Creating Web Pages for Your Site

How to create pages from predefined templates, or add new pages on additional topics.

Introduction Approval and Release Home Page Updating Starter Pages Create New Pages Delete/Change Headings "Go live"

The Web Site Generation Home Page

Please give me an overview of this site generation page.

After you first login and enter and approve your League's basic registration data, you will be taken to the Web site generation home page. Here you will see several pages listed as potential pages for your web site. These pages are intended to start you out so that you don't have to do all of the writing yourself.
Work on one page at a time:
Click on a page name and you will see a preview of that page.
Review the page contents.
Edit to make additions or changes.
When ready, approve the page.

The goal is to make all of the red and blue dots turn green.
The system maintains a table of contents for you on the home page and on every page.
Later, you can make changes to these pages and create your own new pages.

What are all those colored dots?

They are telling you the status of each of your pages. For example, one color will tell you if you started to change a page, but didn't approve it yet.

What do the red and blue dots mean?

The pages listed here have been prepared for you. There are two kinds of pages.
Those that have red dots are called canned pages. While you have the capability to add your own text at some points on each of these pages, the only way to change the main content is to change the values you entered on the registration page.
Those that have blue dots are called pre-written form pages. These have been created for you as examples, but you have the freedom to change any of the content by editing a form.

Does the indention of the list of pages have a meaning?

Yes. The pages are designed in "sets". Each set of pages covers a main topic. Each main topic is usually listed in the table of contents on each page and in the body of the home page. These categories should enable people who come to our Web sites to find the information they are looking for.
Each main topic may have one or more sub-pages. Sub-pages would be linked from the main topic page and contain information about the main topic. For an example, look at the set of pages titled "About the League". Sub-pages may also have sub-pages.

In what order should I process these pages?

First click on the home page (the first link) so you can see a preview of it. You can go ahead and approve it, but note that because no other page has been approved, it will not link to another page.
Return to the generation home page (hit "OK"). Proceed to preview, modify, and approve each of the "main topic" pages. Those are the pages listed with either blue or red dots immediately under the home page.
A sub-page (indented from the page above it) cannot be approved until its "parent" page is approved. Preview and approve each of the sub-pages.

What is the URL of my released web site?

It is "yourleague.ca.lwvnet.org" where yourleague is the abbreviation of your League's name as found on the registration page. Or it is the domain name that you gave us on the registration page. Your released site domain name cannot be used until you "go live".

Is there any other URL that can be used to see my released web pages?

Yes, anyone can see the pages with green dots by going to the web site address you can find by clicking on "Open released site in new window" from your Web site Generation Home page. This works whether or not you use your own domain name and either before or after your web site is activated for the public. Only approved (released) pages will be shown.
The shortest form of the internal URL is http://www.lwvnet.org/st/short_league_name. where "st" is your two character state code and "short_league_name" is the set of characters found in "Short League Abbreviation" in your registration data. This is the same as the "Open released site in new window", except the "/lwv" is removed.

The Approval and Release Process

The preview page lists all other main topic pages in the Table of Contents. After I approved it, the other pages were no longer listed. Why?

Each page has a Table of Contents area in the left-hand column. When a page is approved (released), it will be included with all other pages already released. At the time the first page is approved, there are no other approved pages so that page cannot link to any other page.

I approved one page and the dot turned green. Then after I approved the next page, that green dot turned pink. Why?

The pink dot (Environmental change) means that the page must be regenerated in order to update its table of contents to point to the second page that was just released. Each subsequent main topic page released will update the table of contents making a need to regenerate all previous pages to include it. You may wait until you have released all pages before regenerating all of them by pressing the "Update released pages" button.

What does the "Update released pages" button do?

It causes the system to update the Table of Contents in pages so that they are consistent. You can never hurt anything by pressing this button. It will turn pink dots green so that all updates pending on each of these pages is released to the public.

After I approve a page and its status is "published" (green dot), can the public see it?

If you have not "gone live", the pages cannot be found using your official URL even though they are "green". They can be found at your internal URL. But only people that you tell should know about this URL. When you want other League members to see the site before you "go live", approve the pages, then tell them to look at the internal URL. Green dots are good.
If you have never approved the home page, then no one can see pages even at your internal URL.
Before you "go live", be sure all pages are approved, then notify support@lwvnet.org so that we can activate your official URL.
If you have a published Web site, when you change an existing page and approve it, the page is immediately available to the public.

