Adding a Banner

The banner is the series of large images on the homepage. You can have up to five images that link to content within your website. Generally, however, most visitors don’t look through more than three.

Before you begin, you will need:

·  Horizontal image to place in the banner

·  Link to an article or page on your website (copy and paste this somewhere before you begin)

·  Text for the teaser box (about 5–10 words)

Step 1: Correctly Sizing a Picture

The image for your banner must be:

·  1800 pixels wide

·  800 pixels tall

You will likely need to crop a photo. Be sure that the picture you start with is large enough (larger than 1800 px X 800 px) so that it doesn’t get blurry when you crop it. You can use Microsoft Paint for very basic cropping, Photoshop (if you have it), or free online tools like Pixlr.

For a tutorial on cropping with Pixlr, watch this YouTube video or ask Angela Dice to walk you through the process.

Pre-made Banners

You can find pre-cropped photos to use in your banners here: https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0BwwRSMdCWh1sekhPMnZ4TDctV28&usp=sharing

For generic images (books, spring flowers, etc.) open the 1Banner images folder. Find your school to see school-specific images. To download a logo, click on the image, then click the download button (seen at right).

Step 2: Open the Banner Portlet

·  Go to your homepage and log in.

·  Switch Design mode to “On.”

·  Wait a moment for the page to load.

·  Hover your mouse over the banner and you’ll see a black bar appear above it. Click on the pencil tool.

Step 3: Add Content for Your Banner

Each banner image has four parts.

  1. Add an image. Click on the small folder/spyglass icon to the right of the image field. Upload and choose your banner image. Be sure your image is 1800px X 800px.
  2. Your Image Title and Caption text can be the same. Keep it short, about 5–10 words.
  3. Paste your link in the link field.
  4. Click Publish.

There’s no easy way to change the order of images in your banner. You’ll have to copy and paste information from each field into your desired location.