Demon's Carrd Guide
Probably, some of you have already thought about how cool it would be to make your own lore site, where people could learn about all the amazing worlds that you're building. Maybe you already heard about Carrd, you just weren't sure how to start making a lore site. It may look confusing at first, but I promise, it's not that difficult to make one! In the following little tutorial, I'm sharing my knowledge and experience with Carrd, but there are always people who know more. I'm always trying to improve my knowledge, and I will definitely add more stuff in the future and if there is a demand for it ♡
--TABLE OF CONTENTS
What is Carrd?
If you haven't heard about this site yet, then you may validly ask the question, what exactly is Carrd? Carrd is a simple, no-code platform that is mainly for building one-page websites. It's mainly for those who want to make a website with little to no coding experience.
Important
Carrd is, to an extent, free. With the free plan, you can make 3 separate websites. Some features will be locked, and the number of elements is limited to 50 for one site.
On the left picture, you can see the features available for the free plan, while on the right, you see the available features for the pro plan! (On phone view, free plan features is the top image, pro plan features is the bottom one).
There is a difference between pro features as well. There is Pro Lite, Pro Standard, and Pro Plus. Pro Lite does not have the embed feature, or widgets, forms, etc, but it costs only $9/YEAR. There are different levels in pro plans, some let you have more sites and cost a bit more. Pro Standard has the embed feature and more, and costs $19/YEAR with a maximum of 10 sites.
LORE SITES
Carrd is a good alternative for lorebooks if they're not available for you. It offers a good variety of tools while still keeping things simple. You don't necessarily have to code the most difficult thing to achieve a neat site for your worlds. With the use of containers and sections, you can already go a long way.
In the following link to screen recording I did of one of my lore sites, you can see how it looks like behind the scenes and how many sections it is made of: Lore Site Screen Recording
Buttons
Buttons are your go-to when it comes to navigation, if you want to keep things simple. You simply name your button and add the URL or section you want it to lead to, and voila! All done. You can of course customise it - choosing different fonts, colours, or even changing the size of it is simple.
You can use images as buttons as well. Images also have a 'Link URL' section where you can, again, add your desired URL or section name where you want it to lead to. I usually use Canva to design my image buttons (I have a pro plan for it, but free stuff are also available).
Icons can also possibly be used as buttons. There are all kinds of arrows and icons available. Under 'Type', you select the sort of icon you want to add, and then under 'URL', you add the URL/section you want.
And finally, Links can also be your go-to if you would rather simply have text-based links/buttons, or if it suits your theme more. You can customise them like texts.
Sections
Sections are essential if you don't want to put every piece of information on a single page and have your audience have to scroll down for hours. They help you keep your site neat and in order, having a designated section for different pieces of lore. For example, you have a complex fantasy setting with different gods, a unique magic system, locations, residents, etc. It's more viewer-friendly to put each piece of that world in a different section and have a button that would navigate them there, instead of having to scroll down to find the specific piece of information they're curious about.
You can name each section, which also helps you with navigation. However, it's important to mention that there are different types of sections:
- Section Break is your default, the one you should use when separating/sectioning your lore by topics.
- Header Marker is the section you put below your header. Whether that's the name of your universe and/or a navigation menu is up to you! Definitely a useful tool to use. You can add a section named 'home' below that for the main page of your lore site. It's always visible, unless you set it differently.
- Footer Marker is the section you should put above your footer. Just as useful a header, and it's always visible on default as well, unless you set it differently. You may put copyright stuff there, or maybe you want to have your navigation down there, instead of in the header. Again, it's up to you!
- Scroll Point is the section for what its name suggests. Maybe you have a long description of a village with maps and images, but you also have your characters in that section. You can add a scroll point above the characters and have a button/link/icon navigate you there if you immediately want to look at the characters.
Navigation
If you use buttons with arrows to navigate between sections, section:previous and section:next can be used to go between sections in the order you added them.
Container
Containers are definitely useful to have when making a site on Carrd. You can have columns when using containers. You can also add more things into a container, like texts, images, embeds, etc, and you can move all of those things with just the container when you want to rearrange something without having to move everything by elements. You can also change the background of a container, so each container can have a different background. You can have a maximum of 5 columns in one container.
Embeds
Embeds are only included in Pro Standard and Pro Plus plans. It's perfect if you want to add a song from Spotify or a playlist to your page to set the mood for your world. Embeds are also perfect if you want to add CSS to your site! If I recall correctly, Carrd lets you add HTML and CSS, so all the dropdown menus and scroll boxes are possible to make.
PERSONAL CARRD / LANDING PAGE
Personal sites are perfect if you would like to share some info about yourself and include your personal links and lore site links. Almost like a Linktree, but Carrd gives you more options for customisation, even with only a free plan. It's the perfect outlet to express yourself and give your audience an idea of what sort of style or things you're into. Here's an example of one I made before, following a tutorial on YouTube:
Inspo and Tutorials
Finally, I collected a few YouTube channels with Carrd tutorials that can be easily followed, mostly with features that don't require a pro plan. Even if you have a pro plan, you can learn some interesting tricks by watching them!
- lovjbini has tutorials for free plan
- vivi has tutorials for pro plan
- thestarseekrs has tutorials for both free and pro plans
- lvjnsl should have tutorials for a free plan, but I'm not really familiar with this one.
Pinterest should also have some cool pics for inspiration! Just search 'carrd inspo'.
Always developing, as I gain more knowledge as well