# Your Portal

URL: https://docs.boldvideo.com/guides/portal





The portal is what your viewers see: your videos, playlists, search, and AI assistant under your brand. Bold gives you two ways to run it, and you choose under **Settings → Channel Settings → Portal Type**:

* **Bold Hosted Portal**: instant portal at `your-channel.boldvideo.com`. No code required.
* **Custom Frontend (Headless)**: Bold is the engine, your site is the experience. Point Bold at your frontend's base URL and build with the [API](/api), [SDK](/sdk), or the [Next.js starter](/sdk/nextjs-starter).

## Configuring the hosted portal

Everything lives under **Portal** in the main navigation, grouped into collapsible sections. Hit **Save** when you're done. Changes go live immediately.

<img alt="Portal settings" src={__img0} placeholder="blur" />

### Homepage

* **Layout**: whether visitors land on your **Library**, the **AI Assistant** front and center, or **None** (custom)
* **Hero Section**: none, or a custom hero (custom heroes require a component in your own frontend)
* **Videos per page**: pagination size

### Design

* **Logos**: separate light and dark mode logos
* **Colors**: background, text, and accent
* **Fonts**: heading and body fonts
* **Header size, corner radius, video display style**

### Navigation

* Toggle the **header**, the **search bar**, and **AI search**
* Add **menu links** (managed under [Settings → Main Menu](/guides/settings))

### Video Page

* Toggle **transcripts** and **chapters** panels on video pages

### AI

* **Chat disclaimer**: optional text below the AI chat input, for legal or usage guidance

### Access

* **Public**: anyone with the link
* **Password Protected**: one shared password for the portal

For per-member access with device limits and session control, use [viewer sessions](/guides/team-viewers#viewers) with your own auth provider.

### Analytics

Connect **Plausible**, **Google Analytics 4**, or **Fathom** to track portal traffic with your own analytics account.

### Custom Links

Short, branded URLs (`your-portal.com/l/something`) that redirect wherever you point them.

### Advanced

Custom CSS is the escape hatch when the design controls aren't enough.

<Callout title="Plan availability">
  White-label portals (removing Bold branding) are available on Growth and Enterprise plans.
</Callout>

## Going headless

Switch **Portal Type** to **Custom Frontend** and Bold stops being your viewers' destination and becomes your video backend. The **Frontend Base URL** you configure is used for preview links from the admin panel. From there:

* Fetch content and settings via the [REST API](/api)
* Or use the [JavaScript SDK](/sdk): the portal configuration above (colors, menus, featured playlists) is all available via [`bold.settings()`](/api/reference/settings), so your custom frontend can honor the same settings
* Or start from the [Next.js starter](/sdk/nextjs-starter), which does both out of the box