Neon Web Studio site just launched? Congratulations! Learn how to manage your site going forward in this 12 min video.
Modern, responsive website layouts designed and tested with nonprofit best practices in mind. Completely customizable and built on the incredibly powerful yet easy-to-use WordPress platform, Inspire websites offer a selection of layouts to make your organization’s mission shine. We take care of all the details (hosting, security, maintenance, etc.) so you can stay focused on the real work. Learn more here.
Inspire websites are built upon the WordPress platform, which is an easy to use and customize Content Management System (CMS). When logged in, you may access different parts of the menu by simply clicking on the appropriate menu item and choosing what you’d like to do.
We will be breaking down the specific components of the navigation below but in general they are:
- Posts - this is where you manage and create blog posts
- Media - this is where you manage and upload pictures, video files, and other multimedia files
- Pages - this is where you manage and create static pages
- Comments - this is where you manage and approve/delete blog comments. We have built in spam controls as well
- Appearance - this is where you manage the overall look and feel of your Inspire site
- Users - this is where you manage and add or delete users of the Inspire site
- Tools - this is where you can export your content, if needed
- Page Builder - this is a third party plugin that helps design pages
Customizing the Inspire theme
While Inspire websites are designed with nonprofit best practices in mind, we want your organization to be able to make the site match your branding and feel. We have built in various tools to allow your organization to customize the website.
Customize
The first place to start customizing the Inspire site is through the Customize tool. To find this theme customizer, go to the Appearance menu on the left hand navigation bar and choose Customize.
- Site Identity- this is the default name of your Inspire site if no logo is uploaded
- Typography - this allows your organization to change the default fonts, sizes, and spacing for your website. To see changes made, you will need to refresh your page.
- Colors - this allows your organization to change the colors of various areas within the website. You can see these changes live before you accept them.
- Header Image - this allows your organization to upload a logo that the Inspire site will resize appropriately. There is a built in cropping tool as well.
- Background Image - this allows for a background image for your entire website
- Menus - this is a quick editor for inserting new pages and subpages into your navigation. See below for a deeper explanation of how Menus work.
- Widgets - this is for inserts of content for footers into the Inspire theme. See below for a deeper explanation of how Widgets work.
Remember to hit Save and Publish to accept any of the changes you have made in the Customize section.
Widgets
We have built out four areas that can have information configured on a site-wide basis. They are Blog Sidebar, Footer Left, Footer Middle, and Footer Right. To find this widget customizer, go to the Appearance menu on the left hand navigation bar and choose Widgets.
On the left hand side is a list of available widgets, including the NeonCRM Upcoming Events widget. There are explanations of what each widget does and to insert the widget into the area of the site you’d like, simply drag and drop it. You may insert multiple widgets into each available section and can reorder them by dragging and dropping them in the order you’d like.
Menus
Inspire sites allow for quick updates to the navigation of your website. Through a simple drag and drop interface, you can update how people can find content on your website. To find this menu customizer, go to the Appearance menu on the left hand navigation bar and choose Menu.
If you want to edit what options are available to edit, go to Screen Options on the top right of the Menu section and choose what you’d like to add. Below are the most commonly used menu items.
- Pages - these are main content display pages of your website that are typically static in nature. So things like an About page or Contact Us page.
- Posts - these are blog posts that use the built-in editor and are typically consistently updated content. These posts will be collected as a whole under the Blog Page, but this Menu option allows you to insert posts into your navigation for quick reference. Posts also can be categorized by using the Categories configuration.
- Categories - these help display blog posts that fit into various categories you have configured.
- Custom Links - these are links outside of your website, such as a redirect to an outside event page or another organization’s website.
- NeonCRM Links - these are links drawn from the NeonCRM system that is connected to your Inspire website. This will give you the ability to quickly insert standard NeonCRM links and Campaign Donation Pages and Event Registration Pages into your Inspire navigation without having to copy/paste from NeonCRM.
IMPORTANT - while NeonCRM and Inspire work very closely together, the actual content and forms that constituents fill out are only editable in your NeonCRM system. Inspire will also not pull over custom forms. Learn where to find these forms and then use the Custom Links option to insert these into your website, if needed.
Learn how to edit your forms in NeonCRM. Any changes made on the form will sync immediately over to your Inspire website.
To find your NeonCRM system, go to the Dashboard of your Inspire site and look for the NeonCRM option.
