The studio guide

Everything Mehfilbox does for a studio, planner or photographer building and delivering a catalogue — the private page of films and photographs you make for a client's occasion, whether that is a naming ceremony, a birthday, a graduation, a wedding, a performance or a company's annual day. Published at /help/studio — this file is the page; editing it and deploying is the whole publishing step.

This describes what the console does today. Where something is not built yet, it says so.

• Getting in — Registration · Signing in
• Building a catalogue — Creating one · Films · Photographs · The look · Publishing
• Running it — Settings · Deleting · Handing over to the client
• After handover — Tracking what you delivered
• Limits · When something goes wrong

Registration

Where: /admin/register

Registration is public — anyone can create a studio account, no approval needed. Three things are created in order: the credential, the org, and your operator record. Two studios may share a name but not an address; a taken one gets a numeric suffix automatically rather than an error.

Your studio's own language — what you read your mail in, and the default every new catalogue's picker opens with — is not asked here; it lives in Your studio → Business, once there is a studio to set it for.

Registering signs you in — you land in your console straight away. We also send a link to confirm your email address; until you open it, a slim line across the top of the console says so, with Send the link again. Everything works meanwhile except Publish, which waits for the confirmation. (Where the sign-in service holds an unconfirmed address back, the screen instead names the address to check, and the link brings you in.)

Registration is free and gives you a sample catalogue to try everything on. Making catalogues for clients needs a Partner membership — see Partner membership.

Your sample catalogue

A sample catalogue is waiting the first time you sign in, marked Sample on your Catalogues page and living at /<your studio>/sample. It is a real catalogue to learn on: upload to it, change its look and publish it, exactly as you will for a client. It is never handed over: it stays your studio's, so its overview has no client card and it cannot be sent to a client.

While the sample is the only catalogue you have, your Catalogues page opens with three first steps, each going straight into the sample: upload one film, choose its look and publish, then send it to yourself and open it on your phone. They go once you create a catalogue of your own.

Each card on the Catalogues page is the catalogue's picture — the poster of its featured film, or of the first film that has one — with Live or Draft on it. Click anywhere on the card to open the catalogue; its ⋯ goes straight to Films, Photographs, Page or Settings, and the link under it copies the catalogue's address. The totals at the top, the search box, the filters and the sort only appear from your fourth catalogue; below that the whole list fits on one screen anyway.

• It holds 2 GB of your own films and photographs, together. An upload that would pass that is refused, and no extra storage can be bought for it.
• Publishing it is free — it spends no credit — and it never runs out.
• Every page of it shows a "Sample catalogue — for demonstration only" line to guests, whoever holds it, and nothing can be bought for it: no plan, renewal, upgrade or theme. It is for showing what you can do, not for delivering a client's event.
• It comes with no films of ours. For a fully filled-in example, the home page's demo wedding is still there.

Rate-limited to 3 attempts per IP per hour.

Signing in

Where: /get-started — pick "I run a studio" on the two cards there, then sign in or create an account. (The older /login and /admin/login addresses still work and redirect here; whichever door you picked last is remembered, so a return visit skips the cards.)

• Signing out is in the account menu, top right, behind your avatar.
• The avatar also shows which studio you are signed in to — worth checking if you hold more than one account.
• Forgot your password: "Reset it" on the sign-in form sends a single-use link, the same way as registration's confirmation link.
• Continue with Google, or Email me a link instead, appear below the password form — either signs you in without typing a password, as long as the address matches your existing account and is verified. Neither creates a new account: they are ways in for someone who already has one, the same as the password field above them.

Your team

Where: Your studio → Team → Manage your team (/admin/studio/team).

Everyone who can sign in to your studio, and what each can do:

• Admin — everything: settings, billing, publishing, domains, house styles, and inviting or removing other people.
• Uploader — films and photographs only. An uploader adds, captions, reorders and retries uploads, but cannot touch branding, the page's own sections, settings, billing, domains, house styles or the team itself.

Invite someone with their email, name and a role — they get a set-password link the same way a client's first sign-in does. Change anyone's role, or remove them, from the same list. A studio always needs at least one admin: demoting or removing the last one is refused, so you can never lock yourself, or everyone, out.

Deleting your studio

Where: Your studio → Credits & membership, at the bottom.

This is permanent, not a pause. Every catalogue you still own is deleted for good — not archived, not recoverable — and everyone on your team loses their sign-in, not just whoever clicks it. A catalogue you have already handed over is not affected: it belongs to the client alone by then, and this never reaches it. Review and download anything you want to keep first, then type delete to confirm.

If your studio has its own domain (films.yourstudio.in), it is switched off along with everything else — unless it still serves a catalogue you have handed over, in which case it is left exactly as it is, working, so that client's page does not break on a decision that is no longer yours to make.

A catalogue has four tabs (22 Oct): Home (the link, the client, and Get it ready — what is left before guests arrive), Films & photos (a switch at the top moves between the two), Page (the customizer, built from them) and Settings, in four groups — words and languages, who can watch and when, the client, and the catalogue's life. Until its first Publish the tabs read as steps — Home, Films & photos, Page, Settings (optional) — each a numbered disc that becomes a tick when done (Films & photos once anything is uploaded, Page once the look is chosen), with the line between them filling as you go; Publish, top right, is where it ends. The new-catalogue sheet shows the same steps with The occasion first. Once published they are plain tabs. Translations are under Settings → Languages; inside a client's support window, where Settings is theirs, Translations keeps a tab of its own.

Creating a catalogue

Where: the New catalogue button in the top bar — on every page of the console.

One sheet — the occasion, whose it is and when — and Create and open makes the catalogue (22 Oct). Nothing is lost if you close the tab partway through; the draft lives in your browser until then. You land on Films & photos: upload them first, then Choose the look → in the bar at the top opens the page with the theme browser, so the look is chosen with your own films and photographs on it. Until something is uploaded, the page's preview shows four labelled sample films under your names and date, never an empty frame.

1 — The occasion

What is it for comes first, and the rest of the step follows from it. Pick one of naming ceremony, birthday, graduation, engagement, wedding, baby shower, housewarming, anniversary, performance, corporate event — or Other, which asks you to name the occasion (Diwali get-together) and shows that name wherever the occasion is named, on your cards and to the client.

Only once an occasion is picked do the fields below it appear, labelled for that occasion:

The address is the one thing you cannot casually change later. It goes into every guest's WhatsApp message. Changing it after the link is out breaks every copy already sent — there is no redirect for a catalogue's own address, only for a film's (see Films).

Addresses are unique within your studio, not across the platform. Your catalogues live under your studio's own segment — mehfilbox.com/<your-studio>/aanya-and-vikram-2026 — so another studio making a catalogue for someone of the same name never stands in your way. Only a second catalogue of yours with the same address is refused: the message says "You already have a wedding at that address", and a free alternative (…-2026-k3f) is one click away.

Names ending in -flix are refused, deliberately.

The look — on the page, after Create

There is no look step any more (22 Oct). Start from — on the sheet, when you have saved looks — applies one whole: theme, starting sections, branding, language and guest code. Otherwise the catalogue starts on your studio's look (Your studio → Branding) and the usual sections, and the look is chosen after the upload, from the bar on Films & photos. Starting sections under More options picks The Keepsake, Films Only, Anniversary or Blank instead; Anniversary starts on its suggested theme, Classic. Every section can be reordered, renamed, hidden or removed afterwards, and the look changed any time: on the Page tab, Look (first in the outline), Change look.

The look is chosen in one place — the Page tab. Choose the look → on Films & photos opens it — that bar stays there until the look is chosen, however you come back — and so does the Page tab itself while a new catalogue's look is not chosen yet: it opens on the themes, so missing the button costs nothing. Using a theme, or keeping the one it has (← Keep … or Done), counts as choosing it. Your studio → Branding is the look new catalogues start from — a different thing, set once.

A premium theme you do not own yet is never a catalogue's starting theme: preview it on the finished catalogue and buy it from Look on the Page tab.

More options (on the first screen)

If a guest code was made for you, or you chose to be shown the client's temporary password, a last screen shows it once — write it down — before the catalogue opens.

Films

Where: a catalogue → Films

Uploading

Drag files in, or use the picker.

• Accepted: .mp4, .mov, .mkv, .webm, .avi, .m4v
• Per file: up to 20GB
• Per catalogue: limited by storage, not by count — see Limits

Bytes go straight from your browser to the video service, never through the app.