I approved changes to pages, but when I look at the page with my browser, I don't see the change. What is wrong?

Your browser and some other computers on the internet may store pages on your computer or others. They may return one of those pages rather than the page you just changed on our LEW computer.
So you must force the browser and/or other computers to read the page from the LEW computer.
If you don't see a newly-changed page, know that if you approved the changed (the dot next to the page is green), your change was made on the LEW server. You need to find a way to force your browser to show it to you. Try:
1. Hit the "reload" or "refresh" button on your browser window. This usually works.
2. Close your browser program and open it again.
3. Check your browser settings. For example, using Internet Explorer V9, find:

a. From tool gear, select "Internet Options".
b. Under the "General" tab in the Browsing history section, click on "Settings".
c. Select one of the options under "Check for newer versions of stored pages". Choose either "Every time I visit the webpage" or "Every time I start Internet Explorer" depending on how you want to work. Be sure never to select "Never"!!

4. There are 4 ways to write the URL to see your website. If you were looking at your page with one URL, change to use one of the others. They are:

a. yourleague.st.lwvnet.org (or your own domain name "lwvyourleague.org")
b. www.yourleague.st.lwvnet.org
c. Click on the "Open released site in new window" link on your site generation home page. It goes to: www.lwvnet.org/st/yourleague
d. lwvnet.org/st/yourleague

5. If you have another browser, use it for checking changes.
6. If you know you made the change (the dot is green and you see the change on the preview screen) and you have tried each of the first five steps, then something must be wrong. Send us an email at support@lwvnet.org and let us know what browser, operating system, and Internet Service Provider (ISP) you use. Maybe we can help you with your browser settings.

What is the normal sequence of status of pages?

Red or blue -> turquoise -> green -> pink -> green. Refer to the table on the right side of the list of pages for an explanation of these status indications. Other colors can also sometimes occur.

I want others in my League to look at my page before it goes public. How can I do that?

If you have never "gone live", approve the pages, then tell people to go to your Internal URL. For more information see the question on the meaning of the green dot above.
If you are already live, you may create a new page and check the box in the header that says "The page should not appear in navigation menus". Approve the page, turning that dot green. The page will be published, but since no one will know the name of the page they will not find it -- unless you tell them (or a public page links to it). Give the released page name to those people you want to review it.
Or, you may print the unreleased page(s) and give to reviewer(s).
Or, any reviewer could register with the LWVNet system and be given the password. Then she/he can see all pages in preview mode -- and make changes and approve if desired. You may send the password to whomever you wish by checking a box on the 2nd login page.
For minor changes, it is easiest to publish the page, then ask people to look at it. If there are changes to be made, just make them as soon as possible.

The Home Page (and Table of Contents)

How should I use the main body of the home page?

This is the part of the page that many people will see first when they come to your site. We intended this area to feature the most important sections of your web site at any given time. If people want to look for other pages on your page, they can use the Table of Contents in the left column. You do not want the main body of the home page to simply repeat the table of contents.
For example, if there is an upcoming election, you will want to feature the top-level election page; but if there is not one, you should remove it. You may not want to include pages like Contact Us or About LWV.
What do you most want people to see?

What are the changes that I can make to the Home Page?

You can:

Decide which sections of your site should be featured in the middle of the page with the section heading and a written description. You could decide not to feature any of them. Read the next questions and answers in this section for more information. How to add or remove a featured section.

Add text of your own choosing below the featured section area. Note that if you have no items in that area, this text will be in the main body of your home page. To do this, click on "Home" from the Web Site Generation Home page, then click on "Edit". You could choose to put an image or photo in this area.

Change the Slogan. To do this, click on "View/Edit League Registration", then "Edit" and change "Home Page Slogan".

Change the introductory paragraph. The default (highly recommended to keep) is the League's mission statement. To do this, click on "View/Edit League Registration", then "Edit" and change "Home Page Introduction".

Optionally, you may put a very important message in the area headed "Optional Important Message" which will be included on the home page after the introductory paragraph and before the featured section area.

Below the table of contents in the sidebar, there is an "open" area you may use. It is a good place to put your social media icons.

The League Registration form contains other fields which are displayed on the home page.

Do you have recommendations about how to design our home page so it looks best on a small screen mobile device as well as a full-sized computer?

