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Introduction - What is the Launch Box & Header?
Setting up your Launch Box, Header and other design options
Introduction - What is the Launch Box & Header?
The Launch Box is a special element that is displayed at the very top of your Homepage so that it is the first thing that visitors see when they visit your website. It is primarily focused with showing visitors key information as soon as they click on your website.
The key information include:
- What show is currently on air.
- What song is currently playing.
- What songs have been played recently.
- How to start listening immediately.
Additionally you can add a large image or logo if you wish to promote your brand.
The amount of information included in the Launch Box as well as some key design features can be set by you to make the Launch Box unique to your station.
Here is an example of a Launch Box setup on a station.
Contrast this with the same website but on any Page except the Homepage.
This is is the Header and all settings that refer to the Header will effect this style of Page but not the Launch Box!
If you prefer, you can disable the Launch Box on your Homepage and you Homepage will display the Header instead.
The Main Menu options in this article will effect the Main Menu on both the Launch Box and the Header.
Setting up your Launch Box, Header and other design options
The template site applied to all new broadcast.radio websites includes a generic Launch Box but you will probably want to alter the appearance or explore the feature options.
To access the Launch Box design settings follow these steps:
- Login to your broadcast.radio account.
- Click on Settings > Site Layout > Options and then click on the Design Options button.
- This will open the Design Options Window which allows you to adjust the settings for the multiple areas of your website including Launch Box, Site Colour Settings, Banner Adverts & General Header Options.
This window has a range of options on the left hand side and a large preview window to allow you to see how the changes you make effect the website design in real time. Any changes you make will not effect your live website unless you click on the Save button at which point the changes are applied to your live website.
There are a number of options so we will briefly go through them.
Colour Scheme Options
Use this option to access the general Colour Scheme settings for the website.
These are covered in detail in a separate help article - Edit Colour Scheme
Heading & Menu Options
Use modern homebox layout (launch box) - This option toggles whether or not to display the Launch Box on the Homepage. If this option is unticked, the Homepage will display the standard Header instead.
If there isn't enough space the Launch Box should prefer - This allows you to set whether the current Show or the Current Song are displayed if there is only enough room to display one thing. There are two situations where this would apply
- In the Launch Box with settings set to display a large image that expands to the cover the entire right hand column (that is a setting we will see later).
In this example the Myriad Logo is taking the entire right column to all the 'Now Playing' info has shifted to the left.
Currently the setting is set to display the Programme Name so the top item is the name of the on air Show and a picture of the presenter. If we change that to prefer 'Current Song' then the Launch Box will not show any Show information and instead concentrate on Song information.
- The other instance where this setting applies is on all other Pages where the Header is much smaller than the Launch Box and can only display either Current Programme or Current Song.
As you can alter the design of the Launch Box to mitigate this, it is probably better to decide whether you want current Show or Current Song to be displayed in the Header (ie on all other Pages) and set accordingly.
Set Header Logo - This allows you to set the image to be displayed in the top left hand corner of the Header on each Page. This also doubles as the 'Home' button when navigating your website.
By default, this is also the image that will be in the same position on the Launch Box although the is the option to replace that with a specific image just for the Launch Box as well (which we will get to later).
Show Album Artwork In Header - This option toggles whether the Album / Presenter image is included in the 'player' in the Header.
Please note this does not effect the Launch Box.
Launch Box Options
Set Launch Box Logo - This is similar to the Set Header Logo option in the last section only this image will only be applied to the Launch Box. If you do not set this then the Header Logo will be displayed but if you choose a different image then that is what the Launch Box will display.
For more details on Image options see - Media Library - Adding images & searching for images online (website add-on only)
Show Images In Launch Box - This option toggles whether or not to display album art and Show images within the Launch Box.
Show Recently Played Songs In Launch Box - As well as displaying the currently playing Song, the Launch Box can also be set to display the last X Songs so that listeners can see a brief history what you have been playing on your station.
You can set the number of Songs to be shown using the Number of songs to display drop down or torn this feature off altogether if you prefer.
Show a large image - This option is used to add an image file to be displayed on the right hand column in the Launch Box.
Once this option is enabled, several sub options are also enabled including:
- Set Image - Choose the image to be displayed in the right column.
- Page to open when clicked - You can set a URL to link to when a visitor clicks on the image.
- Expand image to fill whole column - This option toggles whether the image should be positioned below the 'Current Show' section or expand to fill the entire right hand column. The screen shots below show the two options.
This setting also relates to the If there isn't enough space the Launch Box should prefer option discussed in the previous section.
Advanced Settings
The Advanced Settings button opens access to a number of additional settings relating to the design of the Launch Box.
Set Background Image - This option allows you to set an image to be displayed as the background for the Launch Box. This will override the background colour set in the Colour Scheme Settings.
You can select an image from the Media Library or upload a new image. You can also set an image to tile horizontally if the image you use is smaller than the width of the Launch Box window.
How should the on air information appear - This final set of settings relates to how the Song and Show information is displayed within the Launch Box.
The simplest way to demonstrate the options is to show the Launch Box in each state!
- Blend into background - there are no boxes used separate the information.
- Use a text shadow - this option is virtually identical except that the text has a drop shadow effect which makes it easier to read on lighter backgrounds.
- Show as large box - if this option is enabled, a single large box is placed behind the list of recently played Songs (as well as the individual boxes).
- Show as individual boxes - this option shows each item in it's own box.
Colour Button - This allows you to set the colour of the boxes used in for the Song and Show information within the Launch box (only applies to bottom two options in previous section).
Note on this design how the colour is set to black but the transparency is set to 60% to allow the background image to partially show through the boxes!
Advertising
The final settings in the Design Options window relate to adding banner adverts to your website. You can choose whether to add a Leader Board advert (displayed at the top of pages) or a skyscraper advert displayed to the right of pages.
The first time you enable this feature, if the appropriate Advert List is not available then the system will create a corresponding list. You can then drop one or more graphical banner adverts (of the right size) into these lists along with appropriate 'run dates' and the website will automatically display an advert from the matching list each time a Page is loaded.
This is covered in more detail in a dedicated article - See Banner Adverts.
Saving & Cancelling
Whilst changing settings in this window will display the changes in real time in the preview window, none of the changes will be applied until you click on the Save button at which point your changes will be applied across your website.
If you wish to close the window and not apply any of the changes, click on the Cancel button.
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