• Navigating elsewhere in the console does not stop an upload. The dock at the bottom right shows everything still moving — films and photographs, every catalogue — with one bar for the lot, one per folder, and one per file, and lets you pause, resume or cancel each.
• A dropped connection is not a failure. The upload is marked interrupted and resumes by itself once you are back online.
• A page reload, or closing the tab, does not lose what was already sent. The dock comes back listing what was interrupted. In Chrome or Edge, films you dropped or picked with Choose files are remembered: press Continue, allow the browser's one question about reading those files, and each film picks up exactly where it stopped. In Safari and Firefox (or for anything the browser did not keep), Choose the files to continue and pick the same files again. A photograph is sent again.
• A row appears in the film list immediately, so a refresh mid-upload still shows the file.

After upload

Each film is transcoded by the provider, which takes a few minutes.

If a film sits in processing far longer than it should, a scheduled job asks the provider what actually happened and settles the row.

The film list

One slim row per film, as the photographs are laid out: its poster with the running time on it, its name (type on it to rename), its album (category) under the name, whether it is ready, and a Shown / Hidden switch for whether guests see it. Click the poster — or ⋯ → Details… — for the rest in a panel beside the list: its address, synopsis, shape, poster frame and where the poster is held; ← → step to the next film without closing it. ⋯ also moves a film up or down and Removes it: Remove asks first, then the film disappears with a ten-second Undo before anything is deleted — its upload goes with it. Drag a film's grip to move it. To change several at once, select them as on Photographs: tick one, Shift-click another's tick for every film between, drag a box across the space around the films, or Select all in the bar above the list. Then Show to guests, Hide, Move to album… or Remove; a film still processing is left out of Show until it is ready. A film's album is the row a guest finds it in: one of the occasion's (Haldi, Sangeet, Reception…), or one of your own — choose New album… in a film's album menu or in Move to album…, type a name, and it is made and used at once. Your own album names are the catalogue's own list, the same one its photographs are tagged from, so "Behind the Scenes" made on either tab is offered on both. A guest reads the name as you typed it, in every language. A row per event on the Page adds a row for each album your films are in, your own ones included. A film that failed says why on its row, with Retry.

Naming, and its own address

Names are guessed from filenames — correct them. Each film has a name, an optional synopsis, a category, credits, and a poster. A film also has its own address inside the catalogue, shown and editable from the Address field in the film's details panel — guessed from the upload filename at first.

Unlike the catalogue's address, a film's address can change safely. The first rename re-derives it automatically from the new name; after that, changing it again is deliberate. A link built on the old address keeps working for 90 days, redirecting to the new one.

Poster position. Under a film's poster frames, Poster position keeps the part of the poster that matters in every crop: tap the couple's faces (or drag the dot), and the three small previews — a wide card, a tall card, the cover on a phone — follow. It applies wherever the poster appears: every row, every theme's own rows, the film's own page, and the cover when the billboard section has not set its own. Choosing a different poster frame clears it, since a point on one frame means nothing on the next. Like the frame itself, it is live as soon as it saves.

Every change saves when you click away, and the line above the list says so — Saving…, then Saved. If it says Not saved, the change is still in the box and will be retried on your next edit.

A film is not visible to guests until you mark it ready, even on a published page. This is the single most common reason a live catalogue looks empty. The overview's checklist calls it out.

A vertical teaser

If you cut a 9:16 version for phones — the story-shaped teaser you would post yourself — upload it as a film like any other. Mehfilbox recognises a vertical video when it finishes processing and sets its Shape to Vertical for you; you can still change it. Nothing is generated for you; this is your own cut, carrying your name.

What changes for guests:

• In every row it appears as a story-sized card, standing as tall as the cards beside it and narrower, so it reads as a teaser rather than a mis-sized poster. In a list layout its thumbnail is upright too.
• Opened, its still is shown whole, not cropped to a strip; played, it is pillarboxed, never cropped.
• Share on its page is the same share every film has — the phone's own share sheet, WhatsApp first, with copy-link behind it — so a guest sends the film's address and it opens on your catalogue page, with your credit on it.
• The billboard will not pick a vertical film on its own when you have left it to choose; a full-bleed hero crops a 9:16 frame badly. Pointing the billboard at the teaser deliberately still works.

The shape is read from the video itself — taller than wide is vertical — once, when processing finishes. Until then the Shape select waits; after that it is yours, and nothing Mehfilbox does later will change a shape you have set by hand.

Photographs

Where: a catalogue → Photographs

• Limited by storage rather than by count.
• Photographs are resized in your browser before upload, to three widths (2048 / 1024 / 480). A 40MB frame straight off a DSLR does not have to travel, and every guest is served a size that suits their screen.
• Accepted: JPEG, PNG, WebP, AVIF and HEIC (iPhone photos). A browser that cannot open a HEIC itself — Chrome or Firefox on Windows or Android — has it converted on our server instead, to the same three widths; Safari does it in the browser as for any other photograph. Where originals are kept, a HEIC's original is kept as the iPhone wrote it. Camera RAW and TIFF are not accepted: export JPEGs first.
• Every photograph URL a guest's browser loads is individually signed and expires — the same protection films have always had.

Finding your way around the page

Redesigned on 23 Oct to look and work like Google Photos or Drive:

• The header carries the album's name (click it to rename), how many photographs it holds, and its actions: Download, the album's ⋯ (rename, delete), Upload a folder and Add photographs.
• The bar above the grid filters by tag (All, then one chip per tag with its count, then No tag), Select all, and three tile sizes. It stays at the top while you scroll. With anything selected it turns into the selection's own bar.
• The grid is the photographs themselves, in a panel you can drop files or a folder anywhere on. Hover a photograph (or, on a phone or iPad, just look: they are always shown) for its round tick and its ⋯ menu: Open details, Turn clockwise, Move earlier, Move later, Move to album, Delete photograph. Its tags show on the picture, a heart marks one the client picked, and its caption sits underneath.
• Click a photograph to open its details at the side: the picture large enough to judge, its caption, its tags, its album, turn, order, delete. ← and → step to the next photograph without closing, so captioning or tagging a whole album is one panel and two keys. Esc closes it.

Turning a photograph

A photograph that came in on its side: choose Turn clockwise from its ⋯ menu, or in its details, once for each quarter turn. It turns everywhere at once — the gallery, the full-screen view, the TV and every download — because the stored photograph itself is turned, at every size. A kept original turns too when it is a JPEG, PNG or WebP; a HEIC original stays as the iPhone wrote it. Films cannot be turned here: export them the right way up.

Captions

Each photograph's caption sits under it: click Add a caption, type, and press Enter or click away. It saves then, and the line at the top right says Saving… then Saved, or Not saved if it failed. The details panel has the same caption, larger.

Captions are what a guest reads in the lightbox: "Her father seeing the lehenga for the first time", or "Dadi's first look at the baby", is worth more than the photograph beside it.

Albums

Every catalogue starts with one album, created the moment you upload your first photograph. A catalogue with one album shows no tabs, only its name. Add more with New album above the header — a name, Add — for however you like to split a catalogue's photographs: by part of the day, by photographer, by anything. From the second, each album is a tab, with its count.

• A new upload lands in whichever album's tab is open. Switch albums before dropping a batch of files if they belong somewhere other than the one you were just looking at.
• Move a photograph between albums from its ⋯ menu (Move to album), from Album in its details, or by dragging it straight onto the target album's tab — all three do the same thing.
• Reorder within an album by dragging a photograph to its new place, or with Move earlier / Move later in its ⋯ menu or its details — the keyboard's way, for anyone who prefers not to use a mouse.
• Select many at once, as in Google Drive: press on empty space — the panel's margin on any side, or between the photographs — and drag a box across them; hold Shift (or Cmd/Ctrl) to add to what is already selected, and a click on empty space clears it. Tick one, then Shift-click another to take everything between. While anything is selected, a click on a photograph ticks it rather than opening it.
• With some selected, the bar above the grid offers Add tag…, Remove tag…, Move to album… (with New album… at the end, which names one in place and moves them into it) and Delete selected; ✕ clears the selection. A move puts them at the end of that album, in the order shown.
• Deleting an album only works once it is empty — move or delete every photograph in it first. This is deliberate: an album with photographs in it is never one delete away from losing them by accident.

