What dimensions should my custom theme use?

Official response from Adriel Hampton

You can customize the widths, paddings and margins of your custom theme. However, in a two column layout, the left column should have a minimum of 660px, as several elements (such as video embeds) expect that width to populate properly.

As a reference, the official themes use a width of 960px. The left column is 660px and the right column is usually 240px. Generally there is 15px of padding on both sides of both columns, but this can vary a bit from theme to theme. You can also disable the sidebar on any page so it uses full width.

The custom theme documentation and object reference guide, available in the right column of your custom theme page in the control panel, will provide many other helpful details as you build your custom theme.

What are the recommended image sizes for my logo, featured content sliders, header image, and background photo?

Official response from Adriel Hampton

Logo:
140px width by 140px height (NationBuilder will automatically resize a photo down to these proportions upon image upload. Just make sure the image is a square.)

Featured Content Sliders:
660px-960px width by 250px height (660px if in the left column, anywhere between 660px to 960px if the slider spans the entire page width)

Header Image (banner):
960px width by 150px height (learn more about resizing your header image)

Background image for Focus theme:
1024px width by 768px height

Recommended image sizes are different for the Busy Biz, Civitas, and Victory themes. Learn more about these themes on our public theme guidelines page.

Note: the pixel dimensions listed above assume changes have not been made to the template widths of $page_width, $left_column_width, and $right_column_width in theme.scss. Your can disregard this note if you aren't using a custom theme.

What is a unique identifier?

Official response from Adriel Hampton

Unique identifiers (IDs) are profile fields that may not occur in more than one profile within a nation. Unique IDs are used to merge information from imports with records already existing in the nation and for deduping records in your nation.

A person's profile in NationBuilder has several options for unique IDs:

• email address
• facebook_uid
• twitter_ID
• meetup_ID
• civicrm_ID
• external_ID
• nationbuilder_ID

The best unique ID on an import is an email address. If you do not have an email address for a specific person, you may use one or more of the other unique IDs. However, the other unique IDs must have a first name and last name mapped during the import in order for the signup record to be imported into the nation.

Once the import has finished newly imported people in the nation will have a nationbuilder_ID assigned to them.

There will be times when there isn't anything the importer recognizes as unique on import. In this case, you can create a unique ID for each record. 

• Open the CSV file in Excel
• Insert a new column to the left of the existing columns
• Name that column "NationBuilder_ID"
• Leave the rest of the column blank
• Save the CSV file
• Import your file mapping the new column to "nationbuilder_ID" (for one time and voter imports) or  "signup_nationbuilder_ID" (for donation imports)

If an attempt is made to import a person whose unique ID(s) already exist in the nation, NationBuilder will update the existing profile with the information from the import file instead of creating a new profile.

Voter Imports

Voters in your nation may have one or more of these unique IDs:

• NBEC_guid
• state_file_id
• county_file_id
• DW_ID (also known as Catalyst ID)
• VAN_ID

Donation Imports

Donations have their own unique ID (donation_nationbuilder_id) along with one of the unique ID so NationBuilder knows who the donation belongs to. Donation imports connect the donor to the donation via the same fields used for a one time import. However, here is a slight difference for donations: each of these fields begins with "signup_".

 

What fields are available for imports?

Official response from Adriel Hampton

Below is a list of the fields supported for standard imports.

Click here for more info on donor history imports; and here for voter data import info (voter personal information and voting history are imported separately under the voter data import). And here's a look at the process for starting a standard import. If you are doing multiple imports of the same kind, you will want to reuse your field mappings.

We recommend not using fields as proxies for other data - doing so makes it difficult to manage your nation and for others to query data relevant for their workflow. Tags are a good place to store extra data points, and you can add multiple tags separated by commas. If you have questions, drop us a line at help@nationbuilder.com. You can also suggest new features related to imports.

.CSV imports are limited to 20mb per file - if your list is larger than that, you will need to divide it into multiple files.

Standard import fields

Items in italics are unique identifiers for NationBuilder. Unique identfiers can only be assigned to one signup record. An email address is a unique identifier and doesn't require a first or last name to be defined with the import. The other unique identifiers must have a first name and last name mapped during the import in order for the signup record to be imported into the nation.

