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ACCESS YOUR SITE MANAGER ACCOUNT:
LOGIN REMINDERS:
Your username is your full SCS email address. Save your password, and make sure you have an email address associated with your account so you can click the "Forgot Password" link if you ever forget it.
NEW USER ACCOUNTS & GENERAL SUPPORT:
Kyle Bullock - bullockkd@scsk12.org
Meredith Pierce - piercem@scsk12.org
BLACKBOARD HELP SITE:
Click the "How do I?" tab at the top of whatever page you're editing to access the online help guide for managing that area of the site.
TRAINING VIDEOS:
All of our recorded training sessions can be accessed HERE. There are videos for:
- New User/Overview Training
- Homepage, Calendar & Directory Training
- Sections, Pages & Apps Training
- Colors, Images & Branding Training
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When considering what should go on your school website, focus on the content your parents access and use most. Start small and build from there. Here are the minimum standards for school sites:
1. Apply your logo and correct school colors.
2. Replace or turn off your generic placeholder school tagline.
3. Use your own photos or streaming video for your main homepage gallery.
4. Remove any apps, pages, or sections that do not have content.
5. Do not post an empty calendar. Load at least one month of dates.
6. Populate your staff directory.
7. Connect your Find It Fast icons/links.
8. Connect your social media, at least to the footer.
9. Update your footer links/info.
Wondering what your website address is? All websites are based on the domain, https://schools.scsk12.org/. We created "friendly web addresses" for everyone to make it easy to remember and add to flyers and promos. Your website is the domain above with your friendly web address after the slash. Here is how to find your friendly web address.
**Please note, the only ways to reach your site are to use "https://schools.scsk12.org/" or just "schools.scsk12.org/" -- "www." will not work. If you have your own domain name, you can redirect to your new site.
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• Always pre-size your images before uploading to the homepage. Canva.com is a free and simple online graphic design tool that sizes photos easily. Save all of your images as .png files if possible - it's the highest quality image type. You can save other image file types as .png files in Canva. Here's a step sheet for sizing photos.
• Never use a photo that is smaller than the size of the space. Large photos can scale down, but small photos cannot scale up. They'll be stretched and blurry.
• Identify your true school colors to apply to your site. You can use these free color picker tools to easily identify your colors: Colorzilla for Firefox & Chrome; ColorPick Eyedropper for Chrome.
• Remember, no light text on light backgrounds or dark text on dark backgrounds for ADA accessibility. Contrast is important.
• Also, don't forget - all images require Alt text for ADA accessibility, which is a short description of the image. This ensures the image description is read to people with visual impairments. Every time you add an image to your site, add a description in the "alt text" box. In m
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• In your site settings, you can edit your site name, verify your contact info for the footer section, change your site colors, Find It Fast icons/links and connect your social media.
• Use the color pickers linked above to find your colors. Send your highest resolution logo to pachuckisp@scsk12.org so it can be sized and uploaded for you to add to your site. A png version with a transparent background is best. If all you have is a version with a white box behind the logo, you will have to make your main header space white so the white box doesn't show. After submitting your logo, use this step sheet to add it to your site. Be sure to add it to the "School Information" section, not "Template Options."
• You can edit or turn off the tagline on your site. Here's how.
• The template options correlate to different sections of your site. Global template options apply to the outer frame and main headings throughout the site (here is a diagram of your template settings). The homepage content edits the content sections within the homepage (diagram).
• Don't worry about changing the mobile and responsive settings. Those do not impact your site.
• IMPORTANT - Use the "Save & Preview" option to test all of your changes. Only you can see the changes in Save & Preview mode. Be totally sure of your changes before you Publish & Exit. Once you're totally sure, click Publish & Exit to make the changes live.
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• The homepage is the most important part of your site. It should always be accurate and up to date. Images should be high quality and your most important information should be easy to find.
• Try to keep your homepage sections balanced - in other words, if you have two columns, don't let one be way bigger than the other because it adds lots of empty white space. You can set the number of items to display in most apps so it can be balanced. You can also add additional apps to balance it out.
• Here is a region map for the various homepage sections. Section A must have a multimedia gallery for photos or streaming video. Sections B & C display vertically. Section D displays horizontally. Sections E, F & G display vertically. You can add as many or as few sections to each region as you'd like, just keep it balanced.
• If you delete all of the apps in a section, your page will just collapse and not show them, so just use what you like and need. You must have a multimedia gallery in section A at all times though.
• Homepage images must be pre-sized to display best.
• If you want to use an extra photo gallery on your homepage, here's what we figured out: 1. Using unsized, horizontal photos is definitely preferred with this app. 2. It typically displays better in one of the other smaller regions of the homepage. 3. You could also just create a new Photo Gallery page somewhere on the site and add the MMG app there so the photo size isn't as much of an issue. 4. You're not required to have a gallery, so you could also just delete it entirely.
• Make sure you connect your footer links. In the footer of your page which is where your contact info is, there are 3 Important Links. It's simple to change these in your template settings. Here's how to do it.
• Your calendar works with your events app on the homepage. If you update your calendar, it will automatically populate your homepage. You can set how many items to display inside the events app.
• If you choose to sync a Google calendar, make sure it is a public calendar - not private/personal - and be sure to sync two-way so your Google calendar populates Blackboard and vice-versa.
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• All sites are pre-loaded with some apps, sections and pages as a starting point. You can use these, or you can change them, remove them or add more.
• This diagram shows you how to access the various sections of your website for editing. This is the Sections & Pages Help section of the Blackboard guide.
• You can check out all of the various apps here. Apps allow you to display your content in various ways. Try some out to see what you like. You can even use the same apps for different purposes. All apps can be easily dragged and dropped onto any page.
• You can easily change the title by opening the app and clicking the Options tab in the upper right corner. In most apps, you also have the option to display the title or not by checking a box. Here's how.
• Whenever you add a new page, start by selecting "Blank Page" as the type, then choose a layout and add the apps you want.
* The content app is the most basic app for entering standard text and links to a page. Shortcuts is great for quick links.
• If you're not going to use a section or page, just delete it or make it inactive so it doesn't display. **Unless you've connected these to something on your own or repurposed these pages, deactivate or delete the Student Registration and District Information links in your Parents & Students section.
• If you want to redirect any section/page on your site to another link -- OR, if you want to get the link for a page you've created so you can link to it, here's how to do it.
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• You can add a Facebook or Twitter feed to your homepage. You can also link all social media page types to your website footer.
• To add a Facebook or Twitter feed to your homepage, use the Embed app wherever you want each feed to display. Copy and paste this exact code into the app and just replace the sections in red with your own page/info. Just make sure you don't delete any characters/spaces or add any characters/spaces.
• You can connect your social icons in the footer section of your homepage in your template settings. Here's how.
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Here are some of our new step sheets that address frequently asked questions.
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