We've reimagined our platform's homepage to help your residents better understand and engage with your community initiatives. Our new content widgets and improved layout make it easier than ever for residents to:
Find active participation opportunities at a glance
Discover relevant projects personalized to their interests, neighborhood or past actions
Track community progress with clear "What we've done" sections
Stay updated on ongoing projects and upcoming events
Admins can customize the homepage layout to make it unique to their community. The page builder offers lots of possibilities to create a structure that is suitable for your needs. To start designing your homepage, click on "Pages & menu" in the admin panel. Then click on "Edit" next to "Home".
You now see the Page builder for the Homepage:
On the left you see all the available content widgets and layout elements you can drag and drop onto your homepage
In the middle you see a preview of your current home page structure
On the right you'll see the settings of any selected element
For the top section of your homepage, we recommend either:
Using the "Spotlight" content widget to highlight an ongoing project or folder
Using the "Hero Banner" content widget to add static information on your platform.
Maybe you want to promote something on top? Maybe you want to focus first on the main vision? Or maybe the proposals widget is key to you? You can decide how you want to communicate to participants.
Spotlight Widget
This widget highlights a specific folder or project, linking visitors to its page. You can customise the image & description of the highlight, by default it will use the one you defined at the project / folder level.
Published projects & Folders
This widget allows you to display any folders and projects that you wish in and re-order them. As opposed to the existing current "Projects" module (which showcases dynamically all folders & projects in the order they are in the "Projects" tab in the back office), this module gives you full control on which projects & folders to show and in which order.
This widget can't showcase finished, draft or archived projects or folders.
Open to participation
As a visitor, sometimes its hard to understand where your input is required, as the participation (a survey, uploading your idea...) might be buried within a project within a folder. This module showcases only phases within projects where people can participate (taking a survey, adding ideas, volunteering, etc).
they are ordered in terms or urgency (a survey closing tomorrow is prioritised over one closing next month)
if a user is registered, it will affect visibility so only relevant projects where they can participate will be shown
as an admin you can't customise the order or what is shown
Finished projects
This module allows admins to showcase projects that are already done, as a way to report back to users outcomes.
This module will prioritise projects with anprojec active (meaning the project's end date is in the future) reporting phase at the end of the project.
It will also showcase finished (meaning, project is published but the end date is in the past) & archived projects, ordered by which ones were most recently closed.
Areas & Topics
(still not released)
This module allows visitors to select topics they are interested on or the area they live to view projects tagged on those.
If a visitor doesn't have an account, the module will show the areas & topics you defined at the platform level to choose from.
If a visitor is logged in, the module will automatically adapt to their selection of areas & topics. If they don't have them selected, it will save their first choice when interacting with the module (for example, if I'm a user without a neighbourhood selected, if I select "Area X" in this module, it will be saved as my neighbourhood).
Followed items
As a user, sometimes its hard to find back the projects were you participated in the past. This module showcases to registered users the projects they are following, ordered by the latest ones they were active in. Visitors with no account won't see this module.
We highly recommend adding this at the very top of your homepages so users can easily find back were they last participated.
Project & Folders widget (legacy)
Use this widget to showcase projects & folders in a grid in the homepage. As the "legacy" part indicates, it comes with a few caveats:
We don't encourage using this widget, as its more difficult to use for users on mobile devices.
The order of the projects is predetermined – you can only modify it by modifying the order within the "Projects" tab, within "All", by drag and dropping folders & projects around. This widget will be a 1:1 representation of your back office structure at all times.
We recommend the new "Projects & Folders" widget
Call to action widget
This widget allows you to add custom links and text as a card. It can be used to flexibly highlight anything to visitors:
Homepage banner widget
Click on the banner and on the right, you'll see all the options to configure it.
You can choose from; Full-width banner, two-row banner, and fixed-ratio banner. These templates are only visible on the homepage before logging in or registering.
When to use which banner?
The Full-width banner is best for a nice visual result but doesn't work well with text or crucial elements on the sides of an image. This banner is also reused in the narrow version of the banner shown to users that are logged in.
The Two-row banner is the one you need when you don't want the banner text or button to appear on top of the image. This banner is also reused in the narrow version of the banner shown to users that are logged in.
The Fixed-ratio is the best variant if you use text or don't want the banner to be cropped as much as the full-width banner on different devices. When using this banner, we show a solid coloured background based on the primary colour of your platform on top when users are signed in, instead of this banner image. This is to avoid weird looking results.
Banner texts for registered & non-registered users
Besides the homepage banner templates, you can also edit the text in the banner. There is a difference between the text that is shown on the homepage before and after logging or registering.
This text can be used to make clear what the platform is for and to give a call to action.
Banner Button for registered & non-registered users
To enrich your banner you can also add a button to the banner. In the banner before logging in we have set up a button to register by default. If you want a different button you can select 'Custom' and fill in the text of the button and the link that it needs to direct to. You also have the option to disable the button.
For the banner after logging in you also have the option to add a button. This can be useful to direct users to a certain project you want to highlight or to a page with more information about the platform.
Structure your content with columns, text & whitespace
By combining the layout elements you can create a compelling story to structure more complex content. Let's go over it.
2 column & 3 column give you the possibility to use columns that are responsive on mobile. The column elements can also be configured in different versions when you select them.
Whitespace is a basic helper element that adds whitespace above or below any element, whenever you need it.
Text elements can be used to put text on the canvas with basic formatting.
Button elements can be placed on locations where you want to create a clear call-to-action. Buttons have a configurable size and can be used to link to an internal or external page.
Embed elements are your go-to system to embed external components, like a specific map or video.
Accordion elements are popular as a way to bundle FAQs or other structured Question-Answer content. This comes in really handy at the bottom of a homepage.
Images sizes and dimensions
There are multiple places where you can customize your platform with images (pictures or designed visuals or graphics) to make your platform more engaging and communicate the right look and feel, the hompage banner being one of them. In the following article you'll find the exact guidelines per image type to make sure your images are shown correctly and don't look blurry: