There are many places where you can brand your community and provide a consistent look and feel for your members.

You can be creative and strategic in selecting a domain for your community. You don't have to include Gradual in the URL, and can customize it to fit your community's brand, name, etc.

Work with your team to decide on the right domain, and the Gradual team will configure it for you.

Changing your domain is difficult and will result in previous promotions, links and communications leading to a dead link. Consider the ramifications before making a change!

In Community settings, you can add or edit the community name, description and slogan. Each of these items appears on the homepage on the front end if a user is not signed in, or in browser searches.

Any changes to your community name and description will be logged in the admin activity log so you can track all changes to this setting.

Your logo and favicon appear in several places throughout your community. You will load all of these logs within the Community settings tab.

Because Gradual's default template is in 'dark theme' we ask for logos with dark backgrounds and light backgrounds to populate correctly and provide high contrast.

You can also upload a default cover image for social sharing to public websites at the base of this page as well.

Any changes to your logos will be logged in the admin activity log so you can track all changes.

Recommended format: 400x400px | PNG | Up to 2 MB

Recommended format: 800x400px | PNG | Up to 5 MB

Recommended format: 32x32px | PNG | Up to 5 KB

Recommended format: 800x418px | JPG | Up to 5 MB

Here is an example of our social sharing image:

The branding theme color will be consistent throughout the platform and appear as buttons and hyperlinks. This should be a color that is in high contrast with the dark mode of the platform, while also working with the white text of the buttons throughout the community.

You will be able to enter a HEX color or select your color from a color spectrum.

You can customize and brand various pages in your community: the sign-in page, the home page to visitors and when users are signed in, the events page, and the tools page within your community. All of these can be managed within the Customization settings tab in the dashboard.

This page is what users will see when signing up, or logging into the community. You will upload the image that appears to the left of the sign-in block.

Recommended format: 930x810px | PNG | Up to 5 MB

Here is an example of our sign-in page:

The homepage for visitors, or before users sign in can support three different banner style options. These graphics appear at the top of the page, with the community title, slogan, and the "Join Community" button. For example, using the Default gradient background will result in the following page:

You can add, edit, and manage the banners and text in the Settings tab of the dashboard > Page Customization > Home Page before sign-in. The three banner style options are as follows:

Default: A gradient background based on your branding color

Custom background: A custom image or video used as the background for the banner area. It is also possible to optionally upload an image or video that will be shown in browser windows with an aspect ratio for mobile screens.

If you would like to use a custom video for your banner area background, you would have to also upload a screenshot of the video's first frame.

Custom sticker: A custom uploaded sticker or graphic block that populates to the right of the text

Customize the text that appears at the base of your homepage for visitors. This text can be no more than 100 characters, and by default will read "Ready to get started? Join our community".

Change the text that appears in the join button. This text can be no more than 20 characters and by default will read "Join community".

Change the text of the pop-ups that nudge visitors to log in or complete their profile on the homepage.

Change the title and description text from Settings → Customization → System Nudges.

The homepage after users sign in is elevated with the addition of optional hero banners. These banners promote and link to other parts of the community or external sites and can be fully customized to match your branding.

These banners can be JPG images, moving GIF graphics, or mp4 videos. If more than one is uploaded and visible, they will carousel and change every few seconds. There is a limit of 20 banners that can be visible and enabled at one time.

Adding, editing, and managing the banners is done in the Settings tab of the dashboard > Page Customization > Home Page after sign-in.

Here is an example of our homepage after sign in:

This page appears when users select 'Events' from the main menu, and you can customize the banner that appears at the top of that page with an image, a title, and a subtitle.

Here is an example of our events page:

Gradual makes welcome communication and event reminders easy by providing standard email templates sent out by the platform. While these templates are not editable, your community name, logo and theme color will be used and they will be sent by your email sender name and address.

Ads are attractive graphics that catch your members' eyes and serve as great tools to drive users to register for upcoming events, engage in content, or link to your website. Ads appear on the right-hand side of your Content pages and if more than one is loaded, they will rotate automatically to catch your members’ attention and drive traffic and engagement.

Brand your events and provide users with an appealing home screen and events page with event posters and covers. While not mandatory, event covers can be loaded in Event Setup for all your events.

The content section of your community can be customized and curated to fit your brand and your content collections. Each content piece (Videos, Blogs, Resources and External Content links) requires a poster or cover image.

Collections are like playlists in Gradual. They allow you to combine different types of content into a group that can then be featured on the content page of your community. You can design the cover graphic for your collection.

You can also feature a collection that will populate the content pieces within the collection front and center on your content page.

You can also customize which content is featured at the top of the content page by enabling "Featured" on this page. You can Edit and change which content pieces populate in which prominent spots, or have the system automatically load recently published content for you.

Tools provide an opportunity for you to feature sponsors, partners or portfolio companies and their content at the community level, from the community homepage. There are tiers of Tools that allow you to provide engagement like roundtables, or feature content like PDFs and videos that are grouped by company or team.

Tools can be customized for your use case, and must be enabled on your account before you can create booths in the dashboard, and share on your community's front-end. If you would like this feature enabled, please reach out to us.