Which album a section shows is set from the customizer, the same place every other section is configured — this page is only where the albums themselves are built.

Folder upload

If your own folders are already organised by part of the day — a "Mehendi" folder and a "Reception" folder for a wedding, or a "Ceremony" folder and a "Behind the Scenes" one for any occasion — Upload a folder, beside Add photographs, or drop the folder itself onto the photographs, turns each one into its own album automatically, tagged with the right category from its name (close matches count too — "Mehndi", "BTS", "Drone Shots" all resolve correctly). Anything the name does not recognise still gets tagged Behind the Scenes rather than left blank.

One thing to know about the button versus the drop: a folder you drag onto the page becomes the album directly, so you can drag several event folders at once. A folder you pick from the file dialog is one selection, so what becomes the album is whatever is one level inside it — select your whole shoot's root folder, and its own subfolders (Ceremony, Reception, …) are what turn into albums, not the root itself.

One-by-one upload still works exactly as before — this is an addition, not a replacement.

While a folder uploads, a strip above the grid shows how many of its photographs have landed and how far the rest are, folder by folder, and each photograph's own tile carries its own bar. The same figures sit in the dock at the bottom right, which follows you to any other page; a reload lists what was interrupted and lets you choose the same files to finish.

Tags

A photograph can carry any number of tags. They show on the photograph in the grid; change them in its details (click the photograph), where each is a chip — the × takes that one off — and Add a tag opens a box: start typing and pick from the list, or press Enter. The list holds the same tags a film has (Highlights, the Ceremony, Reception, Behind the Scenes and so on; Pre-wedding, Mehendi, Haldi and Sangeet are a wedding's own), and your own: type a name the list does not have — Family, Candid, Dadi's 80th — and choose Create “…”, and it becomes a tag of this catalogue's, offered on every photograph in it from then on. Your own tag names are for you and are never shown to guests, so they are not translated. Tags are independent of albums — an album is where you keep a photograph, its tags are what it shows, and one photograph can be in one album and under three tags.

Tag many at once. Tick the photographs (or Select all), then choose from Add tag… in the bar above the grid — or Remove tag… to take one off, which lists only the tags the selected photographs have. Every other tag each one carries stays. One save for the lot; if it cannot be saved, nothing changes.

See them by tag. The chips in the same bar narrow the grid to one tag, or to No tag to find what still needs one; each says how many it holds. The All photos tab, first among the album tabs, shows every album at once — the way to see every Reception photograph wherever it was filed. Order is per album, so the ways to reorder come back when you open one album with All showing.

Behind the Scenes has a real effect on the guest page. Tagged this way, a photograph comes out of the main gallery and into its own collapsed section — closed until a guest chooses to open it. It shows by default whenever such a photograph exists; a toggle in the customizer's photo section (Show behind-the-scenes photos) turns it off, which hides those photographs from the page entirely rather than folding them back into the main grid.

Bulk download

Need every photograph in one album, or every photograph tagged a certain way, as a single file? Download, in the album's header, opens both: Download this album (zip), and By tag… with its own Download (zip) whenever at least one photograph carries a tag. Either zips and downloads straight from your browser — nothing is emailed, and nothing sits waiting on a server. On Chrome or Edge it streams directly to a file you choose, so the size is limited only by your own disk. Other browsers have to build each archive in memory, so a large album comes down in parts of 2 GB — sangeet-1-of-3.zip, sangeet-2-of-3.zip — the way Google Drive does it; unzip each and you have the album. Switch on Split into 2 GB parts, in the same Download panel, to get parts on any browser: a pen drive formatted the usual way (FAT32) refuses a single file over 4 GB, and a client who asked for a drive is better served by parts that fit.

Selection

Ask the client to pick their favourites — not proofing (no comment rounds, no print store), just a list to work from. Turn it on from Settings: a count, and an optional date. The client picks from this same Photographs page's own upload — whatever you have already made live, whichever side of a handover you are on. Most picking happens while you are still finishing the edit, long before there is anything to hand over.

• A bar above the grid says how many have been picked, of the count — the same place the album tabs sit. Each picked photograph carries a small heart badge in its corner; the client picks, you only ever see the result.
• Export CSV, beside the count, downloads the list: file name, album, tags, the date it was picked, oldest pick first. The file name is the one the photograph had before you uploaded it — recorded from tonight onward, so anything uploaded before this existed shows [name not recorded] rather than a blank cell.
• The count is a hard cap for the client — a new pick is refused once they reach it, though taking one back is always allowed, however full the count is. Lowering the count later does not un-pick anything for them; the bar simply reads "35 of 30" honestly if that happens.
• The date is shown, never enforced. Nothing locks when it passes — a client a day late still finishes, and you can export whenever suits you regardless.

Photographs from guests

Where: switch it on under Settings → Photographs from guests; review what arrives at the top of Photos.

Guests can add their own photographs to the catalogue — no account, no app. Give them the address shown at the top of the Photos page (mehfilbox.com/c/<catalogue>/add-photos): on the table cards, beside the QR, or with the catalogue's link. They pick photographs from their phone, add their name if they like, and send.

• Nothing a guest sends is seen by anyone else until you approve it. It waits under From guests at the top of the Photos page, with the name they gave. Approve puts it live at once, in the catalogue's From guests album — no Publish needed. Turn away deletes it, at every size.
• Publishing never shows a guest's photograph you have not approved.
• After you hand the catalogue over, the client approves them — the same queue, on their side.
• A catalogue with a guest code asks guests for it first, exactly as its link does.
• They count against the catalogue's storage. Up to 300 can wait for you at once; past that, guests are asked to try later.
• Photographs only, for now — not video.

People

Where: the bottom of Photos → People.

Name the people in the catalogue's photographs — Kamla Devi, Nani; Rohit, Mama; Meera, college friend — and, for a wedding, which side of the family each is on. Then choose one and tap every photograph they are in: each tap saves at once, and a second tap takes the tag off. A photograph can carry as many people as are in it.

• Guests see it on the Parivaar theme: everyone on a family tree, a switch for the bride's side and the groom's, and a tap on anyone shows only their photographs, with the others who share them.
• Only photographs that are live reach guests. Tag ahead of a Publish; the tags show when the photographs do.
• The client can tag too, from their own account — usually the family knows who everyone is better than anyone.
• Removing someone takes their tags with them; the photographs stay.

Voice notes

Where: the bottom of Photos → Voice notes.

Add a voice to a photograph — the story behind it, in someone's own words. Choose the photograph, type whose voice it is (Mummy, Dadaji), then Record in the browser or Upload a recording from a phone. Listen back, then Save.

• Up to 30 seconds each, three on a photograph.
• Guests hear them on the Bolta theme, beneath the photograph — a tap plays it. Only photographs that are live play.
• The client can add their own, from their account — the family usually has the best stories.
• They count against the catalogue's storage, beside the photographs (a voice note is a few hundred kilobytes).

The look: themes and saved looks

Your studio has four tabs (22 Oct): Branding — the look every new catalogue starts from, with the same theme browser as the customizer and, when you have one, your sample catalogue drawn beside it in the look you are choosing; Business — how guests reach you, your language, GST and your own domain; Team; Credits & membership. Changing Branding does not repaint a catalogue already made — Apply to my catalogues, under the picker, copies your saved colour, logos, Presented by and credit onto every catalogue you still own (each keeps its own theme and style). It lands as a draft: a published catalogue changes for guests when you next publish it. Catalogues handed to their clients are theirs and are not touched.

Where: a catalogue → Page; your studio's own look in Your studio → Branding; saved looks (once called house styles) at /admin/studio/styles

Three columns in the customizer: the section list, a live preview, and an editor for whatever is selected — on a wide screen the list and the editor each scroll on their own, so the preview stays in view; on a phone a Preview | Edit switch shows one at a time. The preview renders the real guest components — not an approximation — so you cannot publish something you never saw.

Editing a catalogue's sections

Changes autosave as a draft. Saved as draft under the header confirms it. Guests see none of it until you publish.