Some recommendations:

It's always right to keep the words and visual display simple, clear, and free of "League-ese". For a small screen, the Home Page Slogan, Home Page Introduction, and Optional Important Information will be at the top. Make these words and any images compelling.

Tables should be used only when no other formatting option will do. It is better to use simple lists when formatting content. That's a lot easier to create and maintain, too.

Did you add images/icons in the left column below the search box? If so, you may find that a variable width for this column floats images where you don't want them. See Place Photos for more information.

Did you copy "embed" code from another web service and paste it on one of your pages? If so, you might want to test directly on a mobile device. Some embedded functions may not work on a smartphone or other mobile device. Or it may not look the way you would like. It would not be a LEW problem, but a problem with the supplied code. Send us an email at support@lwnvet.org if you find something that doesn't work or look right. We will report here if we hear of common code issues.

Do you have content within images that you expect people to read? If so, you will notice that the size of your image will get smaller depending on the size of the device. Is your content still readable? If not, you will need to think of another way to display that message to people or hope they can enlarge the screen display with their fingers. And also think of people who are sight-impaired: be sure the image has alt text. Better yet, don't put important textual information in an image!

Where can I put social media icons with links to our League's social media pages?

Below the table of contents in the sidebar on each page of your web site, there is an "open" area you may use. An example is shown on the left. First find the code you need for the icons with links by copying the commands found on the Graphics You Can Use page. Then edit your League's Registration Data and paste the code into the box titled "Sidebar Below Menu". Modify the code to link to your League's pages on Facebook, Twitter, for example.
You may also paste code that will embed widgets here. For example, Vote411 offers several widgets you might use during election season. If you paste code into this area, but see all or part of that code displayed when you preview the page, see enter any HTML for instructions.

I have a very important message that I want all visitors to see. Where should I put that?

Edit the League registration data and look in the section "Web site content definition" for "Optional Important Message". In that box you may include words and/or graphics.
The area is highlighted on your home page so people will quickly notice the message. Try to keep the message clear and direct so that its impact is highest.
To preview what people will see on your home page, read how to test registration data.

Can I delete the Home page generated by LEW and make one of my own design?

No. This is the only page which you must have.

What order should the main topics be listed?

You can put them in any order you wish, but generally it is best to put the most important, substantive pages first. You should also be sure to separate "Voters Service" (Education Fund) pages from the rest of the site, by putting them in their own "set" of pages.
Pages like "About the League", "Join us", "Donate to Us", "Contact Us" should be placed at the bottom of the list.
It is important to organize your topics or sections logically.

How can I change the order of items in the table of contents?

To change the order:
1. Edit the page you want to "move".
2. In the first area called "Page Heading" at the bottom find "Place after". This is a list of all the subpages on the same level as this page. In the pull-down box you will see the page names of the "sibling" pages. Choose the one that the current page should be ordered after.
3. Approve this change (release the page).
4. After returning to the Site Generation Home page, click on "Update Released Pages" to turn those pink dots green.

How do I add or remove an item from the center part of the home page (the featured section area)?

Edit the page you wish to remove from the center of the home page (not the home page), then look at the selection box described as "The title and description should be featured on the home page".
If you want the page you are editing to appear in the center part of the home page, check the box. Also be sure you have words in the "Description in Table of Contents" box. Those words will also appear on your home page. If the "Description" box is empty and the "featured on home page" box is checked, the page will not be placed on the home page. If you do not want the "Description" words to appear on the edited page itself, then do not check "The description should appear at the top of the page".
If you don't want this page to be highlighted on the home page, be sure the "featured on home page" selection box is not checked.
Then approve this page and return to the site generation home page. Click on "Update Released Pages" to turn those pink dots green. Be sure to "reload" or "refresh" your browser when checking the changes.

I don't want one of my pages to show up in the menu. How do I mark that it not be included?

To hide a page:

Edit the page by clicking on the page name from the site generation home page, then click on "Edit" at the top.
In the "Page Heading" section, put a check mark in the box next to "The page should not appear in navigation menus"
Preview and Approve

There are a few reasons to create a page that is "hidden" from the public:

It is a "thank you" page that people will see after they have successfully used PayPal to send you money (or a similar function).
You are testing a new page on your public web site and want to publish it for others on your League team to see, but you do not want the public to find it yet.
You have a page that really needs to be updated, but until it gets updated, you want to hide it from the public. In this case you could also delete the page keeping an unreleased preview

Updating Starter Pages

What are "starter" pages?

