2. Your brand and web address: Theme
Give the portal your name, logo, colours, fonts and web address. Changes save as a draft until you publish. Then put the portal on your own website or your own domain.
Where it is
Settings for this
- Setup → Theme — Brand, assets, colours, fonts & style, login copy, contact & email
- Settings → Your domain — Run the portal on your own address
Who this is for: owners, admins and managers. Only they can publish the theme.
Where to find it
Dealer Portal › Setup › Theme. The form is on the left; a Live preview of the sign-in page and the dashboard is on the right.
How saving works
- Every change saves to a draft by itself a moment after you stop typing. "Saving…" shows while it does.
- Dealers see none of it until you press Publish changes.
- The pill at the top says where you are: Never published, Draft has unpublished changes or Live.
- Discard changes puts the draft back to what dealers see now.
Step by step
- Brand. Type the Brand name dealers know you by, and a short Tagline (login screen) such as "Dealer Portal".
- Portal URL slug. This is your portal's web address. Use 3 to 32 lowercase letters, numbers and hyphens, such as tough-trucks. It says Available in green, or Subdomain unavailable (taken, reserved, or invalid characters) in red. Words such as admin, dealer, portal and login are reserved. The line under the box shows the full address: your BuildTrack Pro address, then /dealer/t/ your slug /login.
- Assets.
- Logo: a transparent PNG or SVG, drawn for a light background. Empty space around it is trimmed when you upload it.
- Logo for dark backgrounds (optional): a white or light version for the sign-in photo and the coloured band of emails. Without one, your logo sits on a white panel there.
- Hero image: the sign-in page's background. Landscape, at least 1600 × 900 pixels.
- Favicon: the little icon in the browser tab.
- Colours. Pick a Primary colour (buttons and highlights) and an Accent colour. Then choose Text on primary: White or Dark navy. BuildTrack suggests one, and the box underneath checks the Contrast ratio. Aim for green ("passes WCAG AA"), so dealers can read your buttons.
- Fonts & style. A Heading font and Body font (popular Google fonts, or Other Google font… and type its name exactly as on fonts.google.com), Corners (Sharp, Soft or Round), a Page background and Header background (a dark header uses your logo for dark backgrounds), and Hide the portal's logo when it's on my website so an embedded portal doesn't show a second logo under your site's header. Matching your Shopify store? Its fonts are under Online Store › Themes › Customize › Theme settings › Typography.
- Login copy. A Login heading and a Login subhead for the sign-in page.
- Contact & email. The Email-from display name is the name portal emails come from (the address itself stays BuildTrack's). Add a Support email, Support phone and Website URL.
- Check it in the Live preview, or with Preview portal at the top of the page (it shows the draft).
- Press Publish changes and confirm. Dealers see the new look on their next page load.
What the theme reaches
| Where | What it uses |
|---|---|
| The sign-in page and the whole portal | Everything above |
| Quote and sales order PDFs sent to dealers | Logo, primary colour and brand name |
| Invite and other portal emails | Email-from name, logo and primary colour |
| The "Become a dealer" form (lesson 6) | Needs a published slug before it appears |
Publish before you invite anyone. Invite emails only carry your brand once the theme is published. Until then they go out under your business name in BuildTrack's colours.
Revision history
Every publish keeps a copy. Open Revision history at the bottom, find the date and press Restore to draft. That copies it into your draft; press Publish changes to make it live again.
Put it on your website
Once the theme is published with a slug, Put it on your website shows one line of code and a Copy button.
- Press Copy.
- Shopify: Online Store › Pages, add a page (for example "Trade"). Then Themes › Customize, open that page's template, Add section › Custom Liquid, paste the code and save. Add the page to your menu.
- Any other site: paste it into a "custom HTML" or "embed code" block.
Dealers sign in with their password on that page. Card payments open Stripe in a new tab. To make the frame taller, add data-height="900px" to the code.
If you change the slug, publish first, then copy the code again. The old code points at the old address.
Your own domain
The Custom domain card on this screen links to Settings → Your domain (Set up in Your domain →, or Manage in Your domain → once there is one). To run the portal on your own address (such as portal.yourbusiness.com.au), type your domain once, choose the address, add the DNS records it lists and press Check now. It goes live once the DNS is in. The same page sets up email from your domain and the address your customers' quote and payment links use. The /dealer/t/ address keeps working either way.
What happens by itself
- The draft saves as you type, so closing the page loses nothing.
- Open branded login in new tab always shows what's published, not the draft.
Where it ends
The pill says Live, the sign-in page carries your brand, and you have your portal's address to give dealers.
Lesson 2 of 8 in Setting up your dealer portal. Previous: 1. Switching it on and finding your way. Next: 3. Dealer pricing: tiers, groups and one-off prices.