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Does NationBuilder support iframes?

A:

Yes. You can use iframes and JavaScript elements with NationBuilder - you need to put the code in the template of your page, not the content or basic HTML editor.


How do I add pages to my nation?

A:

NationBuilder lets you have unlimited pages on your website, and it's easy to set up new pages specifically designed for activities that will help grow your community. Just go to "Pages" in the control panel, click on your site name, then on "New page." You'll be able to choose from dozens of page types that include things like autoresponders for people who sign up for events, custom roles for volunteers, and blogs that support multiple authors. 

With NationBuilder, you design your website around the activities and services your community wants. Our platform has special pages for ActBlue, Meetup and registering voters with Rock the Vote, and page types designed around press releases, calendars and events, endorsements, leaderboards for top supporters, petitions, suggestions boxes for crowdsourcing, custom surveys and much more.


Can I use my own website design?

A:

Absolutely. You have full control of the HTML and CSS and can customize any detail on any page, from the headers to the autroresponders. The theme editor allows to preview any page in private prior to publishing it to the public. You can even use Javascript or jQuery and upload files that you want hosted on NationBuilder.


What are slugs?

A:

Slugs are used throughout NationBuilder. They are the url address of a page. For example:

http://abeforprez.nationbuilder.com/blog 

The word blog is the slug for the blog page on the Abe for Prez website. The slug is always going to be after the backslash at the end of your website's url (the address of your homepage).

In many areas of the NationBuilder control panel, slugs are used to designate or indicate pages that you might want to direct people to, or highlight in some other way. 

Slugs will always default to be the name that you designate for a page, and spaces will always be marked by underscores (_). You can edit them to make them shorter and simpler. You want to do this so that they are easy to remember.


Do I have a limited number of pages in my nation?

A:

Nope! You can create pages/subpages and yet more subpages for each of your organizations, and each of these sections could have their own blog, calendar, suggestion boxes, any of the pages you can create.


How do I change my Facebook page?

"My organization has changed its Facebook page and I want to update that on NationBuilder." Or, "I changed my settings and yet when people click 'Like' on Facebook they get the previous site name."

A:

The main Facebook page for your site is assigned according to the site's main broadcaster. You can assign the main broadcaster by going to Pages > Settings. If you need to change the Facebook page linked to your broadcaster, go to Messages > choose the appropriate broadcaster > Settings > Facebook > and connect the page you want for your nation. You will have to be logged into Facebook as someone who has permissions for that page.

If you don't have a Facebook page connected to the main broadcaster, people will still be able to like the page on Facebook and share the link to the nation there.

Sometimes if you change your page settings, Facebook won't immediately catch up and it will continue to highlight an old headline from your site. If that happens, you can update your site's Facebook settings by running your URL through Facebook's debugger. Do that here.


How can I add Google Apps and webmaster tools to my nation?

A:

NationBuilder works great with Google products and Chartbeat's real-time traffic monitoring. You don't need to upload anything to your site or modify templates because we've created a spot in your dashboard for adding the Google Analytics code, site verification key for Webmaster tools and Google Apps (including email), and Chartbeat's API key and UID.

To link any of these tools to your nation, go to the Pages dashboard and click Settings > Analytics setup.

For more information on using custom analytics with NationBuilder, check out this blog post on analyzing traffic and recruitment with partner organizations and our screencast on setting up Google Analytics and creating activity chains.


How do I include images on my NationBuilder page?

A:

In order to place images on any NationBuilder page you must first upload them to the page (this also applies to email blasts). From the Settings tab or the Content tab for that page in the control panel go to the Files tab. Any Files tab in NationBuilder allows you to upload images from your computer directly to that NationBuilder page or email blast. 

Once you've done this you still have to place the images where you want them on the page; you do this in your content editor, so go back to the content tab (or corresponding tab that brings you to the page's content editor). On your content editor's toolbar you're going to click on the Insert edit/image button, the button which looks like a window with a green plus sign in the bottom right hand corner. When you do this, you'll get a insert/edit image pop-up on your screen. The second field down is Image list, from here you'll be able to choose from any images that you uploaded in the files tab for this particular page

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You can add an image description, which helps with search engine optimization. Also, there are lots a fields for adjusting how your image looks on the page. When you are ready click insert. You can always resize your image in the content editor too. 


How do I add a video to a NationBuilder page?

A:

Although you can't upload videos to NationBuilder, embedding videos from the web is easy, you don't even need embed codes! Simply copy and paste the URL of your video into any content editor and the video will appear in the place of the URL when you go to publish the page. Just put the URL on its own separate line, not an actual link (which would be underlined).

introblurb.png

We use Embedly in order to do this and you can check here to see if your video will be compatible. If you need to edit your video size of otherwise customize how it appears, you can use an embed code in you page template.

Embedly can be quirky once in a while - if it's not displaying a video that should covert, you can try cutting and replacing the URL or just let us know at help@nationbuilder.com. In your request, include the URL for the video you're trying to embed, and the URL of the page you want it on.

If you're comfortable with more advanced development, you can also insert and edit the embed code in the template level of your page.


How do I add search to my site?

A:

You can embed Google Custom Search to allow users to search all the content on your website:

http://www.google.com/cse/

Make sure you paste the custom search embed code directly into the template of a page, not into the content editor.

Google will not index your site right away, so you should work to get some external links to your new nation from other sites or submit it to Google directly.  Once Google and other search engines know your site exists, NationBuilder does provide a sitemap that will help the search engines index all of your public pages.


How do I insert links to other pages?

A:

In order to insert links to other pages on your website or other websites on the internet you use the link button on your content editor's toolbar. 

From within your page's Content tab (or corresponding tab that brings you to the page's content editor) highlight the text that you want to turn into a link. Then click on the link icon in the toolbar, and you will get a pop-up window prompting you to insert the url of the page you want to link to. Set the target to open the link in the same window or in a different windor. You can also un-link highlighted text using the un-link icon in the toolbar.

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How do multiple sites work within a nation?

A:

NationBuilder supports separate websites sharing one nation's database. Each additional site is $9 per month, and custom URLs are $5 per site.


How do featured content sliders work?

Featured content sliders are moving image displays that NationBuilder allows you to set up on most pages of your website, although most people use it on the homepage. The images on your featured content slider will be links to different pages on your website.

A:

To configure a featured content slider, click Pages and then Edit next to the page you wish to install it on. Then click Settings > Featured Content Slider.

You add one image at a time. Choose a label for your image and enter the slug of the page on your website which you want your image to link to (the label text will link to the slide, not the page). The action text you specify will be overlayed on top of the image and clickable. Now select an image to upload from your computer by clicking on Choose File.

Images look best when they span the width of your left column, so an image size of 660px by 250px usually works well. In some themes, such as Revolution, the image slider spans the entire page width, in which case you'd want an image size of about 960px by 250px. Make sure all your images are exactly the same size so they cleanly slide into each other.

You can then select to publish your slider and click on Save featured content slider to save. You can always go back and edit an existing slider. Now you are ready to add more sliders to your display; do this by taking the same steps you did to create the first one. You can re-order the slides simply by dragging and dropping them into place. We recommend 3-5 sliders to avoid crowding.


What are public profiles?

A:

Nationbuilder works to integrate your Twitter and Facebook followers and supporters into your nation. Unlike custom social networks like Ning and others, it doesn't try to fill the role of a stand-alone social site, rather NationBuilder draws on public Twitter and Facebook data and activities on your site to fill out your nation's database and our "public profile" feature. The public profile for a supporter will have things like tweets about your nation and primary broadcaster, event RSVPs, donations and other public interactions.

NationBuilder automatically assigns "supporter" status to someone who has opted in to receiving information from you - by following you on Twitter or subscribing to email updates, for example. A "non-supporter" is someone who has interacted with your broadcaster or nation - sometimes just by your broadcaster retweeting or mentioning them on Twitter - but has not chosen to receive your updates. 

You can manually assign support status to a person or a batch of people by changing their support level to a 1 or a 2 in the dashboard. You can also chose to turn off public profiles for individuals (public profiles are indexed by Google) or for the whole site. To turn them off site-wide, you go to Pages > Settings and uncheck the "Show public profiles" box. Public profiles for identical people will be different for each nation, although elements like a Twitter bio photo might be the same. Unlike Facebook and Twitter, NationBuilder does not have universal logins.

Let's look at some examples of how public profiles work:

Someone who has signed up for email updates will see their own avatar picture (drawn from Twitter or Facebook, or a generic picture if they don't have one with those service or haven't authorized NationBuilder to interact with those services) and a link to their own public profile when they are logged into a site.

Public profile on NationBuilder

In the example above, if I were not opted-in, I would not have a public profile link.

Supporters' public profiles will appear different to people who are logged into the site and those who are not. Logged in users will see a supporters' public profile with a notes field where people in a nation can leave each other messages. The stream below the profile will include interactions with the site and main broadcaster, as well as any of these public notes.

Obama_publicprofile.png

The example above does not have the notes field, but it includes recent interactions between the main broadcaster and the POTUS' Twitter account, and links where others can interact with those recent tweets, including replying or favoriting.

Non-supporters in your nation's database will have an ID in the system and you can interact with them on Twitter and put in private notes and other information in your dashboard. They will not have a public profile.

nonsupporterprofile.png

Supporters, who for example follow your main broadcaster on Twitter, also have IDs in the dashboard, and you have more administrative options related to their public profile, like the ability to review any pages they have authored and to edit their public profile.

Arnold_publicprofiledashboard.png


How do I make my own favicon?

Favicons are those little icons that show up next to the site name in tabbed browsing. How do I customize mine in NationBuilder?

A:

To customize your favicon, you will first need a custom theme.

Then you can create a favicon.ico file using a tool like this: http://tools.dynamicdrive.com/favicon/

Upload that file to Pages > Theme > Files. Lastly, add the following HTML in the <head> of your layout.html file: <link rel="shortcut icon" type="image/x-icon" href="favicon.ico">


What dimensions should my custom theme use?

A:

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.


How do activity streams work?

A:

You'll find activity streams throughout NationBuilder. The biggest and most comprehensive of which is on your dashboard in the control panel. This stream gives you an overall, up to the minute view of everything happening in your nation: who is creating pages, who is tweeting about broadcasters, who is signing up on the website, who just left a voice mail, etc. More specific streams based around people and pages appear in other parts of your control panel and public website.

All of the activities that appear in streams can be edited when you go to Settings > Activities in the control panel. On the right hand side of this page you'll see a series of columns. Each column is a different dashboard in NationBuilder and you can control what streams a particular activity appears on by going to the activity and clicking on EDIT. There, you'll see check boxes on the right side of the screen where you can choose what dashboards the activity appears on. 

When you create new pages for you public website, you have the option to check Show stream in the Settings tab for that particular page. If you add a stream to a page that stream is a public dashboard.  


How can I display a stream of the most recent public activities occurring in my nation?

A:

The following code will display a paginated stream of the most recent public activities occurring in your nation:

{% for activity in site.activities %}
<div class="activity">
{{ activity.show }}
</div>
{% endfor %}

If you want to limit the stream to say, the latest 5 activities, you can modify the code as shown:

{% for activity in site.activities limit:5 %}
<div class="activity">
{{ activity.show }}
</div>
{% endfor %}


How can I store an image for use on multiple pages?

A:

NationBuilder allows you to upload files to individual pages, or to your own custom theme. To use an image across your site, we recommend uploading it to your custom theme files and then right clicking to get the link to that file on our servers. You can then insert the image URL in the photo editor on other content pages.


How can I link to a stored file on my pages?

A:

NationBuilder allows you to store files like PDFs and images on a directory assigned to each page. You can also store files such as MP3s under the files director of a custom theme.

If you want to link publicly to a stored file, do so by right clicking on them and copying the link, then making it the hyperlink in the public pages. Your files each have their own URL that can be linked to on public pages. And if you want to make it so they automatically download when clicked, here are the instructions for that - http://www.wikihow.com/Make-a-File-Downloadable-from-Your-Website.


How does the supporter nav work?

A:

Nationbuilder allows you to include a supporter navigation bar on your website pages. When someone is visiting the site for the first time this nav bar will appear with some basic information on it, such as your logo, a link to your volunteer sign-up page and donation page, a Facebook plugin, and a Twitter follow button (so long as these pages exist and these social media accounts have been connected). When someone logs into your website with their email, Facebook, or Twitter account, the supporter nav changes and users will be able to themselves on it as well as a selection of links to pages that they can go to.

The idea is that you want to create specific pages for your users to interact with you and each other on your website, enhancing the community aspect of your nation. What page types are included here is entirely up to you. NationBuilder includes some default page types here which give you an idea of how to make the most out of the supporter nav, these page include:

Dashboard- let's your users see an individualized stream of everything going on in your nation that pertains specifically to them, i.e., people they are following, pages they are following, pages they are a part of (event's they RSVP'd for), etc. 

Recruiting- Shows people that they have recruited to the nation and how many of those have become volunteers, donors, voters 

Leaderboard- Shows where they stand in comparison to other users 

Political Capital- How much political capital they've accumulated  

Follows/Followers- Other users from you website they are following or are following them 

Find Friends- allows them to find friends from their social networks who are also users on the website

Here are a couple of other ideas for what to include in the supporter nav:

-Create a suggestion box page for logged in users only, let them have input in the goals and principals of the nation.

-Create an events calendar for logged in users. Post meetings and events that are just for them. Allow users to create their own events here.


How can I display my latest Tweets?

A:

First, you need to have or create a custom theme. Next, customize your Twitter profile widget here

Once you're done, click the Finish & Grab Code button. If you copy and paste it into your NationBuilder _columns2.html template, the tweet stream will appear in the right column of your website. 


How does event ticketing work?

A:

First, create a new donation page which will be used to sell tickets to your event. If you create a tracking code while on the Donation settings page, you'll be able to clearly track who has purchased tickets, how many, and how much money you've raised. 

Next, create and configure a new event page. When on Event details, check "Sell tickets" and select the donation page and donation tracking code you just configured. Then click on Advanced under Event details, and specify a tag for RSVPs. Finally, click Tickets to configure your ticket levels.

Later, you will be able to pull a lists or target everyone who RSVP'd for an email blast by using the RSVP tag you specified, and you can get a detailed breakdown of ticket purchases on the Finances page by selecting the tracking code you created. You can print a list of everyone who purchased a ticket to verify people at the door by clicking the RSVP button while editing your event page.

RSVPs will receive both an RSVP confirmation and donation receipt email. You can configure both of these emails on the donation and event autoresponse page respectively. 


How do I connect a NationBuilder event with a Facebook event?

A:

In order to connect a NationBuilder event with a Facebook event, you must first create your event in the NationBuilder control panel. After creating your event page, or selecting an existing event page in the overview display, go to Event Details > Social Media. 

In the Social Media tab under Facebook there are two options. When you click on the Publish to Facebook button you will be taken to a new event page in Facebook identical to your NationBuilder event page. Keep in mind that whichever Facebook account you are logged in as at the time will be the creator of the event. So if you have a Facebook page for your organization, you want to be sure that you are logged into that account before you take this step.

The other option for connecting these events is to create your event page on Facebook independently of NationBuilder. Make sure the information about the two event pages matches up! Then go into the corresponding event page in NationBuilder and go to Event Details > Social Media. Right above the button that reads Connect to an existing Facebook event, enter the url of that event, and then click the button.

publish.png

Once your NationBuilder event page is linked to a Facebook event page, anyone who RSVPs for the event on Facebook will show up in your control panel dashboard and event dashboard as an RSVP for the NationBuilder event (because the two events are one in the same!). This way you will always have an accurate RSVP count.


How do I get my text to format correctly in the content editor?

A:

If you are running into spacing and formatting issues when using the NationBuilder content editor you are probably copying and pasting the text from another application. When you copy and past text from one application into the NationBuilder content editor what happens many times is that hidden html is attached to that text, and that can create issues with the formatting of your content.

In order to get around this, you can do a few things.

You can use the Paste from Word feature on the tool bar. You can copy and paste from Microsoft Word right into the clipboard, and click insert. Your text should be formatted and ready to go. 

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You can also highlight all of the text in your content editor and then go to the drop down menu on the left hand side of the toolbar and select Paragraph. Chances are it was on Format before, and switching it over to Paragraph will allow you to make the necessary changes to your formatting. 

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If all else fails, you can go into the html editor in the toolbar, and manually strip your content of any unnecessary html. Screen_shot_2011-04-14_at_2.24.24_PM.png


How do I prevent displaying political capital (pc) on my website?

A:

Add the following to your theme.scss file:

.pc { display: none; }

You will need to be using a custom theme in order to access your theme.scss file. 


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