A section's layout

Most sections can be drawn more than one way, and the theme decides which unless you do. In the inspector, Layout offers Theme's choice — follow whatever the catalogue's theme prefers, which is what every fresh section does — beside the layouts that section has:

Photographs by tag, not just by album (21 Oct). A photo row, a photo gallery and the photo cover each say where their photographs come from: An album (or all of them), as before, or Tags — pick one or more, and the section shows every photograph that has any of them, from every album. Only tags some photograph already has are offered, with how many each has. A gallery set to the Behind the Scenes tag shows those photographs whatever its behind-the-scenes switch says. | A message | Plain (type straight on the page) · Framed (raised on a card) |

A layout changes how a section is arranged, never what it says — every name, caption and running time is there in each. The preview shows the change as you pick, and picking Theme's choice again hands the decision back to the theme.

The line under the names. The sentence on the cover belongs to the billboard section, whatever the theme: A line under the headline turns it on or off, and The line is what it says. Left blank, it shows the film's synopsis, then the catalogue's description. The quickest way there is to click the sentence in the preview: the billboard's editor opens with the box ready to type in. Scene themes point to it from their own panel too.

Cover position. A billboard or a photo billboard is cropped tall on a phone and wide on a laptop or TV, and on its own it keeps the middle of the picture — which cuts off the couple whenever they are not in the middle. In the section's inspector, under Cover position, tap the part that must always show (usually their faces) or drag the dot; the two small previews beside it are the phone crop and the laptop crop, and they follow as you move it. Arrow keys move it in small steps, and Centre it again undoes it. It belongs to that picture: choose a different featured film or album and the new cover starts centred until you set it. Like every change in the customizer, guests see it when you publish. If the film already has a poster position (set on the Films tab), the cover uses that until you set one here, and Use the film's own position goes back to it.

Theme and branding

Pick a theme — the built-in ones, plus any the platform has added — and it repaints the whole guest surface: colours, type, the preview's own frame, even the posters generated for films. Each card is a picture of the theme — a sample wedding as a phone shows it; hover to see it on a laptop. A theme made on the console shows its colours instead. The customizer has three columns: the outline on the left, the live preview in the middle and the inspector on the right. Look, first in the outline, holds the look: the current theme, then its own options, then Brand (accent, Presented by, your logo and where it sits, the credits) and Style — all three drawn the same way since 23 Oct, one row per look decision, each closed, with its current value beside it (a colour shows as a dot of that colour) and a dot when you have changed it from the theme; an on/off option is a switch on its own line. In Style: Type, Between sections (each choice drawn, not named), Footer, Section guide, Next film starts and Top bar. Open a row to change it. A theme that draws one of these itself does not offer that row. Last, Your look (reset, save as your own). Above the preview: Undo/Redo, the buttons that hide the outline or the inspector (on a wide screen), On your phone and Publish; under them Mobile/Desktop and Edit (a click picks a section) or Watch (a click plays a film). A section with a suggestion has a small dot beside its name — hover it to read it; all of them are under N suggestions below the outline. Click a section — in the outline or on the preview — and the inspector shows its words and layout; a small bar on the preview moves it Up or Down, Hides it or Removes it (Undo brings it back). Type straight onto the preview: a section's heading, the cover's line and a letter's words — click the selected section's words, type, and click away (Escape puts them back). Its heading's own face and size are in the closed row right under the heading box — on the cover, Headline typeface and size, which names the face in use; on the cover, the date's face and the trailer are under their own closed rows. Change theme opens the theme browser, beside the live preview. Two families are one card each: Darpan, the base theme, whose eleven presets (Marquee, Classic, Letterpress and the rest) are all free and differ only in colour, type and a few layouts — open it to pick one, then change any colour or face in Style; and Scenes, the illustrated worlds with a seal and a scratch card. ← All looks goes back. A search lists every match directly, wherever it lives. Clicking a theme only tries it: the preview shows your catalogue in it, and nothing is saved. Use puts the catalogue on it; Keep … or Back (or Escape) returns to the theme you had. Search by any word (newspaper, dark, kids), or filter by kind, mood and price. Details on a card tells a theme in full: how it looks on a phone and on a laptop, the whole description, what you can change about it, the languages it is made for, how heavy it is for a guest on 4G (Light, Medium or Heavy — the artwork their phone downloads), its version and what that version changed, and its price. Try on this catalogue puts it on the preview; Use (or Buy) from there. Most are free. A premium theme shows its price on the card; picking one previews it straight away, so you can see it on your own catalogue before deciding, but it only saves once you buy it — from the same card, in the customizer. A studio's purchase covers every catalogue it makes from then on; a client who buys one themselves is buying it for their own catalogue. As a Partner you may pay less: when the platform has set a Partner discount, the card shows your price with the usual price struck beside it, and that is what the checkout charges. With many themes to choose from, narrow them by mood — Editorial, Romantic, Light and so on, above the cards; the theme you are on always stays in view. If a theme was not made for one of your catalogue's languages, its card says so (Not made for Tamil) and Only themes made for … hides those. Both live on the Page tab under Look, first in the outline on the left. A theme you pick arrives as it was designed (15 Oct): its own accent colour, unless you chose one yourself — then yours stays, with Use <theme>'s own beside it. A theme's own settings (Rang's art, say) are remembered while you try others, and Back to <theme> undoes the switch in one click.

Shaping the look, beyond the theme (13 Oct). All of it is a draft until you Publish, and all of it works on every theme:

• The preview stays put. On a laptop the preview holds its place while you scroll the panel beside it, and the theme list scrolls in its own box.
• Section layouts follow the theme. In a section's editor the first layout card names what the theme does there (Akhbar's own · Columns). If sections keep a layout of their own that hides the theme's, a note above the preview says so and Use Akhbar's layouts hands them back in one step (Undo puts them back).
• Heading style, for the whole page (20 Oct), under Brand: the theme's own, or one of twenty faces in three tabs — Classic, Social styles (Typewriter, Modern, Neon, Squeeze, Editorial, Poster, Deco, Bubble, Comic — the looks people know from Instagram's text tool) and Handwriting (Script, Handwritten, Flowing, Calligraphy, Monoline, Brush, Marker). It sets the cover's headline and every section's title, on any theme. Each face is shown as itself; a guest's phone downloads only the face you chose.
• Size, face and Undo on the important texts (21 Oct): a film's synopsis (Films tab), the letter's message, the cover's line and the catalogue's description (Settings) each have a small bar above the box: Undo and Redo for what you typed there, then S · M · L · XL for the size and Face for the typeface — the same twenty faces as headings. The size and face are the whole text's, not single words, and work on every theme and in every language (in Hindi, Tamil and the other scripts the text keeps a face made for that script; the size still applies). The letter's signature keeps the theme's face. The catalogue's description takes the cover line's look when it shows as the cover's line.
• Heading typeface and size, per section, under the section's heading: the page's style (or the theme's), any of the same twenty faces, and Small to Larger. A section's own face wins over the page's. In Hindi, Tamil and the other scripts the heading keeps a face made for that script; only the size applies.
• Photo size, in a gallery section: Small, Medium or Large — 4, 3 or 2 across on a laptop, 2, 2 or 1 on a phone.
• Between sections: the theme's own drawing, a Line, a small Ornament in your colour, plain Space, or None.
• Footer artwork: With artwork or Compact. Compact keeps every word and leaves out the theme's artwork there.
• Footer layout (20 Oct): Standard (the theme's split), Centred, Card (a raised panel, narrower than the page) or Minimal (one quiet line).
• Section guide (21 Oct): on laptops and televisions, a slim line of dots down the right edge of the guest page — one per section with a heading — that fills in as a guest scrolls, names the section they reach, names them all when pointed at, and takes them to one with a tap. Not on phones, and only on a page with three or more such sections. Shown or Hidden. While shown (22 Oct): Side (Right or Left), Size (S · M · L · XL) and the Face of its names — the page's own, or any of the twenty heading faces.
• The name in the top bar (21 Oct): the catalogue's own name (“Aanya & Vikram Originals”). The 31 themes that draw their own top bar shorten it to its initials on a phone: there, choose the theme's way, Full name (the whole name at every width) or Hidden. The scene themes and the base ones always show the whole name: there, it is Shown or Hidden. A logo placed in the top bar still shows either way. The words themselves are edited in Settings → Name and city → Name in the top bar.
• Where your logo sits (20 Oct): Top bar, Foot of the page, or Both. At the top it can sit in the top bar, Inline (its own centred row above the cover), In front (larger, over the cover) or Float (a small badge that stays as the page scrolls).
• Playing all the films in a row (20 Oct): after Play the whole event, the next film starts by itself after Right away, 3 s (the default), 5 s or 10 s.
• Reset to the theme's own look puts colour, typeface, heading style, the theme's options, separators, footer, logo placement, section layouts and heading styles back as the theme was designed — your logo, "Presented by" and content stay — and becomes Undo until you change anything else.
• Save as my theme keeps the look on screen by name. It appears under Yours in the theme list on any catalogue (with any themes you made yourself), and among your house styles for new catalogues. A saved look is the theme, colour, typeface, the theme's options, footer and separator; sections and words stay with each catalogue.

