Getting Started

Here are some ideas to help you get up and running with StudyStays. If you get stuck at any stage, feel free to contact us!

Create your free trial site

If you haven’t already, you can create a trial site. It takes only a minute to fill out the form and your trial site will be ready to use straight away. The idea behind trial sites is to help you see how StudyStays can work for your university. There’s no obligation to purchase if it doesn’t meet your needs.

Add a campus

One of the main ways students will search is to find listings near their campus. You can add campuses through Admin > Settings tab > Campuses. Click the “Add a new campus” link and fill out the form.

Set up your categories

As well as property and room types, you can also add any additional categories you like. Things like included furnishings, included bills, utilities and parking spaces are some examples of categories you might like to add.

To set up your categories, go to Admin > Settings tab > Categories.
More a video intro to categories

Try adding a listing

Click Home > Add a listing to see how providers will add listings to the site. If you're signed in as an admin, you'll be directed to register as a provider first—some of your details will be automatically filled out for you.

Example data

We can fill in example data for hundreds of students, landlords and listings so you can get a better feel for searching, reports and other functions of the site. We’ll clear all this data before you launch your site. Just shoot an email to support@studystays.com and we'll be happy to do this for you.

Set up pages

There are 5 pages created for you automatically: About Us, Contact, Terms for Students, Terms for Providers, and Privacy Policy. You might like to add some text to these pages—you can find them under Admin > Content > Pages. The names might be slightly different to the ones above. You can also add any number of additional pages, e.g. information about the surrounding areas, help for international students etc.

Questions and answers

You can provide some self-service support to students and providers by creating FAQs under Admin > Content > Frequently Asked Questions. By default, we categorise these for you under “Students” and “Providers”, but feel free to change the categories as you need.

Change the duration of advertisements

You can change how long listings are advertised for under Admin > Settings > Listings. While you’re there, you might like to check out some of the other ways you can customise the site to fit your specific needs.

Try out email verification for students

To begin with, anyone can register as a student on your trial site. If you'd like to see how current students can be automatically verified when they register, you can try setting up email registration.

Select “Email verification” under Admin > Settings > Authentication. In the “Valid email domains” box, enter the part after the @ in your own email address, and click save. You can then try registering using an address that ends with this domain, but please note: you won’t be able to register with the same email address you use for your admin account.

Try it out on a phone

StudyStays has a mobile-friendly format which automatically displays when you visit the site on a small-screen device like phones or tablets.

See how other people are using Studystays

Check out the list of our customers—you might find some inspiration by looking at how other universities are using Studystays.

More resources

Our blog has information about updates as they happen, and tips on how to get the most out of Studystays.

Our website has general information on the software. You might be interested in the Frequently Asked Questions.

Let us know how you go

If you have any questions or feedback during your trial, feel free to get in touch with us at support@studystays.com.