Guide | Create your website

A Yapla website stays connected to your members, events and donations. Visitors join, register or donate online, pay, receive their invoice and access their personal space without any action on your part. This guide takes you from creating the website to putting it online, with a link to the detailed article for each step.

The website relies on four elements: visitors browse pages; each page is divided into zones; each zone holds a module that displays a type of content; this module draws on your articles, events, memberships or donation campaigns. Any update to your content therefore appears automatically on the website.

In this article

• Create the website
• Customize the look and the master page
• Prepare your content
• Create your pages
• Set up the membership page
• Set up the events page
• Set up the donation page
• Turn on the shopping cart
• Restrict content to members
• Put the website online
• Switch from the old to the new template

Create the website

1. Check your logo and social media addresses under Settings > Your organization: the website automatically uses them in the header and footer.
2. Go to Website, then click Add a Website.

The website is created from the default template, with pages already set up for your main features: home, members, events and donations. These pages are not published: customize them, then publish each one when it is ready.

Customize the look and the master page

1. In your website, click the Customization tile, enter your main and secondary colours, then choose the font. See the article Customize the look of your website.
2. Turn on master pages in the Parameters tile, then set up the Base master page: it holds the header, menu and footer shared by every page. See the article How master pages work.
3. In the master page, set up the header (logo, member login, social media, language choice), the menu and the footer (contact details, social media).

Prepare your content

Your website's text (introduction, news, About page, etc.) is written as articles sorted into categories. An article stays in your content library and can be reused on any page, even in a future website.

• Create your categories, then your articles: see the article Create articles for your website.
• Prepare your images: see the article Best practices for managing images on your website.

Create your pages

1. In the Pages tile, click Add a page and choose its type: internal page, menu separator or external link. See the article Create a page on your website.
2. Drag the pages in the list to organize the menu and its submenus. Duplicate saves time when a new page looks like an existing one.
3. Open the page, choose a zone and place the module you want in it (article, article list, slider, image, etc.). See the article List of modules in the Website feature and the article Edit the structure of a page on your website.

Set up the membership page

The membership page lets visitors become members, and lets members renew their membership and manage their profile.

1. First create your membership types in the Members feature.
2. Open the Members page (or create one), click the main zone, choose the Members feature and the Member Area module, then set it up. See the article Add the Member Area module to your website.
3. In the master page header, show the login section with its buttons (log in, become a member, renew membership). See the article Allow members and non-members to log in to your website.

Set up the events page

1. Create and publish your events in the Events feature.
2. Open the Events page (or create one), click the main zone, choose the Events feature and the Events Section module, then choose the display and the information to show. See the article Events Section.

Set up the donation page

1. Create your donation campaign in the Donations feature.
2. Open the Donations page (or create one), click the main zone, choose the Donations feature and the Donation Section module, then set up how your campaigns are displayed (donor list, amount raised, goal, etc.). See the article Donation Section.

Turn on the shopping cart

The cart lets visitors pay for purchases from several features in a single transaction, for example a membership and an event registration. Turn it on, add its page to your website and choose the features that share the same cart. See the article Enable the shopping cart and payment on the website.

To sell products, see the article Create an online store (Beta).

Restrict content to members

A whole page, or a single zone of a page, can be restricted to logged-in users or to certain groups. See the article Restrict access to a page or section of your website.

Put the website online

1. Publish the pages that are ready, then click View live site to check the result.
2. Fill in the search engine information of the website, pages and articles. See the article Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
3. Connect Google Analytics to track your visits. See the article Set up Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager.
4. Customize the subdomain or connect your own domain name. See the article Domain name and subdomain of your website.
5. Promote your website: newsletter, social media, email signature.

Switch from the old to the new template

Every new website automatically uses the new, more modern template. A website created before it was released keeps the old template: there is no automatic migration. To adopt the new template:

1. Create a second website under Website with Add a Website. It uses the new template and contains the preconfigured pages (unpublished).
2. Rebuild your pages and modules, then customize the look. Your articles are already available: just add them to the pages.
3. Publish the pages, then redirect your domain name to the new website. See the article Domain name and subdomain of your website.
4. Unpublish the old website once the new one is online.