Branding on top of a theme is accent colour, logo, display font, and "presented by". Upload your logo from your computer: a PNG, JPEG or WebP up to 2 MB, and a transparent PNG looks best. A logo for dark backgrounds is optional, beside it: a white or light version of the same logo. Where your logo sits on something dark — a dark theme, a nav that is white over the cover photograph, a film playing with your watermark — guests see that version; everywhere else, your regular logo. The page decides from the colour around the logo as the guest scrolls, so you never pick per theme. Leave it empty and your one logo is used everywhere, exactly as before. Guest pages only load images stored on Mehfilbox, so a logo can no longer be a link to another website. A logo saved that way before is not shown: guests see your name in its place until you upload the file. The footer also says "Filmed by <your business name>", which is not branding — you will see it in the preview, and you cannot edit or remove it, because it is the credit your studio keeps on every catalogue you make. You are warned at pick time if an accent will not read as white button text, before you can publish something illegible.

How guests reach you. In Your studio → Business, under How guests reach you, add your WhatsApp number, Instagram, a phone for calls, your website and an email. Each one you fill in appears as a link under "Filmed by" on every catalogue you made — WhatsApp and Instagram first, since that is how couples find a studio — including catalogues you have already delivered and handed over, so a number you change stops ringing the old one everywhere at once. Type them the way you would anywhere: 98765 43210 is read as an Indian number, @yourstudio or your profile link as your Instagram, yourstudio.in as your website. A field left blank shows nothing. Your clients cannot change these, the same as the credit.

A small "Made with Mehfilbox" line sits beside your credit, on unless you switch it off in the customizer — and it is worth keeping on: it is how a guest who loved the catalogue finds their way back to you. Following it takes them to a form ("Get your event on Mehfilbox"), named for your studio, that sends you an email — nobody else — with their name, their email and a word about what they are after. Reply to them directly; Mehfilbox only passes the message on. Switching the line off hides the whole thing, enquiry included.

Your own logo as a watermark is a separate setting, in Your studio rather than here — because it is one choice for every catalogue you make, not something to decide fresh each time. Turn it on and a small, translucent copy of your logo appears in the corner of the video player, never burned into the file itself, so nothing changes about what a guest can still download or share clean. It is off unless you turn it on, the opposite default from "Made with Mehfilbox" above: it is entirely your call, worth nothing to advertise, and it only ever applies to catalogues you create after you switch it on — a catalogue already published keeps whatever it had. Set your logo first; the toggle does nothing without one.

A theme has versions, and a catalogue stays on the one it was given. When the platform changes a theme's look it publishes a new version of it; it does not alter the version your client's page already uses. A catalogue is pinned to the version of its theme the day it is made (or the day you pick the theme), so nothing on a page a client has been given ever changes on its own. When a newer version of your catalogue's theme exists, the theme panel in the customizer says so (This catalogue is on version 1 of Feast. Version 2 is available), says what changed in it, and offers Use version 2. Nothing changes until you press it, and even then it is a draft: your client sees it when you Publish. Catalogues from before versions existed are on version 1, which is what they were already showing. A house style is pinned the same way: it keeps the version it was made with. Your studio's own default theme is not pinned, so a new catalogue starts on the newest version. And if the platform withdraws a theme, the catalogues already on it keep it.

Scene themes: a sealed opening and a scratch card. The Scenes themes (a palace, a garden, a beach, the mountains, a shikara, fireworks, toys, a heritage train, a royal airstrip, a flower valley, a lotus lake, the ghats, a temple, an old cinema hall, the desert, Kerala's backwaters, the monsoon, a Pichwai painting, a stepwell, a retro film poster, Holi, Goa, Eid night, the Haldi, Mehendi and Sangeet, kite day, Punjab, Chettinad, old Kolkata, Bombay, a naming day, a gala evening and Mysore) open with a painted scene and a wax seal. A guest taps the seal, it melts away as smoke and glitter, and the scene opens onto the catalogue: once per visit, never in your preview. The seal is the welcome, so a scene theme does not ask guests "Who's joining?". Below the cover, a foil card hides the event's date until the guest scratches it (or taps Reveal), then counts down to the day. Each scene theme offers three paintings, painted for phones and again for laptops, and in its options (Design → the theme's options, below the theme) you choose the painting, the seal's colour, how the scene opens, whether the seal appears at all, whether the scratch card appears at all, whether the scene's next painting closes the page above the footer (on unless you turn it off), and four lines in your own words: the letters on the seal, the line under it, the words above the card and once it is revealed — and the word on the card's button (Reveal unless you write another). Leave a line blank and each guest reads our words in their own language. The scratch card's foil is gold, silver or rose gold. Click the card in the preview to jump straight to its words. Use the category buttons above the theme list to find them.

The page around the scene. Four more options shape the page below the cover:

• Page colour. The theme's own colour, six colours taken from the chosen painting, or Custom… for any colour of your own, such as your brand colour. The cards, the text and the accent all follow the colour you pick, light or dark, so the page stays readable. If no readable page can be built on a custom colour, the theme's own is used and the panel tells you.
• Fade the page to. A second colour, so the page fades from the first at the top of the screen to this one at the foot. It has to be close enough to the first for the same text to read on both. If it isn't, the page stays one colour and the panel says so.
• How far the painting fades into the page. Short, medium (as before) or long.
• The painting behind the page. None, faint, soft or strong. The scene shows softened behind the films, under the page colour.

Guests see the changes when you publish.

House styles

Where: /admin/studio/styles

Your studio's own saved looks — a house style plus a template — reusable across every catalogue instead of choosing fresh each time. Capture one from a catalogue you have already built, or start one from scratch; the wizard's step 2 offers every saved style.

A style carries a language too, chosen from the same list: a catalogue made from it opens in that language, and is offered in it and English. Choosing the style in the wizard adds the language to the catalogue.

A house style in use by a published catalogue is frozen. Changing it would silently repaint a delivered catalogue. Duplicate and edit makes a new style instead.

Every free theme is free to duplicate, without limit. The styles page also lists every theme — built in or added by the platform — each with its own Duplicate as a house style button. It makes a new, fully editable style starting from that theme's own colours, which you can then rename, restyle and set as default like any other. A premium theme shows its price instead of the button until your studio owns it — buy it from any catalogue's customizer, and from then on it duplicates like the rest (a copy would otherwise be a way around the price).

Sections available

Phase 0: billboard, film row, photo row, letter, photo grid. Phase 1: keep watching, our story (timeline), pick one for us (randomiser), photo billboard — the same full-screen opener as billboard, a photograph instead of a film, for a catalogue that wants its first screen to be a picture. (The bucket list was retired on 23 Oct: its ticks stayed on each guest's phone, seen by no one else.)

Add in the customizer offers every one of them (until 30 September it offered only the first five — a leftover gate from before the others existed). A billboard and a photo billboard are each allowed once per catalogue; everything else can be added as many times as you like.

Every section disappears when it has nothing to show rather than rendering an empty heading — a film row with no films, a timeline with no moments, a "keep watching" row for a first-time guest are all simply absent.

On your phone

On your phone, beside Publish in the customizer, shows a QR code. Point a phone's camera at it and the catalogue's draft opens — your sections, your look, every ready film you have ticked and every photograph — exactly as Publish would put it live, with a strip across the top saying it is a draft. The link works for thirty minutes and opens only this catalogue; make a new one whenever you need it. A film that has never been published does not play in the preview yet; everything else does.

Publishing

Publish is in the catalogue's header, beside its Draft or Live label, on every tab — so when the last film turns Ready on Films you publish from there. It reads Publish changes when a live catalogue has edits, films or photographs waiting, and steps aside when nothing is. The customizer keeps its own Publish, which saves what you are editing first, so it can never ship a stale version.

