Pages
The individual pages of your website feature specific types of content about your organization, its members, and its activities. When you first create your site, it consists solely of a Home page designed to present basic information about your organization. As you work in the Site Builder, use the wide range of templates to add pages that showcase specific types of organizational information.
Page Templates
To add pages to your site so you can present specific types of information about your organization and its activities, the Site Builder includes 18 types of page templates, each crafted to fulfill a specific purpose. The modular design of each template uses widgets—defined page sections that incorporate combinations of text, images, and site data—that you can edit and customize.
Widgets
A widget adds a specific combination of text, images, and site data in a defined section of a site page template and the page you build using that template. Some widgets only include text, but others incorporate photos, logos, links, and organizational information drawn from the events, news, documents, and more that you set up behind the scenes. Each widget includes controls that enable you to make it visible or invisible on your public site, edit its contents, and restrict who can see it. You can deactivate the visibility of any widget, but it remains a permanent part of the page design you see in the Site Builder.
Some widgets consist of multiple modules arranged horizontally in a row. When these widgets are active, you can edit the contents of each module individually, but you cannot deactivate an individual module.
Themes
The theme of your site determines the color schemes you can choose for solid backgrounds and text, the typefaces used for text and headlines, the images that appear as placeholders and background elements, and the modular design of the pages you create. (Note that when a widget includes a background image behind a text area, you can edit the text but not the theme element.)
Production Site
When you first create your organization’s website, it is invisible to everyone except members with Administrative credentials who can access your site through the Site Builder. Your Production Site includes the design and content that will become your publicly visible website once you save and publish the content. Initially, it consists only of a Home page, with the name of your organization as the name of the site. By default, the site’s logo area lists the name of your organization; it provides a text area that you can customize with a slogan.
Staging Site
When you first create your organization’s website, it is invisible to everyone except members with Administrative credentials who can access your site through the Site Builder. If you want to experiment with a different look, you can create a Staging Site that enables you to apply different themes and color schemes.
- To create a Staging Site, click on the “Build a Staging Site” button at the top of the Site Builder window. After you create a Staging Site, the “Currently Editing” dropdown menu replaces the “Build a Staging Site” button.
- Click on this dropdown menu and choose “Edit Production Site” to switch from Staging Site to Production Site.
- Click on this dropdown menu and choose “Edit Staging Site” to switch from Production Site to Staging Site.
- The pages you create in your Production Site do not exist in a Staging Site, and vice versa. The sole exception is the home page.
- The pages you create and changes you make in a Staging Site do not carry over to your Production Site unless you save your changes in the Staging Site and publish your Staging Site. Once you publish the Staging Site, the Staging Site becomes the Production Site, and completely replaces any content you had built in the Production Site.
Page Preview
While you work in the Site Builder, you see both active and deactivated widgets, boundary lines that show you where widgets begin and end on a page, and edit controls you use to add and customize content. The Page Preview opens a new browser tab that shows you the effects of your changes on a temporary live representation of your Production Site or Staging Site.
- To open the Page Preview, click on the “Preview Page” button at the top right of the Site Builder window. This Page Preview looks and functions like a real website, but because it only provides a preview, it disappears as soon as you close its browser tab.
- To make your public site look like the Page Preview, click on the “Save Changes” button at the top right corner of the Staging Site, and then click on the “Publish” button to make your edited version visible. If you did not use a Staging Site, simply click on the “Save and Publish” button at the top right corner of the Production Site to make your site design visible.
Published Site
When your members visit your organization’s website, they see the published version, not the behind-the-scenes view you see in the Site Builder. Only members with Administrative credentials can access the Site Builder and its editing controls.
- To make your site visible, click on the “Save and Publish” button at the top right corner of the Site Builder window.
NOTE: Until you save and publish your site to create its public view, your site is not visible via the internet, and no “Public Site” link exists on the Administrative Dashboard.