To give you a quick start in creating a new web site, we have written some pages which you may choose to use.
There are two types of starter pages:

Some of these pages ("Elections", "About the League" and its subpages) can be updated with the words of your choice just like any other page you may create. You have complete control over all words in the main body of the page. You must update one of these pages before you go live.

The "canned" pages are different and more structured. These are "Join the League", the Join and Donate form pages, and "Contact Us". These pages are made from centrally-defined templates.

The data within the main body of these pages comes from the templates and from words you write in the League registration data. You may add your own words in sections at the beginning and/or at the bottom of the main body of these pages. More info

Are there any changes that I must make to any of these pages?

Yes. Please read the "About the League" page very carefully. The text in the section "Other League Organizations" is intended to be an example and must be changed to reflect your League.

How can I change the words describing each main topic in the center of the home page?

You can change the words in the description for any page whose contents can be changed by a form. Change the field "Description for Home Page".

How do I update the Contact Us page?

This is one of the pages that is built from data entered into the League Registration Data form. Edit the League Registration Data form and then scroll down to the last major section titled "Contact Information" and change it.

How can I update the Join, Join form, or Donate form pages?

There are two ways you can change the provided Join or Donate pages:
1. Change the fields in the registration data form that are used on the donate page (for example, Education Fund name, 501(c)(3) classification) or join form page (e.g. additional membership types) or the Join page (e.g. number of times your newsletter is published yearly among others).
2. Edit the Join, Donate or Join Form page and add a section above or below the "canned" part. If you want to extend the form, you can easily do so by adding a section without a heading below the form. On the donate page, your data will be placed just before the "Thank you for your support!" line. You may also change the words in the Page Heading including the Description.
If you want to otherwise change the main body of any of these three pages, you can delete the one we provide and replace it with one of your own. If you want to make a completely new "Join Form" page and want the "Join the League" page (join.html) to link to it, give your new page the same name as the deleted one: join_form. Likewise, if you replace the "donate" page, the unchanged "Join the League" page will link to it.

The words in the main body of one of the "canned" pages (Join, Join form, Donate, or Contact Us) don't really fit for my League. Can I change them?

Each "canned" page is intended to be correct for all Leagues with the usage of the data you put into the League registration data form. Please contact support@lwvnet.org if you think the words should be changed. Also please see the Q&A above to see what changes you can make.

Last time I worked on this system, I approved all of my pages and the dots were all green. Today I entered the system and one or more of these dots is no longer green. What happened? I didn't change anything.

But the system did! There may be times when we need to change one of the definitions of a "canned" page. When that happens, the next time you come into this system, that page will have a red dot indicating that something changed. Press "preview" to see the change (which may or may not be apparent). If the page is right for you, approve it and it will be published.

I deleted or made lots of updates to one of your pre-written pages (for example, Elections) and now want to start from the original page you provided.

If you deleted a pre-written form page and want to get it back, or you made updates to that page and now want to replace your page with the original contents of the pre-written form page (you want to start again with the original starter contents of the page), you can do that easily.
1. If you updated the page (it still has the same page name), simply delete this page as if it never existed. Warning: once you do this you can never get back the changes you made to this page, so be sure you want to replace it.
2. On the site generation home page, go to "Create a New Page", and select the name of the page you want from "New page type" (e.g. Elections).
3. Edit the new page to be sure it is ordered the way you want and make any other changes you wish.
4. Approve the new page and update released pages.

Creating New Pages on Additional Topics

Can I create my own pages?

Yes! As many as you want. You may create pages of three different formats: generic ("plain"), calendar, and FAQ (questions and answers you think people may ask frequently).

How should the pages on our Web site be organized?