If Publish is refused, one line says why and offers the way forward: Get a credit, Send the link again (to confirm your email), Check translations, or Become a Partner.

Before that — or after you take it offline — the link resolves but shows guests a neutral "not yet available" screen. It is never a 404, so a link sent early is embarrassing rather than broken. If a premiere date is set, guests instead see a countdown until it, then the catalogue opens on its own.

Guests can cast a film to a television from the player (a Cast button in Chrome, Edge and Android; AirPlay in Safari) and use the phone as the remote. Nothing to set up, and nothing to send them: it works on the same link.

Guests can also keep the catalogue on their phone or laptop as an app named for whoever it is for — the couple, the graduate, the baby — with an icon of their initials on the catalogue's colours: a small banner offers it once, a few seconds after the page opens, and stops for good if they choose Don't show again. Nothing to set up. A catalogue served on its own web address does not offer it yet.

Under The link on the overview, QR code for this link opens a code you can download as a PNG (for a card or an album box) or an SVG (for a designer). It opens the same address as the link and never carries the passcode — a guarded catalogue still asks for its code on the other side.

Send one to a side, not everyone. Three more links sit under the plain one — for the bride's side, for the groom's side, and for anyone who just wants the highlights. Each opens the exact same catalogue, but skips the "who's joining?" moment for whoever opens it: a bride's-side link never asks that family who they are. Nothing else about the catalogue changes. The two sides are a wedding's, and are named that way on every catalogue for now; for any other occasion, the plain link and the highlights link are the ones to send.

The overview follows the catalogue's state. A draft opens on what to do next — Upload and title films, Arrange and publish — then its storage, plan and link. A live catalogue opens on the link, then The client: one card showing where things stand (Sign-in issued → Handover sent → Handed over) above giving them a sign-in, sending them the page, and handing it over. The useful-once things — the TV card, a link for each side, saving the look as a house style — are under More.

The catalogue overview carries a checklist of what is left:

1. Films uploaded
2. Films finished processing
3. At least one film shown to guests
4. Photographs added (optional)
5. The look — a theme, their colour and logo (optional)
6. Published

Trying it with a real client before you hand it over

A catalogue you publish but have not yet handed over is a specimen — real, live, with your real footage, but marked "Specimen copy — not yet handed over" on its guest page, and good for one week. If you have not handed it over by then, it unpublishes itself automatically — nothing is lost, and publishing it again starts a fresh week. You are warned by email two days before it unpublishes, and again when it does.

Publishing never adds a code you did not choose. A catalogue opens to anyone with its link unless you gave it a guest code — in the wizard (More options → A guest code) or later in Settings → Who can watch. If you want your client to review it privately first, choose a code there and send it with the link. (Catalogues published before 16 October were given a six-digit PIN on their first Publish; theirs is still shown on the overview, and setting or removing a code replaces it.)

Hand it over any time before the week is up and the badge and the deadline both disappear for good — it is the client's catalogue from then on, exactly as Handing over to the client below describes. The specimen window costs nothing beyond the credit Publish already spends.

Partner membership

Making a catalogue for a client — and publishing one for the first time — needs a Partner membership, bought by the year under Credits. Until you are a Partner, New catalogue shows the membership instead of the wizard; your sample catalogue stays free either way.

• Each payment adds a year — to the end you already have if you renew early, from the day you pay if it had ended. Each one also adds the membership's Deliver credit to your account.
• When it ends, you have 30 days' grace to renew, with nothing changing. After that you cannot make or first- publish a catalogue until you renew.
• Nothing you have published is touched by a lapse: every catalogue keeps playing, and renewals, upgrades and archive for them can still be bought. Your clients are never affected by your membership.
• Where online payment is not switched on yet, write to us: we set the membership up the same working day.
• Once you are a Partner, a gold Partner mark sits under your studio's name in the sidebar, for as long as the membership runs.
• Premium themes cost a Partner less, when a Partner discount is set: the theme card shows your price beside the usual one, and your receipt and order history name the discount. It applies through the 30 days' grace too.

Credits

Every catalogue for a client spends one credit when it is first published — and credits come in kinds: Deliver, Keep and Cinema. Each catalogue is on one of those plans, and publishing it spends a credit of that plan. Having Deliver credits does not pay for a Cinema catalogue, however many you hold; your balance is shown by kind — on the dashboard and on your Credits card under Your studio — for exactly that reason. The card also lists what each kind costs today, and always shows today's price.

Choose the plan when you create the catalogue, or change it on the catalogue's overview (Plan, above The link). You can change it until you first publish. After that it is fixed and the overview says so: publishing spent a credit of that plan, and a plan that could drift afterwards would leave a Cinema catalogue paid for with a Deliver credit. Taking a catalogue offline and putting it back does not spend another credit, and does not unlock the plan.

Publish without a credit of the catalogue's plan shows exactly what is short — "This catalogue is on the Keep plan… and you have none left" — and, if you hold credits of another kind, says so and where to change the plan. Where online payment is switched on, the same panel lets you pay for a credit right there (see Buying credits, below), and publishing works the moment the payment lands. Either way there is an Ask for a credit button, once a day per plan — for a studio that would rather be invoiced, and for a deployment where online payment is not switched on yet. Nothing about the catalogue is lost while you wait, and the platform adds credits the same working day.

Publish can also be refused because your email address has not been confirmed yet. When you registered, we sent a link to that address; until it is opened, a catalogue can be built, uploaded to and customised in full, but not published, and no credit is spent. The line that appears says so and has Send the link again; the same line sits at the top of the console from your first sign-in. Signing in once with Send me a link on the sign-in page confirms the address too. Nothing is lost while it waits.

Buying credits. Under Credits (its own place in the sidebar — balance, buying, and every order in one destination), Buy credits lists every kind you can buy online — a single credit of each plan, and the five-pack of Deliver where one is on sale — each at today's price. Choose one and press Pay; you are taken to the payment page, and brought back to a page that confirms it and says exactly what was added. Prices are before GST. A few things worth knowing:

• Check what you are buying before you press Pay. The option you chose is ringed, each option says what it adds ("Adds 5 Deliver credits" is the five-pack; "Adds 1 Cinema credit" is Cinema), and a sentence above the button repeats it: "You are buying Deliver — five credits — adds 5 Deliver credits." A Deliver credit does not publish a Cinema catalogue, so it is worth the second look.
• Your credits are shown as a basket — a tile each for Deliver, Keep and Cinema, even when one is empty — at the top of Credits: how many you can spend, when the soonest lapses, and how many are spent or have lapsed.
• Orders, further down the same page, lists everything you have paid for, newest first — including payments that are still waiting or did not go through — with what it was, what was charged before GST, the code and discount if you used one, what it added, the date and a short reference to quote to us. Below that, Where your credits came from says how each credit arrived (bought, a reward code, the welcome credit, or added by us) and which catalogue a spent one went to.
• The amount is decided by us, not by the page. What you are charged is worked out on the server from the price list when you press Pay; nothing typed or edited in the browser can change it.
• A discount code goes in Discount code?. Press Apply and the button shows the price with the code taken off; a code that has been typed but not applied cannot be paid with, so the amount on the button is always the amount you will be asked for. A code that takes off the whole price adds the credit without a payment.
• A code you started to use is held for you while you pay, so the last use of a limited code cannot be given to two people at once. If the payment fails or is abandoned it comes back.
• You are emailed a receipt — to every admin of your studio, in your studio's language — once what you bought has been added: what it was, the amount before GST, the reference and the date, and the discount if you used a code. Keep it as your record. If a receipt does not arrive, the payment page and your credits are still the truth; check spam, then write to us with the time and amount.
• If you close the window after paying, nothing is lost. The credit is added when the payment is confirmed, whether or not you come back to the page; if the confirmation is slow the page says so and tells you not to pay again. Once a day we also ask the payment provider about anything still waiting.
• The Partner membership is bought here too, at the top of Credits — see Partner membership, above.
• Extra storage is not buyable online yet. It is refused before any money is asked for; ask us as before. (Renewal is — see Renewing a catalogue, below.) Extra storage is sold as a 50 GB block for the rest of the catalogue's term, and the overview quotes the block's price beside the catalogue's usage once it passes four-fifths full.

Have a code? If you have been given a reward code — from a campaign, a partnership, a thank-you — type it into Have a code? on the Credits page. It adds credits of the kind the code names straight to your balance, with no payment, and the balance updates as soon as it does. Capital letters do not matter.

