Plan your first week

This plan is for the person leading the launch — often a producer or operations manager — with marketing and finance joining on the days that need them. Each day builds on the one before, and nothing here puts anything in front of the public until you decide to.

Day 1 — Brand and locale

1. 1
   Set your colours

   Open Studio → System → Settings → Appearance → Theme, pick your brand and status colours, and decide whether visitors get dark mode, light mode or both.

2. 2
   Upload your logos

   In Appearance → Branding, upload a dark-mode logo, a light-mode logo and a favicon.

3. 3
   Set language, currency and timezone

   In Locale → Language, pick the site language. In Locale → Region, set the default currency and timezone. Do this before you create anything with a price or a date.

Day 2 — Modules and team

1. 1
   Decide what’s on

   In Studio → System → Settings → Content → Features, switch off every module you won’t launch with. You can turn them back on later without losing anything.

2. 2
   Create roles

   In Studio → Management → Roles & Permissions, create a role for each job, such as Editor or Game Day Producer, and tick only what that job needs.

3. 3
   Add your staff

   In Studio → Management → Staff Members, add each person and give them a role.

Day 3 — Taxonomy and content

1. 1
   Build your labels

   Under Studio → Taxonomy, create the genres, teams and roster positions your content will be tagged with.

2. 2
   Fill the library

   Upload artwork and recordings to Studio → Library → Media Library so every form can pick from them.

3. 3
   Publish a first batch

   Add a handful of on-demand titles, articles or episodes so the site doesn’t open empty.

Day 4 — Money, in test mode

1. 1
   Connect a payment provider

   In Studio → Management → Payments, open the Gateways tab and enter your Stripe, PayPal or Square details with the provider in test mode.

2. 2
   Create plans

   In Studio → Management → Subscription Plans, create your plans and season passes.

3. 3
   Buy something

   From a viewer account, complete a test purchase of a plan and of an event ticket, then find both in Studio → Management → Payments.

Day 5 — The homepage

1. 1
   Add a hero

   In Studio → Home → Sliders, add slides by hand or let them build themselves from your upcoming events.

2. 2
   Stack your sections

   In Studio → Home → Sections, add rows for live events, recent videos or articles, and drag them into order.

Day 6 — A test broadcast

1. 1
   Create a test event

   In Studio → Content → Events, create an event starting within the hour, give it a ticket price and connect your encoder.

2. 2
   Run it end to end

   Go live, watch on a phone and a TV, buy the ticket from a second viewer account, then end the event.

3. 3
   Check the replay

   Confirm the recording appears in Studio → Content → On-Demand with the event’s artwork and access rules.

Day 7 — Review and launch

Work through the Launch checklist with the people who own each area. When every line is ticked, switch payments to live, bring the site out of maintenance mode and share your address.