Set up your portal for the first time

How to get there: The onboarding wizard appears automatically the first time you sign in to a new portal. Everything it touches is editable later under Settings.

This article covers the full first-time setup: the onboarding wizard (5 minutes), then the optional next steps once you're in the portal.

Part 1. The onboarding wizard

The wizard is a short, AI-assisted flow that takes your product URL, scrapes it for context, and uses what it finds to suggest your first board, your first post, and your branding.

What it does for you

  • Reads your website so AI can suggest relevant board ideas and an example first post.
  • Pulls a logo if your site has one.
  • Creates your first board based on what you tell it you want to do.
  • Sets brand color, theme, and dark/light mode in one screen.
  • Optionally invites teammates at the end.

You can skip any step. Everything is editable later in Settings.

Step 0. Product website (URL-first)

The first screen asks for your product website (homepage URL).

  • Type your URL (e.g. https://yourproduct.com) and click Next step.
  • ProductLift queues a background job that uses Firecrawl to read the homepage. It uses what it finds to:
    • Pre-fill the product description.
    • Suggest example content for whichever board type you pick next.
    • Pull a logo and brand colors if it can.
    • Draft a starter Product Vision.
  • If you don't have a website yet, click I don't have a site yet to skip to manual entry.

Scraping usually takes 5-15 seconds. The flow continues even if scraping is still running. You'll see "AI suggestions ready" appear later.

Step 1. Product description

Confirm or edit the one-sentence description of your product. Examples:

  • "A CRM for freelance designers"
  • "Mobile app for tracking workouts"

This text feeds AI features (vision, prioritization, suggestions) throughout the portal, so make it concrete.

Step 2. Pick what to start with

Four cards:

  • Collect User Feedback, gather and prioritize feature requests.
  • Roadmap, share your product plans publicly.
  • Changelog, announce updates and releases.
  • Knowledge Base, help docs for your users.

Pick exactly one to start. You can add the others later from Boards → Add Board.

Step 3. Add the first item

The wizard asks for one starter item that fits the board you picked. If AI prepared a suggestion based on your scraped homepage, click Use suggestion to drop it into the title and description, then edit before saving.

The description is optional. Click Create my board to continue.

Step 4. Setup loading

A short progress screen runs through workspace creation, first post, finishing touches. Usually a few seconds.

Step 5. Branding (Make it yours)

One page that sets:

  • Logo, PNG, JPG, GIF, SVG, or WebP. (If your site had a usable logo, it's already filled in.)
  • Brand color, color picker plus hex input.
  • Theme style, Clean, Rounded, or Sharp.
  • Darkmode, Auto, Light, or Dark.
  • Screenshot extraction (if AI is enabled), drag a screenshot of your product and ProductLift detects brand colors and a matching theme automatically.

Click Continue to save, or Skip for now to leave defaults.

Step 6. Invite people (optional)

Invite teammates by email. Skip if you're flying solo, you can always invite later from Users → Invite Admins.

Step 7. Done, choose what's next

The final screen offers three quick links:

  • Install Widgets, go to the widget builder.
  • Import Users, bring an existing user list into ProductLift.
  • Import Existing Data, bulk-import existing posts from CSV/Excel.

Pick whichever applies, or click Skip to land on your portal home.

Part 2. After the wizard

Once you're in the portal, these are the common next steps.

Customise branding further

The wizard sets the basics. For full control (logos, favicon, dark mode toggle, custom CSS), go to Settings → Branding. See Branding and Colors.

Set up your domain

By default your portal lives at <workspace>.productlift.dev. For a professional look, point it at a custom domain like feedback.yourcompany.com. See Custom domain.

Configure boards and statuses

Review the boards the wizard created and customize statuses to match your workflow. See Managing boards and Statuses.

Install widgets on your product

Embed the feedback widget so customers can submit ideas from inside your app. See Install widgets.

Invite your team

Bring in admins and members who'll moderate, triage, and respond. See User roles and permissions.

Set up integrations

Connect Stripe (for customer MRR), your issue tracker (Jira, Linear, GitHub), and notification channels (Slack, Discord). See the Integrations & API section.

Configure AI features

If you want AI auto-reply, auto-tag, moderation, or prioritization, enable them under Settings → AI. Define your Product Vision under the Product Vision sidebar item to give the AI context. See AI features overview.

Where the wizard's settings live afterwards

What the wizard set Where to edit
Product description Settings → General
Boards Settings → Boards or the Boards sidebar item
Branding Settings → Branding
Custom domain Settings → Custom Domain
Users / team Users in the sidebar
AI / Product Vision Settings → AI and the Product Vision sidebar item

Troubleshooting

The scrape is taking a long time. It runs as a background job and can take 5-15 seconds, occasionally longer. The wizard advances past it automatically. Suggestions appear later as a banner ("AI suggestion ready") on the relevant step.

I can't get past the URL step. If your site can't be reached (offline, login-walled, blocking the scraper), click I don't have a site yet to skip ahead and enter your description manually. Nothing breaks, you just don't get AI pre-fill.

The wizard didn't appear. Either you've already completed it, or the portal you logged into already has content. There's no "restart wizard" button, configure missing pieces directly in Settings. See Skip or redo onboarding.

The logo it picked isn't right. Upload your own at Settings → Branding (PNG/JPG/SVG recommended, WebP supported but may not render in some email clients).