• If a code does not work, you are told only that it did not work. Mistyped, expired, switched off, already used by you, used up by everyone, and not meant for your studio all read the same, on purpose — a code is worth money, and telling them apart would let anyone find out which ones exist. Check it against where you were given it, or ask whoever gave it to you.
• Most codes can be used once per studio, and some run out or end on a date.
• After several tries in a row you are asked to wait a few minutes before trying again.
• Credits from a code last two years, like any other, and each is listed as coming from that code.
• Codes that take money off a purchase are entered in Discount code? in Buy credits, not here; this box is for the ones that hand over credits.

Settings

Where: a catalogue → Settings

Everything here saves as you change it — there is no Save button. The line at the top right says Saving… while it waits for you to stop typing, then Saved. The one exception is a new guest code, below.

Who can watch

Type a code — or Generate one for me — and press Set this code. It waits for that press on purpose: setting a code signs out everyone still holding the old one, so nothing half-typed is ever saved on a pause. Until a code is set, a catalogue switched to A guest code stays open to anyone with the link. Leaving the box empty keeps the existing code; switching back to Anyone with the link clears it.

A passcode is view-only. Downloading the catalogue needs a sign-in — the studio's own, or the client's once handed over — even on a passcode-protected catalogue. This is deliberate: a code passed around at the event should not also hand out full-resolution originals forever.

Languages

Where: a catalogue → Settings → Languages, and Name and city just below it.

A catalogue is offered in the languages you choose for it — one catalogue English alone, another English and Tamil, another English and Kannada. English is always included: it is what a guest reads wherever another language has nothing written yet.

• Choose them from the dropdown (up to ten). Each is listed by its name and in its own script. Pick the one the catalogue opens in beneath it; guests can switch to any of the others.
• Write in them. Choosing a language does not translate anything — you write the catalogue's own words in it. In the customizer, the film list and Name and city, a Writing in switch appears above the fields. It lists the catalogue's languages with how many of the words are written in each (Tamil 12/18); choose one and every field shows a box for that language, with the English above it to translate from. Anything you leave empty shows in English.
• Removing a language hides it; nothing is deleted. What you wrote stays, and comes back if you add the language again.
• In the customizer, the preview follows the language you are writing in — choose Tamil in the Writing in switch and the preview shows the catalogue as a Tamil guest will read it, the platform's buttons included.
• The platform's own words — the buttons, the labels, the emails a client receives — are in each guest's language where we have them (the fourteen launch languages), and in English where we do not. We wrote them, and they have not all been read by a native speaker yet; if a word reads wrongly to a guest, tell us and it will be corrected.
• A catalogue made before this was chosen keeps English and Hindi. You can remove Hindi in the same place.
• Suggested headings come in the catalogue's languages. A layout gives each section a heading you will probably keep (The films, A message for you…). A catalogue made in Tamil starts with those headings in Tamil beside the English ones. We wrote them and they have not been read by a native speaker yet — change any of them in the customizer. Only the languages the catalogue has at the time are filled in; a language you add later starts empty.

The translation sheet

If you do not write Tamil yourself, Settings → Translation sheet is how someone else does. It appears once a catalogue has a language besides English.

1. Download the sheet. It is a spreadsheet (CSV) with one row for every word in the catalogue — the name it is made for and its city, each film's name and synopsis, photograph captions, and every section's heading and text — with a column for each language, and what is already written in it.
2. Send it to your translator. They fill in the empty cells of their language's column. They do not need the console, and they should not change the other columns.
3. Upload it. You see what it would do first (Would write 14 words — Tamil 14) and press Apply to save it. Nothing is saved before that.

What an upload will never do: change the English (that column is ignored, whatever it says), or clear something you have written (an empty cell is skipped). A column for a language the catalogue does not have is ignored, by name; a row for something you have since deleted is skipped, and listed by its line. Words in sections are saved as a draft in the customizer, like your own edits, and go live when you Publish; the name and city, film names and captions save at once, as they do when you type them.

A CSV opens in Excel, Numbers or Google Sheets. Save it back as CSV UTF-8, or from Google Sheets Download → CSV, so the Tamil, Kannada and the other scripts survive.

Their own address

A domain the client owns, pointed here. They add a CNAME and the domain is added to the hosting project. Until both are done this is stored but not served — saving it alone does nothing. Check DNS on this screen confirms the record is actually there before you tell them it works.

Serving until

After this date guests see a renewal screen — never a broken link, and nothing is deleted.

The term starts the day you first publish, not the day you create the catalogue. Until then Settings says Not started and nothing counts down, so a catalogue you spend weeks building has spent none of its time. Its length is set by the catalogue's plan — Deliver runs six months, Keep and Cinema twelve — and the overview says which while it is still a draft. Publishing it again after taking it offline never restarts the term.

Take offline

Unpublish returns the catalogue to the "not yet available" screen. Nothing is deleted and the films stay exactly where they are.

Deleting a catalogue

Where: Settings → the red panel at the bottom.

You must type the catalogue's address to confirm. It removes every film from the video provider, every photograph and every resized version of it, every record of guests watching, and the catalogue itself.

There is no undo and no copy. If you only want it hidden, take it offline instead.

Handing over to the client

Where: a catalogue → Home → Hand this over to the client.

However you reach it, a handover is always the client's to accept — nothing moves on your side alone. You keep full access, exactly as before, until they do.

If you have already given them a sign-in (wizard step 3, or Create their sign-in here any time before) — the usual case — there is nothing to type: press Hand over now. The client is emailed at once, in the catalogue's language: who is handing over what, and one link. For a client who has never signed in — most of them, at this point — the link also sets their password, so one click takes them to their account with the handover waiting first, and an Accept the handover button finishes it. Until they press it, this page still shows Waiting to be accepted by <their email>, and you keep full access.

If you have not, enter their email and press Create handover link. The client is emailed the link, and it is shown to you as well, so you can send it on WhatsApp too if that is where you and they talk. They open it, see what they are being given and by whom, and set a password (or sign in, if that address already has an account). Either way, from here on they sign in on the Client door.

Mistyped their address? Every email goes to whatever you typed, so a letter missing sends the password link and the handover to a stranger. While the account is still new — this catalogue the only one on it, nothing accepted on it yet — the sign-in panel offers Mistyped? Change their address: the same account, re-addressed; the new address gets a fresh password link, and a waiting handover goes out again to it. Once the client has accepted anything, the address is theirs to change, from their own account.

What to know

• A link is shown exactly once. Only a hash of it is stored, so it cannot be shown again — copy it before you dismiss it. The direct path has no link to show; the client's email carries the way in.
• Anyone who opens a link can claim the catalogue. Send it to the client and nobody else.
• One live handover per catalogue, whichever way you sent it. A second attempt is refused; cancel the outstanding one to issue a new one.
• A handover — link or direct — expires after 14 days. Missing, expired and already-accepted all look identical to whoever the client's own page belongs to.

After it is accepted

• You lose access entirely — it is gone from your list, and 404 by direct link — unless the client opens a support window for you from their own console, good for seven or fourteen days and closing on its own. You are emailed the moment one opens — to every admin at your studio, in whatever language your studio reads its own mail in (set in Your studio settings) — naming the catalogue, how long the window lasts, and the reason the client gave (Theme change, Rectification, Additional storage, or their own words for anything else), with a link straight to the catalogue's overview.
• What a window lets you touch: films, photographs, sections, branding and translations — the Home, Films & photos, Page and Translations tabs. Settings is the client's alone now (the term, the address, the domain, deletion), so that tab is not shown while you are inside on a window, and so is the handover panel.
• Handing a change back. The overview shows what they asked for and the date the window closes. Make the change and publish it, then hand it back: the change-handover fee is paid by your studio, through the same checkout as credits (how you share it with the client is between you). The client is emailed to review the catalogue and accept, with our terms, and your access closes when they do. Not handed back before the window closes? Your access closes and the request lapses — their catalogue stays live either way, and they can ask again.
• Your credit survives, and nobody can edit it away. Every catalogue you made carries "Filmed by <your business name>" in its footer — for as long as the catalogue exists, through the handover and every renewal. It is read from your studio, not from the catalogue's branding, so the client cannot reword or remove it. (Their "presented by" line is theirs to change; when it only repeats your name, the footer shows your credit once.)

