NationBuilder comes with a variety of pre-built themes. When you first open them, they don’t look like the beautiful demo sites that we display in our public theme gallery. Your website is launched with a generic theme (look) and few “placeholder” pages that are ready for you to edit, these include an about page, events page, contact page, join page, and volunteer page.

To start, decide what you’d like your website to look like. Click on Website > Website name and click on Theme, then Switch to a stock theme. Here you will find the pre-built designs that are readily available for you. Once you find one you like, hover over it and click Use Theme.

Now, within the theme you’ve chosen, you can choose a style. Once you find a style you like, hover over it and click Use style.

Awesome, now you’ve selected your site’s overall look!

You have the option to add several types of images to further customize your website. We recommend adding these to improve the user experience and make your site look professional.

Favicons are used to improve user experience and tab navigation in a web browser. "Favicon" combines the words "favorite" and "icon". They're that little icon that appears next to the site name on a website's tab in a browser, as well as in the bookmarks list. 

Go to Website > Site settings > Favicon to upload your favicon image. 

Click Choose File, select your image, and select Upload image. Your image will display under the upload image button (and on your website) and a new button, Remove current favicon, will appear if you'd like to remove it. 

A logo is a graphic representation or symbol of your company, campaign, cause, etc. 

Navigate to Website > Site settings > Logo to upload your logo. 

Select Choose File, select your logo file, and select Upload image. Your image will display under the upload image button (and on your website) and a new button, Remove current logo, will appear if you'd like to remove it.

Header images are large images that display at the top of a web page. It is one of the first images people see when visiting your website and as such should be something that aligns with your campaign/cause/mission.

Navigate to Website > Site settings > Header image to upload your header image. 

Click Choose File, select your image, and select Upload image . Your image will display under the upload image button (and on your website) and a new button, Remove current header image, will appear if you'd like to remove it. 

Your homepage is the one page that all of the people who visit your site will see, so you want to make sure the most important information is represented on it. 

A good starting point would be making sure you that you have:

A good place to start is by editing your "About" page. To edit this page, navigate to Website > Pages, and click on the Edit button to the left of the page name. Click on the Content tab. You’ll find we’ve provided you with some guidance text to get you started. 

Featured content sliders are a scrolling bar of images that link to other parts of your site on your homepage. They provide a huge visual upgrade without the hassle of coding. You may have noticed them on the demos on NationBuilder’s site. 

Featured content sliders can be easily swapped out to reflect the current needs of your organization. Need more people to read the blog? Create a featured content slider that redirects folks to the newest piece of news. Featured content sliders live at Website > Pages > Edit page > Settings > Featured content sliders. You'll notice we've created an example slider for you. 

For each photo:

1. Enter a label.

2. Give it a headline. This will display on the actual image to encourage clicks!

3. Link it to the page to feature. Enter the page slug in this box. For example, if I want to feature my contact page, I would just type "Contact" into the box.

4. Choose your image. You can find the best dimensions for featured content sliders on your particular public theme here.

5. Click Save featured content slider. All photos you add to the slider will display at the bottom of the page. You can reorder images by holding down your cursor on the image you'd like to move and drag it to a new spot. Delete images by clicking on the arrow and select Delete.

Many times you want to feature the latest blog post and the most recent upcoming event under the main content on your homepage. Or perhaps you want to display a petition or contact form. This is easy to do in NationBuilder.

If you are using a current public theme and are using a "basic" page type for your homepage, you can easily add a homepage widget by adding the page tag "homepage" to any page under [Your Page] > Settings > Page Settings and click Save page.

To remove an excerpt from the homepage, simply remove the tag "homepage" from the page.

The homepage excerpts are sorted by the most recently published pages first. To change their order you can simply change the published dates of the pages corresponding to these excerpts via the [Your Page] > Settings > Page Settings section.

Now your site is set up for maximum success and supporter engagement! For more information on website features, click here.