Tips for optimizing your Website’s Appearance

Tips for optimizing your Website’s Appearance

Contents 1 What to expect when the March 24 change occurs 2 Utilise the top menu in preference to the left menu bar 3 Utilise sub-menus 4 Set your Sponsor Logos to Rotate

What to expect when the March 24 change occurs

On 24 March when the website upgrade occurs, all Sportzware Websites will have a right hand column. This will not affect your top and/or right menu if you have one or both of these in place.

If you already have a right hand menu on your website, the sections you have in this menu will remain when the new right hand column is introduced. The right hand column is able to facilitate both regular sections (eg. News, Photo Gallery, Fixtures/Results, Profile, etc.) as well as special right hand column features.

The following applies in regards to how ‘regular’ and ‘special’ sections appear in the right hand column.

• The first five ‘regular’ sections will appear above main advertisement.
• Items five and onwards will appear below the main advertisement.
• All special features will appear below the main advertisement.

This is to ensure the main advertisement in the right hand column stays ‘above the fold’, ie. Within the main area of the page before you need to start scrolling down.

Example:

Regular sections – there are 3 sections above the main advertisement. The first 5 regular sections will appear above the main advertisement, the rest will appear below. Main Advertisement – this has been moved out of the main body of the Fixtures/ Results/ Ladders pages and into the right hand column to allow for better utilisation of space on these pages. Special right hand column section – Club Links/Logos. Text Advertisement. Special right hand column section – Notice Board. Special right hand column section – Sponsor Logos.

As you can see, the advertisements (items 2 and 4) are interspersed throughout the content in the right hand column.

This is how the right hand column in the above example looks in the Content Manager:

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Utilise the top menu in preference to the left menu bar

Using a top menu bar rather than the left menu bar will substantially increase the room available in the body of your website. You can still keep the left menu bar on your website if you prefer, but with the ability to set up a top menu and sub menus, the top menu bar will help better utilise space and create a more modern looking website.

Example:

With left menu bar/ no top menu:

With top menu bar/ no left menu:

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Utilise sub-menus

Some websites have 15 or 20 items in their left menu bar. It’s not possible to have the same number of items in the top menu as they simply won’t fit. As such, the utilisation of sub-menus becomes important. For example, by organising a group of your website sections as submenus within a main menu (see the ‘About Us’ menu below for an example), it will reduce clutter in your menu and make information easier to find.

Example:

Click here for instructions on creating sub menus in the Content Manager.

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Set your Sponsor Logos to Rotate

Setting your sponsor logos to rotate through the right hand column will allow you to increase the size of the logos (200 x 200 pixels). The alternate option - 'list' view (all at once) - sets sponsor logos to appear side by side (100 x 100 pixels) in the navigation bar. Using the rotating option will also help reduce clutter and better utilise space in your right hand column.

Example – Rotating Sponsor Logos:

Example – Showing all Sponsor Logos at once:

To display your sponsor logos at the maximum size (200 x 200px), you will need to re-upload the images and ensure they are at least 200 pixels wide. If the images are smaller than this, they will display according to their actual size (eg. a logo 50 pixels wide will display 50 pixels wide). Images should be 200 pixels or greater in width to display at the maximum size.