Pipeline — where each catalogue stands

Where: Pipeline in the sidebar

Every catalogue you have made, from first draft to delivered, on one page — including the ones you have already handed over. Each is a short timeline:

1. Created — the day you made it.
2. Draft — how many films and photographs it holds so far (for a catalogue you still hold).
3. Published — the day it went live; offline now if you have taken it down since.
4. Delivered — the day you sent the client the link. Not the day they opened it, and not the day they took ownership: sent, or queued if the message has not gone out yet. If the message could not be sent, the catalogue is not shown as delivered and it is flagged, so you know to send it again.

Whether the client has taken the catalogue over is a separate line beside the timeline, not a fifth step: Not handed over, Handover sent … waiting for the client, the invitation has expired, or Claimed by the client with the date. A catalogue can be delivered and not yet claimed, and that is the one to nudge. A catalogue you never hand over is not counted as stuck for it.

The chips at the top — All, Draft, Published, Delivered, Needs attention — show how many catalogues are in each and filter the page; the address of a filtered page can be bookmarked. Whatever needs a hand comes first, and says why:

• a draft with nothing uploaded three days after you made it, or a draft still unpublished after three weeks;
• a catalogue that has been live three days and whose link has not been sent, or whose delivery message failed;
• a handover sent two weeks ago and still unclaimed, or an invitation that expired;
• for a catalogue you still hold: a term ending within thirty days, a catalogue in its grace period, or one that has been paused (guests see the renewal page). Once you hand a catalogue over, its term stops appearing here at all — renewing it is between the client and Mehfilbox now, and the platform tells them directly, on its own schedule.

How much guests have opened it. A published or delivered catalogue you still hold carries one line under its timeline — "3 guests have opened it · first 12 September 2026 · last watched 3 days ago", or "No guest has opened it yet" — and the catalogue's own overview says the same above the film-by-film numbers. A catalogue whose link went out a week ago and that nobody has opened is flagged, because the message may not have landed, or nobody forwarded it. Three things worth knowing:

• It is counts and dates, never people. Guests choose a label ("Bride's side", "Friends"), not a name; nobody is identified, here or anywhere.
• It counts anyone who opened the link — including you. Opening your own catalogue to check it counts as a guest, because there is no way to tell you apart. If you have looked at it yourself, "1 guest has opened it" may just be you.
• Once a catalogue is handed over it is not shown. What a client's guests do with the client's catalogue is the client's to know, just as you can no longer see inside it.

Once a catalogue is handed over you can no longer see inside it, so its row shows the stage and the claim but not the film counts. Open takes you into any catalogue you still hold.

The live screen — the catalogue on the venue's TV

Where: Open the live screen under the link on a published catalogue's overview. It opens mehfilbox.com/tv/<catalogue>/live in a new tab — open it on the TV, or the laptop driving the projector, at the venue.

The catalogue's photographs fill the screen, newest first, one every eight seconds, round and round. Publish more photographs during the evening and they appear on it within a minute, next in line, ahead of the rest — the room sees the cake being cut, or the shot from the sangeet, five minutes after you took it. Nothing needs pressing on the screen itself; the name the catalogue is made for sits in the corner.

• The same rules as the catalogue's link. A catalogue with a guest code asks for it on the screen first; a catalogue you take offline, or whose term runs out, leaves the screen within a minute.
• Only what you have published. A photograph you have uploaded but not yet published never appears.
• Films do not play on it — it is a slideshow for a room that is busy celebrating. The TV page (/tv) is still where a family sits down to watch.

Reach — what your catalogues did for you

Where: Reach in the sidebar. Studio admins only: it carries your enquiry count, which is the business's.

Everything your catalogues have done for you, added up across the catalogues you hold:

• Guests reached — how many guests opened them and chose who is watching.
• Plays — films watched past thirty seconds. Opening a film and closing it straight away does not count.
• Watched — the time guests spent watching, in minutes or hours.
• Likes — hearts on your films and photographs.
• Enquiries — guests who followed the "Filmed by" credit on one of your catalogues and asked you about an event of their own, in all and in the last thirty days. Each one still reaches you by email, as before; this page only counts them. Counting began on 6 October 2026: enquiries you received by email before then are not in the number.

Below the totals are your most-watched films (the top five, with the catalogue each belongs to) and every catalogue with its own guests, plays, watch time and likes, busiest first.

Three things worth knowing:

• The numbers are floors, not estimates. A guest who skips "Who's watching?" can watch everything without being counted, so the real figures are at least these, and often more. Opening your own catalogue to check it counts, as it does on Pipeline.
• It is counts, never people. No guest is named or listed, here or anywhere. An enquiry is counted as one enquiry; who sent it and what they wrote is only in the email you received.
• Catalogues you have handed over are not counted. What a client's guests do with the client's catalogue is the client's to know. A catalogue appears here from the day you first publish it.

Renewing a catalogue

Where: Renew beside the term on a catalogue's overview, on its row in Pipeline, or the address it opens.

You are billed for every catalogue you made — including the ones you have handed over to the client, whether or not you can still open them. So Renew is on each of those, and only those: a catalogue you hold but did not make is not yours to pay for, and it has no Renew link.

The screen says where the catalogue stands — running, ending soon (within thirty days), in its grace period (the term has ended but guests can still watch, for now) or paused (guests see the renewal page instead of the films) — and what renewing does: twelve more months, and the exact date it takes it to.

• Renewing early costs nothing extra: the twelve months are added after the current end, never overlapping it.
• Renewing an ended catalogue starts from today, and it is served again the moment the payment is confirmed. A catalogue in its grace period goes back to active, so the console stops saying its term has ended.
• A receipt is emailed to every admin of your studio, and the payment is in Credits.
• Once you hand a catalogue over, the client can always renew it themselves too — at the list price, any time, whether or not you still would. Nothing else moves: you are still recorded as the studio that made it (your "Filmed by" credit stays), and you are still who is billed by default. Renewing it yourself is always open to you as well; whoever pays first is simply who paid.
• Deliver has no renewal: it runs its six months and ends. The screen says so, and how to ask us.
• A catalogue not yet published has nothing to renew — its term starts on first Publish.
• Pipeline stresses the Renew link on a catalogue you still hold whose term is ending, in grace or paused, so the ones that need it are the ones you see. Once handed over, the link stays — you are still billed for it by default — but it never stresses: the term is no longer yours to watch, and the platform reminds the client directly instead.
• A paused catalogue's own page has a way in for you. A client who forwards you the link that has stopped playing is looking at the guests' renewal page; under its buttons it says Do you pay for this wedding? Sign in to renew it. (in the occasion's own word — birthday, event — rather than wedding where it is not one). Sign in as your studio and you land on that catalogue's Renew screen — for any catalogue you are billed for, including one you have handed over. Signed in as somebody who does not pay for it, you land on your usual page and are shown nothing about the catalogue.

Tracking what you delivered

Where: your console's list page, Delivered

Every catalogue you originated, wherever it lives now, with its renewal date and status — the collection channel for a renewal, not a report nobody reads. A catalogue past its term shows here before a client ever has to ask you what happens next.

Limits

Storage is the only limit. There is no cap on how many films or photographs a catalogue holds.

Storage counts what the provider actually stores — the encoding ladder for a film, every rendition for a photograph — not the file that was uploaded. An upload that would not fit is refused before a byte moves, with the figures in the message.

A catalogue holds what its plan is sold with — pick Deliver, Keep or Cinema and the space comes with it; there is nothing else to choose at creation. It follows the plan if you change the plan before you publish, and follows an upgrade afterwards. Your platform can still set a different figure by hand, on the catalogue itself or on your account as a whole, and a catalogue's own setting always wins — which matters after a handover, so a client who has been granted more storage does not stay capped by a studio who has already left the relationship.

When a catalogue is full, an Ask for more space button appears on its overview, next to the warning. We add it by hand, the same working day — buying it yourself is not built yet.

When something goes wrong

Where else to look

Getting help

Support is at the bottom of the console's side rail. Tell us what happened — or pick Report a problem — and we reply by email; the page you were on goes with your message. Guests have the same door: Report a problem sits beside Made with Mehfilbox at the foot of every catalogue page that shows the credit, and brings the catalogue's address with it. Turn the credit off and both go, so a catalogue you have white-labelled carries nothing of ours.