The Community Ad Builder widget enables Community Admins (and Site Admins and Super Admins) to manage and display ads on their community landing pages or community microsites.
The Community Ad Builder widget:
- Is included with Group Manager, an optional module that your organization can license in order to gain additional community functionality. To learn more, see Group Manager Overview.
- Can only be added to a page by a Site Admin or Super Admin.
NOTE: The Community Ad Builder widget is distinct from the ads that are described in Advertisements In Your Site.
Add the Community Ad Builder widget
Only Site Admins and Super Admins can add this widget to a page. If you're a Community Admin and are not seeing this widget in your community, work with the appropriate staff member to have it added to your community.
TIP: The steps below explain how to add this widget to a specific community page; you can also make this widget available to ALL Community Admins simultaneously by adding it to the main Community Home page in the CMS (Page Code groupdetails).
To add the Community Ad Builder widget:
- Navigate to the page you want to add the widget to.
- In the Admin Toolbar, click (or right click for a new tab) Edit Page.
- On the Build tab in the right panel of Page Designer, expand the Widget section. Click and drag the Community Ad Builder widget onto the canvas.
- Click Properties and configure the widget settings.
- Click the edit icon on the widget and on the Editing Widget dialog:
- Ad Banner Size - Select from a variety of shapes and sizes, including buttons, half and full banners, rectangles, squares, and skyscrapers. Choose a size that is appropriate for the ads to be displayed. This defines the size of ads that admins should upload (e.g., use Skyscraper for tall ads that will be placed on the side of the page).
- Display Border - Choose whether the ads will have a border.
- Group Count - Specify how many ads will simultaneously display per rotation interval.
NOTE: The recommended setting is 1; ads will display one at a time. Numbers higher than 1 will cause the ads to display in a vertical stack.
- Max Number of Active Ads - Specify the number of ads admins will be able to create in the widget control.
- Rotation Interval - Specify the duration, in seconds, for each ad to display.
- Click Save to add the widget to the page.
EXAMPLE: The criteria that are defined for the widget are indicated in the widget control so when admins click to create an ad, they can see how many ads they can upload, the maximum size of ads they upload, and how the ads will display:
Upload an ad
After the widget is added to a page, Community and Super Admins will see the Create Ads button in the widget control.
Notes
Images must be a .GIF, .JPG, .JPEG, or .PNG. In addition, they'll be automatically sized to the shape and size specified in the widget control settings (Ad Banner Size option).
Ads are isolated to the Ad Builder widget to which they're uploaded; this enables the display of unique ads on a community-by-community basis.
To upload an ad:
- Click Create Ads.
- Click Add in the Manage Ads pop-up to upload your first ad. You can add images from a variety of sources, like your device or network, via a URL, third-party sources, and more. Add additional images by repeating this step as many times as needed.
- After uploading an ad, you can configure it's details:
- Ad Name - This name is for internal tracking purposes only.
- URL / Link - Enter the URL for the page you want displayed when the ad is clicked.
- Pop-up Help Text - This is the text displayed when users hover over the ad, and is a great way to provide more detail about the ad.
- Once you've uploaded your ads and configured their details, click Close have them display in the widget control.
Manage your ads
All ads uploaded to a Community Ad Builder widget can be managed from a single place: The Manage Ads window. To access it, click Manage Ads from the widget control.
Your ads are organized as either Active or Inactive, and are stored in the corresponding tab:
- Active ads are currently being displayed in the widget control.
- Making ads inactive prevents them from being displayed, and is a great alternative to permanent deletion if you think they may be useful again in the future. On the Inactive tab, they can be made active again at any time or deleted.
On either tab, their associated ads are listed below, along with their details. Each ad has an actions menu where they can be edited, deleted, and made inactive/active (depending on the tab).
In addition, you can set the order of your ads by clicking-and-dragging their headers to the desired location. This also controls their rotation order in the widget control.
If at least one ad is displayed in a Community Slideshow widget, this is also where new ads can be uploaded via the Add button.
