Designing an Atlas Public Site Welcome Page

Creating an Atlas Public Site to share with your community outside of your school is a great way to share part of your curriculum with families, community members, and other stakeholders (such as a school board or accreditation team), while still keeping selected aspects of your curriculum private. The first thing that your public site users will see when they go to explore your curriculum is your Welcome Page. You have the ability to customize this Welcome Page to meet the specific needs of your community and to direct them to the information that you are sharing. Here are some of the key features of the Atlas Public Site Welcome Page that you can leverage to make the navigation process as smooth as possible for your users.

Choose Design Elements

You can include all, some or none of the three Design Elements for your public site. To add these elements, select the ⨁ icon. To remove, select the ⊖ icon.

Top Banner

This field will extend across the top of your page. If you would like to include a header with any text, imagery, or links, this is an optimal location to add those details.

Side Column

You can add a column to the left or right side of the main stage of your site. Many schools use this as a place for quick links, contact information, or even navigation support for users.

If you choose to include a side column, consider how the information will appear when your visitors use the mobile view. If you opt to place your column on the left of your main stage, the information in the column will be shown above the main stage in mobile view. If you place the column on the right, it will appear beneath the main stage in mobile view.

See a preview of your site in both desktop and mobile view by selecting Preview in the upper right corner of your screen.

Browse Button

Whether you include a Browse button or not, users will be able to navigate to the top toolbar of your site, to All Curriculum, and Browse. For ease of use, you can add an additional Browse button to the body of your public site homepage, and label this button anything that you would like. This can be a helpful way to increase the ease of use for the users of your public site.

Choose where you would like this button to appear on the page by selecting left, center, or right. Move the button above or below other fields by selecting the encircled up and down arrows in the upper right corner.

Tips

Customize the settings of your public site to streamline the experience for your users.

Your unique goals for your public site will dictate the most appropriate settings. You have the ability to control the privacy and transparency of your site and the content within it, customize the content that users see when they navigate your curriculum, and more.

Create links in text by highlighting the text and selecting the 🔗 insert link icon. Also consider creating hyperlinks from images inserted on your site.

Click on and select images that you have inserted to your page to adjust placement, add a caption, resize, change style, and alignment to text.

For more information on Atlas Public Sites, refer to our guide on 3 Components of a Quality Public Site and join us for one of our webinars, available live and on demand.