The easiest way to publish with Shorthand is to let us manage the hosting for you.

There are two different approaches to Shorthand hosting:

1. shorthandstories.com hosting
(e.g., https://mybrand.shorthandstories.com)
This is the simplest way to publish your Shorthand stories and requires no technical input from you. You do not need to possess or purchase a domain name. Simply choose a unique name, and your content can then be published at the click of a button to (e.g.) mybrand.shorthandstories.com/page-path/
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​2. Custom subdomain hosting
(e.g., https://mystories.mybrand.com)
Dedicate a subdomain of a domain you already own to your Shorthand stories. You will need to be able to edit CNAME and DNS records listed with your domain registrar (the entity with which you registered the domain). Name your custom subdomain as you wish, then after setup, publish your stories with one click to Shorthand's servers using an address that's all yours, e.g.: mystories.mybrand.com/page-path/

Please note: Shorthand does not provide DNS hosting. You are expected to have your own DNS provider and to manage your domain names through that provider. See here for more info on editing CNAME records.

You will need to be an organisation owner or administrator of your Shorthand workspace.
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You can set up publishing from within the story editor, or from your Shorthand dashboard.

Click the PUBLISH button in the top-right of the editor:

The publishing panel will appear. For your first story, the panel has a large section for the shorthandstories.com publishing option. If this is your preferred publishing method, check that you are happy with the publishing location name you have been assigned. By default, this will be your workspace name or a slight variation of it, followed by .shorthandstories.com.

The panel's look and features will vary slightly depending on your Shorthand plan. The examples below show two different versions. In both of these examples, the assigned publishing location is hot-potato.shorthandstories.com

Version A: If you are happy with the publishing location, press the Confirm button and you'll be shown a screen in which you can set an address (URL) for the particular story you are publishing, and set its 'visibility' (who can see it).

Version B: The publishing location is set in the first input box. The second input box sets the story address. The Confirm button will set both and publish the story.

If you'd prefer to use something other than your workspace name as your shorthandstories.com subdomain name, then before publishing, enter a new name in the input box. All of your stories and projects will be published to this location.

For plans that enable restricted visibility publishing, the following interface will show. Check that you've set the appropriate visibility, then check the URL. By default, it will use a version of your story title, though you can change the text here and set unique URLs for each story you publish. Click Confirm again to publish your story.

To publish to a custom subdomain of a domain you already own, choose that option from the publishing panel. The interface will vary slightly depending on your Shorthand plan:

Version B. Choosing the custom subdomain option

Using a custom subdomain requires that you own the domain and can change name-server settings with your domain registrar so that requests to that part of your domain retrieve the content appropriately from Shorthand.

After entering your subdomain and domain, you can choose a URL for the story itself, and if your plan allows for it, the publishing visibility of your story: whether it is publicly available or private.

Once logged into Shorthand, click on the Settings menu in the bottom-left of the screen:

Then choose Publishing from the same panel on the left:

...and you will see a number of publishing options to choose from. Click the CREATE button next to the option of your choice.

This is the simplest method for publishing with Shorthand. To set it from your dashboard, after clicking the appropriate CREATE button shown in the image above, you'll see this short form pre-filled with your workspace name as a suggestion for your shorthandstories.com subdomain.
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Type an alternate subdomain name if you wish to use something other than your workspace name, then click the CHECK AVAILABILITY button to see that your choice is available for use. If it is available, the button will change to read CREATE SUBDOMAIN. Once you've selected the button and the domain has been created, go the Publishing page under TEAM SETTINGS to enable that publishing option for any teams that need access to publish there. See this support page for more info on managing team publishing.
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To use a custom subdomain, choose that option from the panel and a short form will appear.

You will need to enter the full chosen domain and subdomain (make sure you have access to the DNS settings at your domain registrar before you do this! See our related support doc on editing your CNAME and DNS records with your domain registrar).
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Then, click CREATE SHORTHAND HOSTING and you will be given the details needed to edit the CNAME and DNS records listed with your domain registrar. You will also be sent an email with this information.
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Once you have added the details with your registrar, go back to Shorthand and click the FINALISE SETUP button in the same panel. Once that's all set, go the Publishing page under TEAM SETTINGS to enable the custom domain option for any teams that need access to publish there (you may need to refresh the team publishing options page if it says the hosting configuration is not finalized). See this support page for more info on managing team publishing:

Once you have successfully setup your publishing, by default there will be nothing published to the home or top-level URL path of your domain (e.g. https://stories.yourdomain.com/) and if you visit that URL you'll see a 404 page like this:

If you want a live page to be shown at this URL you must publish a story there, which you can do by removing the text from the subdirectory path of the URL on the publishing panel for the story, which defaults to the title of the story separated by hyphens:

We recommend reserving the top-level domain for a generic landing page or home page, for instance a simple page that primarily consists of links to Shorthand stories and other pages that you want to promote. Our Collection and Grid sections are helpful for linking to other stories, or, if you’re using our Project feature and want to link to other stories within the same Project, it’s generally best to use Related Stories sections.

It’s best practice to refrain from using the top-level domain for hosting content that you may want to change to a different URL path in the future.

For instance, if publishing a 2025 annual report or a Winter 2025 newsletter, use URLs like stories.yourdomain.com/2025-annual-report and stories.yourdomain.com/newsletter-winter-2025 instead of stories.yourdomain.com, since using the root could cause issues when you go to publish the 2026 version.