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Get your website live

The ordered path from a fresh HaulHQ account to a working website that takes bookings, end to end.

This is the whole path, in order. Each step links to the detail. If you are handing this to a web developer, send them Working with a web developer first.

In HaulHQ

  1. 1Finish onboarding. It ends when your public site is live, which is the point at which the rest of this works.
  2. 2Set your service area. Add cities *and* zips. Cities are what your public pages are gated on -- zips alone will leave you dark. See Service area.
  3. 3Add your equipment and services. Dumpster rental: add each container size as equipment, with a quantity, which creates the bookable units. Junk removal: add your services and load tiers. See Equipment & units.
  4. 4Set your hours and scheduling, then set booking capacity. These are two different screens and this trips up nearly everyone -- see Scheduling & business hours.
  5. 5Connect Stripe if you want to take payment online.

Stop here and decide: do you need WordPress at all?

The steps above are enough. When you finish them your HaulHQ page at `yourname.haulhq.app` is live and taking bookings, and for a good number of operators that is the whole website. Everything below this line is the WordPress route, and it is worth thirty seconds deciding whether you want it before you start.

Read this before installing anything

Which website should I use? lays out the three options honestly -- what the free page does, what it cannot do, and when WordPress genuinely earns its keep. Start on the free page and move up when you have a reason is the right answer for most people.

On your own WordPress site

Not on WordPress?

These steps are the WordPress route. If you are on something else, or have no website at all, you can stop after the HaulHQ section above -- your HaulHQ page already is a website, it takes bookings on its own, and you can link to it from anywhere.

  1. 1Install the WordPress plugin and connect it. See Install the WordPress plugin.
  2. 2Work out which shortcodes you need and which page each goes on. See Which shortcodes, and where.
  3. 3Paste them in and publish.
  4. 4Test a real booking or quote from your phone, on the live site, not a preview.

Then, once jobs are running

Your crew taking photos on jobs is what fills the gallery on your website. Nothing else has to happen for that to work, but you do have to know it works that way -- see Photos & your gallery.

The most common reason a site looks broken

An empty catalog or a service area with no cities. Both produce pages that render but show nothing, which reads as a plugin problem and is not one.