platform works this way: The all-in-one model
Done with the first hour?
When you are ready to publish, follow the launch guide: Go live: publish your first site. To plan the days that follow, see Your first week.