Field Name	Constrictions
email	must contain valid email address (can be repeated up to four times per profile)
email_opt_in	Y/N
prefix
first_name
middle_name
last_name
suffix
name	the full name of someone, leave blank if you provide first/last/middle name separately.
legal_name	i.e. William instead of Bill
employer
occupation
sex	Must be M/F/O
party	1 character Party abbreivation - full list of political parties
religion
church
ethnicity
marital_status	C/D/M/P/S/W -(civil union, divorced, married, domestic partner, single, widowed)
is_deceased	Y/N
DOB	Birthdate - must be in the form MM/DD/YYYY
phone_number
work_phone_number
mobile_number
mobile_opt_in	Willing to receive text messages from nation - Y/N
is_mobile_bad	Indicates mobile number is bad and will not accept text messages - Y/N
federal_donotcall	On US Federal Do Not Call list - Y/N
do_not_call	Does not want to be called by nation - Y/N
do_not_contact	Does not want to be contacted by nation - Y/N
fax_number
website	Must be valid URL
language	Primary spoken language - Two character abreviation
created_at	Date joined or imported to nation - must be in the form MM/DD/YYYY
support_level	1 =very strong support and 5 = very strong oppose
inferred_support_level	1(very strong inferred support) to 5 (very weak inferred support)
priority_level	value of 1 through 5, with 1 being low priorty and 5 being high priority
background	Background field which shows at top of the person's profile
availability
household_size	Must be numerical
demo	Demographic information
tag_list	Tags separated by commas which will be added to person's profile. See Overwrite non-blank fields FAQ entry for more information.
assistant_id	NationBuilder ID for assistant
assistant_name_or_email	Must be valid member of nation
recruiter_id	NationBuilder ID of the recruiter for this person
recruiter_name_or_email	Recruiter's name or email address - Must be valid member of nation
parent_id	NationBuilder ID for point person for this profile
point_person_name_or_email	Point person's name or email address - Must be valid member of nation
nationbuilder_id	NationBuilder ID for this person - Must be blank for imports. Must be numerical for updates
facebook_uid
twitter_login
twitter_id	At most one Twitter account per record. At most one record per Twitter account.
meetup_id
civicrm_id
external_id
address_country_code
address_country
address_state
address_city
address_county
address_zip
address_address1
address_address2
address_address3
address_fips
work_country_code
work_country
work_state
work_city
work_county
work_zip
work_address1
work_address2
work_address3
work_fips
mailing_country_code
mailing_country
mailing_state
mailing_city
mailing_county
mailing_zip
mailing_address1
mailing_address2
mailing_address3
mailing_fips
VOLUNTEER ADDON
is_volunteer	Y/N
DONOR ADDON (*indicates has bank account with the NYC option checked)
is_fundraiser	Y/N
is_ignore_donation_limits	Y/N
donations_to_raise_amount
*doing_business_with_nyc_agency
*doing_business_with_nyc_business_category
MEMBERS ADDON	Learn about setting up memberships
membership_level_name	Must exist in nation
membership_started_at	must be in the form MM/DD/YYYY
membership_expires_at	must be in the form MM/DD/YYYY

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How do my team and I log in to the control panel?

Official response from Adriel Hampton

In order to access your NationBuilder control panel simply login to your website using the email and password that you setup when you created your nation. As an admin, you will see a link in your supporter nav (side bar) to the NationBuilder control panel, clicking here will take you to your control panel dashboard.

 

 

 You can also use the /admin slug to login directly to your control panel. That would be: [name].nationbuilder.com/admin

In order to allow other people on your team access to your control panel you need to change their permission level to staffer. From the control panel go to the People tab or search their name, email, or twitter in the search bar. From their personal profile page click the Edit tab and change their permission level to staffer. Now they will have the same level of access to the control panel as you do.

If you've created new team member accounts using the "New person" function under People, a best practice is to assign an email address and temporary password to their record and then send them that login info so they can access their new account permissions. 

To make logging in to your nation even more simple, connect your staffers' social media accounts to their profile in your databse (see below). To do this, find their profile from within the People tab of your control panel and click Edit > Social media accounts. Once you've connected either a Facebook or Twitter account, your team can log into your nation with one click using the social media login buttons (and won't need to remember a password for their NationBuilder account, again). 

I walk through adding a new person and assigning a permission level in order to make them a point person with control panel access in this clip from NationBuilder Live:

You can also watch "Adding a new person and setting permissions" in high definition on our YouTube channel.

Once point people are added to your nation, you can review and edit their permission levels. You can also make a website or specific web pages viewable by people with a certain permission level:

"Setting permissions for your control panel and web pages" can also be viewed in high definition on our YouTube channel.

What is the the difference between precinct codes and precinct numbers?

Official response from Adriel Hampton

Precinct numbers are numerical codes unique to each of the precincts within the state. Precinct codes are the names associated with those numbers. The list of precincts you have created for your nation can be found at in your control panel under People > Precincts.

NationBuilder expects your nation to have distinct precinct codes for each precinct. Precincts can also have distinct names for each precinct. 

If you are searching for the voters in a specific precinct, you can search for either the name of the precinct or the code assosciated with that name. You are not able to search for both at the same time.

For most states, the name and the code each indicate the same precinct. In some states such as AZ, precincts are defined with a combination of the code and name. If your state uses a name and number combination to indicate distinct precincts, you need to create precinct names for each precinct that contain both the name and the number (you can do this by concatenating the name and code field in Excel).

For example M0002 Apache. M is the county code, 0002 is the precinct code, and Apache is the name of the precinct. Each of the three pieces is needed to define the precinct, so precincts in AZ need to be defined as precinct names in NationBuilder instead of as precinct codes.