Branding Your Community
There are many places where you can brand your community and provide a consistent look and feel for your members.
Domain
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!
Settings
Within the Gradual dashboard, the best place to start is in the Settings tab; found at the base of the main menu on the left-hand side. In Settings, you can personalize the look and feel of your space and user experience.
Community
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.
This is also where you load all logos and the favicon for your community. 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.
Square logos
Recommended format: 400x400px | PNG | Up to 2 MB
Wide logos
Recommended format: 800x400px | PNG | Up to 5 MB
Favicon
Recommended format: 32x32px | PNG | Up to 5 KB
Social Sharing Image
Recommended format: 800x418px | JPG | Up to 5 MB
Customization
Branding Theme Color
The branding theme color will be consistent throughout the platform and appear as buttons and hyperlinks. You will be able to enter a HEX color or select your color from a color spectrum.
Note: Gradual’s default template is a ‘dark theme’ so we suggest choosing a color that provides high contrast meeting WCAG 2 accessibility standards.
Page customization
This section allows for you to brand the sign-in page, the home page, and the events page within your community.
The sign-in 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.
The home page banner appears when users sign in and are directed to the home page. You will upload the image that appears to the right of the welcome text and subtitle (which you can customize, too).
Note: Adding hero banner(s) to the community will replace the personalized welcome message banner that you’ve loaded as the home page banner. Learn more about hero banners here.
The events page banner appears at the top of the events page and can be customized with an image, a title, and a subtitle. This banner is recommended format: 2560x230px | JPG | Up to 5 MB.
Automated Emails
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.
Learn more about these emails and what they look like here.
Hero Banners & Ads
Banners and 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.
Hero Banners appear at the top of the main home page, while Ads appear on the right-hand side of your Content pages. Add as many banners or ads as you’d like and they’ll rotate automatically to catch your members’ attention and drive traffic and engagement.
Learn more about how to build and customize ads and banners here.
Note: Adding hero banner(s) to the community will replace the personalized welcome message banner that you’ve loaded in Settings→Customization→Home Page.
Hero Banners
Recommended format: 1800x250px | JPG | Up to 5 MB
Ads
Recommended format: 690x900px | JPG | Up to 5 MB
Event Graphics
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 event cover image or poster is recommended format: 624x326px | JPG | Up to 5 MB
💡 Pro Tip: Set up virtual tickets for livestream or in-person events. Once enabled, these tickets create a virtual ticket graphic and a personalized page for each registrant that encourages them to share their participation in the event and allows you as the event administrator to track referrals. Learn more here.
Content Graphics
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. They all follow the recommended format: 800x450px | JPG | Up to 5 MB.
Collections
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 will design the Collection's cover graphic and follow the recommended format: 588x470px | JPG | Up to 5MB for each graphic. You can also feature a collection that will populate the content pieces within the collection front and center on your content page.
Learn more about Collections here.
Customization
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.
Learn more about content Customization here.
Tools
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.
Reach Out To Us If You'd Like This Feature Enabled.