We understand that, when there's an emergency, you will want to update your website to keep your communities informed. There are a number of ways that you can use your website if you need to get the word out about things like school closures.
Adding a News Banner to your homepage
This can be done using standard functionality within your website CMS, and can be achieved by creating a news article and setting the priority to urgent. This is a great way to let people know that the school is closed due to the weather, as you can add lots of additional information in the news article.
Using a Custom Pop-up
If you have had a custom pop-up box added to the homepage of your website, this can usually be updated through Custom Data. If you do not already have this functionality, it cannot be quickly added to your site, as it will require our development team to code this element and will need to be booked in with them at an additional cost.
Using the in-built Emergency Pop-up
We have implemented this feature to allow schools that do not have a custom pop-up facility to switch on a very basic, black-and-white pop-up box to be enabled on the homepage of your site. Click here to find out how to switch this on.
Updating your homepage welcome message
Most sites will have a 'Welcome Message ' visible on the homepage. This can usually be updated by clicking into the content area, and overtyping the message, however, some sites are configured to pull the content from another page, for example, the About Us page. In the case of the second option, you can update the wording on the secondary page to affect the homepage message.
Amending your slideshow to reflect your school’s status
You could create an image to replace your usual Slideshow images however, you should not use this option to add words as it will not be accessible to anyone who is visually impaired. An example of this could simply be a plain black background or changing some of your other images to black and white, in the case of the school being in mourning.
Depending on your website set-up, you can choose to update either your homepage slideshow through custom data, your default and inner page slides through the File Manager, or both.