Using Custom Headers in WebMedley
The template system built into WebMedley allows anyone to have a professional looking website with minimal effort. It provides you with hundreds of different combinations of layouts, color schemes, and images to use in your website's design with no more needed than a couple clicks. However, WebMedley also offers you the ability to personalize your site even more by adding your own custom header to your site. Adding your own header to your site (assuming it looks good) adds another level of personalized and professional excellence to your site. WebMedley makes it very easy to do. Here's how:
1) Choose the design you want to add your custom header to. It is important to choose your design first because different designs are going to have different requirements for the size of the graphic you should create in order for it to fit properly in your template. Also, although headers can be placed into all templates, some templates are better suited for custom headers than others. (Examples of these 'header-friendly' templates are Shadows, Bannerlines, Bannerstyle, Evening Grey, Structured, and Fade Left. Click here to see all the templates.)
2) Find the size of the header. If you were to take a piece out of the frame of a puzzle, then try and replace it with another piece of a different size or shape, with enough pushing and pounding, you might make it 'fit', but your puzzle frame certainly wouldn't look as smooth any more. Putting in a new header is something like that. You need to replace the previous header image in WebMedley with another of the same size for it to fit right and not make your template look odd. Finding out the size of a header (or any graphic for that matter) is very simple and it's done like this:
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Right click the graphic you want more information on.
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Choose 'Properties' off the bottom of the menu.
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In the Properties dialogue box, look for information on 'Dimensions'
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Click here for a table of header sizes with standard WebMedley Templates
3) Create your header. Now that you know the dimensions of the header on the template you want to use the next step is to create it. You can use any graphic editing software to do this from professional level software such as Adobe Photoshop or Corel Draw all the way down to the 'Windows included' MS Paint. Be aware, of course, that different levels of graphic creation software will produce different qualities of images. Remember, your final image must be in a .gif or .jpg format and I recommend 72 dpi for your resolution. (See Hints and Tips #1 for an outline of making your images web friendly.)
4) Load your header into a library. Now that you have created your header, you will need to load it into one of your media libraries. If you are unsure on how to load an image into a media library, refer to the section on media libraries in the Training Refresher.
5) Insert your header into the template. Here's how you insert your personal header into one of WebMedley's templates:
6) Publish your site. You will not see your header change on your actual Web site until after you have published the change you just made. To publish your site, click on the Home link in the upper right of the screen and then click the 'Publish' button. Give WebMedley a little time to publish it and then, when it seems to be done, you can go have a look at your spiffy new header by clicking the link to your site above the publish button.
Let Us Do The Work!
If you want to do a custom header, but you just don't have the time/skills/software to create one from scratch - we can design one for you. (Want a free customized header?) To download a .pdf file with examples of some custom headers we have done for other churches and organizations, click here. You can also email support@webmedley.net or call us at 1-800-434-8607 for more information.
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(If you want this header to be displayed throughout your whole website, insert it on your Home page and make sure you put a checkmark in the "Cascade Changes" box before saving it.)
