Videos

Homepage Widgets and News Alerts

Added Aug 15, 2017 •

Copy this URL:
Embed code:	<iframe class="edlio-embed-player" type="text/html" width="640" height="360" src="//help.edlio.com/apps/embed/?v=152916" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> Change dimensions

Learn how to use homepage widgets to draw attention to important deadlines, links, or forms on your homepage. This webinar also includes a review of the homepage news alerts feature.

Show Transcript

Thank you all so much for joining us. Good afternoon everyone. As usual, it's a pleasure to have you here with us during our webinar series. If you have topics that you would like for us to cover in the future, please reach out to us to this email and let us know what you would like us to train on. We love the feedback you all submit specifically for our MyEdlio video webinar trainings So today, we will be covering our homepage widgets  and our news alerts. This is just a great way to get some very important information out there to your parents and the users of your sites we're excited specifically about the widgets as this is a feature that we just pushed out recently and we're getting great feedback on it. So let's actually get started. So those of you who have been using your sites for some time you know that under the announce module is where you can under news and alerts is where you can set up not just your news but your alerts. This serves, for those of you who do not know, as a pop-up alert users see when they initially come to your site, they have to acknowledge that alert prior to moving on. And you would create that as if you were adding regular news. So I'm just going to click add news here, and add a few details below. So the headline here can say something like open enrollment . A short summary serves as a short preview of text that you see on your home page, doesn't have to be too lengthy. Maybe one of two sentences would suffice here. Just going to take a little text, copy and paste. And then you have three options below: content using you formatting options, link to a file so for those you can have a flyer with all of the details that you would prefer to you just drag and drop them from here and then went to this this is for an external site or a page within your site. When your users click the headline they will be redirected to that URL, just keep in mind that you can only use one of these three options at a time. I'm going to add my content, add my text below. And then if you're listing news from an outside source, we're going to list our source here and our URL. We're adding images, drag and drop, and as you hear me mention in every other training the same thing here please be sure to use your alternative text, it's very important that we accommodate all you users who come to your sites, with that click  Alt in the top right-hand corner and just add a little blurb on the photo. When you're setting up your homepage alerts, you do not have to use the delivery option.  Add your content, click save. On the following page there's an option that says homepage pop-up alert. By default, this is already set for 24 hours. You can increase or decrease this time if you like. I'm going to leave it as is, post. If you go back to News and alerts, the most recent post is at the top. Now, the difference with the two is that you do not have to the dots to the left of the alert, because again, the alert is always considered a priority, so with the news, you can drag and drop to change the order. You don't want the the ability to do that for the alerts so I'm going to go back and refresh to see my changes reflected here. So here's my open enrollment, and with that and it gives your users three options: don't show again, okay and read full story. Read full story takes them to the landing page with all details. Links are here, these photos are clickable, attachments that you added they can all access those options on this link. Otherwise, you can click don't show again and continue you to browse the site. Open enrollment is listed in the news section, so it's going to be very difficult for your users to get away from seeing this; it's considered a priority. Something I want to point out is districts - if you have not set this option up on the district site, you have the option to push news and alerts out to your school so in the event if there's an emergency, or some important you know updates about how school is being closed, there's a minimum day or there's a snow day. If you would like these  set up on your District site, please contact technical support and submit your ticket, we will be more than happy to get that set up for you. Now, with the alert, one thing I'm going to say before we move on to the widgets is, you have the ability to disable your alerts - now this is really great because it keeps you from doing a lot of tedious work. So if, you know, this is something that's reoccurring, you know every school year, you want to use your disable button, and you can find it in the show disabled news . This is set up like an archive so you know when you're ready for this to go live on your site, click edit. Update the text. More specifically, if it's outdated, you may want to swap out the photos add some more details click enable and then you're all set to go. Other than that we're just going to go ahead and delete this alert all together and we're good to go here. So now, let's move on to page management, and homepage widgets. Now this is also you know an option to either get your users to subscribe to some of your lists that you're creating or redirect them to maybe forms, external sites, or important pages that you created within your site. So let's start with the forms. Before I drag and drop the form widget to the homepage below, I'm going back to the dashboard because what we need to do first is create a list. So you're going to do that under Contact Lists, and here we have one that's created 2017-18 volunteers so if you want to connect it to a list that you have, that's perfectly fine or you can just click New List, custom, you can call this Open Enrollment, you can say new parents subscribe 2017-18 new parents whatever title that you add here, this will give you an idea of what type of list this is. And again, everything you create under the form widget and connected to is where the contact information will be listed. So we're actually going to use the 2017-18 volunteers;  go back to page management, homepage widgets, drag and drop the form widget to the left side of our homepage. We're going to change this text to say: New parents volunteer here You cannot customize this form, you cannot change the design of the form. But you can however select the contact fields you want to pull information from. I'm going to select my volunteer list, and click save. So now when I go back to the homepage and refresh, I should see these changes reflect this here: "New Parents Volunteer Here!" Like a little sticky note. When they complete the contact fields here and subscribe, that contact information is going to go straight back to that list. When they clicked the X, it's going to be reduced to a white dot on your site. Now we're going to go to the button widget. Now this is really great if some of you, for those of you who have forms with the Edlio CMS or if you are familiar with using Google forms for example, or you would like to redirect users to an external site or a page within your site with detailed information for them you can definitely use your button widget for that. I'm going to drag and drop this, change the title here to say: open enrollment. Now if you are using an external site or a Google form for example just copy and paste that link below. However, if you're using forms within your site, we want to go to community and forms, and actually build that form here, or you can use a current form. So if you are building a form, just click "new form" and add your details. If you would like to use a current form that has been created, click the 3 dots the right. Click here for: Copy link. X out of here. go back to the page management. and homepage widgets. Drag and drop a button widget here We're going to change that text to say "open enrollment," or of course if it's connected we're going to connect to our registration so you can say open enrollment, or registration. Copy and paste the link below. Select one of the two options, and save so now when I go back and refresh We have our registration button. So when I click this, it's going to be redirect to the form. When they complete this form, it will go directly to the user's for you set up to be notified. both of these So again, both options are great ways to get some quick important information out there to your new parents, existing parents students, even staff if you would like to use this on your homepage. Now, with that in mind as you're setting these up, if you do not have forms added to your site and you would like to set this module up and get this activated, contact us and we can get it set up for you, you can start using forms immediately. Or those of you who have questions where you have one set up and you're wanting to play around with stuff and have questions, please use your help center; it's very detailed information here and as always you know you can use the screenshot play  by plays and register for upcoming trainings. If you or your staff members cannot make it, we record all of our trainings and we add them in an area where you can view the most recent and the previously recorded trainings as well. As I mentioned earlier, if you have any suggestions for upcoming trainings, please send those details to us, we would love to hear from you. In addition to that, if your site is live,  you all have unlimited access to technical support, so you can send your tickets or call in to technical support to the left of the toll free number there is specific hours listed and it's pre-set to your specific time zone  so again it's always a pleasure to have you with us. Reach out to us, give us your feedback with your comments and questions, we would love to hear from you. Continue to register for upcoming training and as always, have a very successful school year.

