Community Homepage
Your community homepage showcases upcoming events, and popular content and can be customized to suit your engagement strategy, follow your branding, and drive members to the most engaging or crucial parts of your community.
The homepage for visitors who are not signed in is different from the homepage for members who are signed in. The visitors' homepage displays some events, content pieces, and several prompts for users to join or sign into the community. You can also customize the banner and branding of this homepage for visitors, see more details below.
Note: If your community is marked private in system settings, visitors must join or login to see the homepage.
Banners and Headers
You can brand the homepage with customizable banners and graphics - and have different looks for visitors to the community, versus members when they've signed in.
Before users sign in (Visitors' homepage)
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.
Default: a gradient background based on your branding color
Custom background: custom uploaded graphic
- This can be a JPG or GIF graphic
Custom sticker: custom uploaded sticker or graphic block that populates to the right of the text
- This can be a PNG graphic
Text Customization
You can customize the home page header (60 characters maximum) and the description of your community (200 characters maximum).
Dashboard settings
Adding, editing, and managing these banners & text is done in the Settings tab of the dashboard —> Page Customization —> Home Page before sign-in.
After users sign in (Members' homepage)
The homepage after users sign in is elevated with the addition of customizable banners. These banners can promote and link to other parts of the community or external sites and can be fully customized to match your branding.
Banners can be JPG images, moving GIF graphics, or mp4/m3u8 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.
Dashboard settings
Adding, editing and managing the banners is done in the Settings tab of the dashboard —> Page Customization —> Home Page after sign-in.
Learn more about banners here.
If your public home page is hard-coded, you are not able to edit or customize the home page before sign-in or home page after sign-in from the dashboard.
Main Menu Navigation Layouts
There are two main menu navigation layout options available for the community homepage - the standard left mode and the new top mode.
If a user is on a smaller screen or mobile device they will see the main menu navigation from an icon in the upper right-hand side.
Left Mode
This layout is the standard Gradual homepage layout and what you may be familiar with. It displays the main menu on the left of all Gradual pages.
Dashboard settings
Customize the order of your main menu to drive members to the top features in your community in the dashboard → Page Customization → Menus → Edit. Simply drag and drop the menu items to the preferred order.
You can also 'reset to default' which will order them:
Top Mode
This layout is new and displays the main menu across the top of all Gradual pages.
Note: To change the layout of your homepage to 'top mode', reach out to the Gradual team.
Dashboard settings
Customize the order of your main menu to drive members to the top features in your community in the dashboard → Page Customization → Menus → Edit. Simply drag and drop the menu items to the preferred order.
You can also 'reset to default' which will order them:
User Profile Menu
From the upper-right profile icon, members can change their settings and profile, and navigate to their clubs and schedule.
Edit Profile
Users can see their full profile and make edits.
My Clubs
Users can see all the clubs where they are a member.
My Schedule
Users can see all the events where they are or were an attendee.
Notification Settings
Users can adjust their notification settings for platform-automated emails and alerts.
Logout
Users can log out of the community.
Timezone
The timezone indicator shows the user's timezone and where they sit, offset to UTC.
Roundtables
You can host community-level roundtables that appear on the community’s homepage. Users don’t need to register for these roundtables and you don’t have to create an agenda or description, either; just set it up and invite your members to join in on the conversation.
Learn more about these roundtables here.
Events
Up to four of your upcoming or most recent events are featured on the homepage, and users can scroll to the right to see more events in the carousel. Events that are space-restricted or limited to members-only will not be displayed on the homepage to visitors who are not signed in, and 1:1 match events are not featured either.
Content
Your most recently published content pieces are featured on the homepage as well, and users can scroll to see all the content, or click into a specific piece to learn more. Content that is space-restricted or limited to members-only will not be displayed on the homepage to visitors who are not signed in.
'Join Community' Prompts
On the visitors' homepage, there are a number of prompts for users to join the community, or sign in if they are a member. They are prompted with a 'Join Community' button at the top and base of the page, and anytime they select a member engagement menu item - People, Messages, Channels or Forum, they are prompted to join or sign in.
Social Sharing
There are four sharing icons at the base of the visitors' homepage so users can share the community homepage link to LinkedIn, X (Twitter), Facebook, or via email.
Custom homepage
If there is further customization requested of the homepage for your community, reach out to the Gradual Team.