28:22 [Edlio Webinar] Teacher Pages Featured
Join Edlio for a 30-minute webinar about Teacher Pages. We cover how to create and update Pages, best practices for sharing content, and everything else you need to know to use your Pages to effectively reach parents and students.
Uploaded Mar 20, 2020
30:05 [Edlio Webinar] Teacher Pages Refresher Featured
Join Edlio to learn the ins and outs of the Edlio CMS! You'll leave with actionable steps your school or district can take today to update your website, better engage with parents, and more. Bring your questions for a Q&A session at the end!
Uploaded Jan 24, 2020
27:58 [Edlio Webinar] Teacher Pages for the New School Year Featured
In this 30-minute webinar about Teacher Pages we cover how to create Pages, best practices for sharing content, and everything else you need to know to use your Pages to communicate with parents and students for this upcoming school year, whether classes are held in-person or virtually.
Uploaded Jul 23, 2020. Also listed in Back-to-School
19:29 The Beginner's Guide to Building Pages [Edlio Webinar] Featured
Are you new to Edlio? Or do you want to learn how to improve your skills building Pages? This webinar is for you! In this beginner-friendly session, you'll learn how to:

- Create and update Pages
- Share content effectively
- Organize your Page Management based on your needs

We'll also cover best practices for building Pages that are both informative and engaging.
Uploaded Jun 02, 2023
30:03 [Edlio Webinar] Overview for Administrators Featured
In this Edlio, we highlight how administrators can best use their school or district’s Edlio Website. We share website tips that are easy to implement and can have a big impact on your school or district’s communication with parents and students.
Uploaded Mar 25, 2020

Videos

Homepage Widgets and News Alerts

More videos in My Edlio Webinars