We recommend that you plan the categories of pages and the detailed outline of pages you expect to have on your site. Pages should fall within one of three categories: Education Fund, Action, and General. Decide what your top level pages (main topics of your site) will be. Ideally, there should be no more than about 10.
Elections, Voter Registration, and Studies are examples of topics in the Education Fund category.
Issues (positions), Action Alerts are examples of "Action".
Calendar, Newsletter, About the League, Join, Donate, Contact Us are examples of the third category. This category can be divided. It is best to keep the last four pages listed together on the bottom of the list. You may want Calendar to be high on your list.
In general, you want to structure the pages on your site as or within the main topics so that people can easily find what they are looking for.
Each of those "1st level" pages may serve as an introduction to the topic and link to lower level pages with more content. For example, you might create a simple page on the top level named "Elections". That page can serve as a menu of those topics you have about Elections. Perhaps:

The Next Election
Your Voters Guide
Register to Vote
About Voting: Early, By Mail, At the Polls

Each of those bullet items would be links to separate 2nd level pages with those titles. You could put the most important information about each topic on the menu page and then more detail on each of the linked pages.
Consider creating a menu page linking to subpages whenever you have a lot of content on the subject. You don't want your pages to be too long!!
You may create a page that is a subpage of any 1st level page or of any 2nd (or more) level pages. By this method, you can create a "tree" structure of your pages headed by a page introducing the main topic.

How do I get started in creating my own page?

First what is the main topic your page will cover? Is it a new page under a main topic that already exists? Is your new page a new main topic? You must know where your new page will fit in the set of existing pages.
Is the format of your new page a calendar or an FAQ?
Select the appropriate page type and click on "Create" under Create a New Page. This will bring up a special form. Fill it out. When you've completed filling it out, you have the equivalent of a "pre-written form" and the sequence of approval and release follows as before.

What is the page name?

Every page in your Web site must have a unique name. Duplicate names are not allowed. This name (pagename) becomes part of the URL of a page: http://yourleague.yourstate.lwvnet.org/pagename.html. The pagename can contain letters or numbers and the underscore (_) or dash (-). Blanks or other special characters are not allowed. Try to use names that describe the unique content of your page. Big hint: never use capital letters and try to make simple names to remember. You will want to create links to your own pages.

How do I tell the system where my new page fits within the table of contents on the left?

In the form, see the fields in the first section of the "Create or Edit a Web page" form. Find the field "Name of next higher page in site map". If you are creating a new main topic page, enter "home" in that box. If you are creating a sub-page, enter the page name of the parent in the field. The page names of all current pages for your Web site are listed after the title of each page in brackets on the generation home site map.
Then you tell the system what order you want the new page to appear within the other pages in the same group or topic area. If the new page is a main topic page, be sure to consider how it should fit within the other main topics. For more information about ordering main topics, click here.
To order a page, click on the down arrow in the "Place After" field and select the page "above" this new one.

How do I move a page on the top level (listed in the main table of contents in the left column), to be placed under another page?

1. Edit the page you want to move. For example, if you want to make the page named "join_form" a subpage of "join" (a good idea), edit "join-form".
2. Change the "Sub-Page of" value from "home" to the name of the page you wish (e.g. "join"). You could press "Preview" now if you want to see an updated selection of pages in the "Place after" list. Then press "Edit" on the preview page to return.
3. If desired, you may order the page within those on the second level by choosing the page you want to be "placed after".
4. Preview, Approve, then Update Released Pages.

I want to create a new page that is a sub-page of an existing 2nd level page. That name is not listed -- what do I do?

Choose the name of the top level page above the one you are creating. Then when you get to the Edit form and enter the pagename of the new page, change the name of the "Sub-page of" area to that of the desired page.
Pages subordinate to 2nd level pages are not included in the main table of contents.

How do I link from one page to another page?

Enclose the words you want to be the "link phrase" in double quotes immediately followed by the "less than" symbol, the pagename appending ".html", and the "greater than" symbol. For example:
"Library Position"<pos_library.html>.
In this example, "pos_library" is the pagename. You can use any words you want within the double quotes, but you must have the pagename plus ".html" to link to within the <>. The < symbol must immediately follow the second double quote ".
IMPORTANT: All characters entered within the <> must be identical, including capitalization or lower-case, to the name of the page.
Read more about linking or print this PDF file Linking from LEW to the World for your offline reading.

Is there an easy way to know the names of pages or files I might want to link to?

Yes. When you are editing a page where you want a link to be, look in the right-hand column of the data entry form for the lists of pages and files on your website. Then in the place you want the link, enter (for example):

"link words"<>

Then copy the name of the page that you want to link to and paste it within the <> symbols:

"link words"<about.html>

Similarly, for an uploaded file, copy "files/votermay.pdf", for example, into the area delineated by the <> symbols: "link words"<file/votermay.pdf>.
IMPORTANT: All characters entered within the <> must be identical, including capitalization or lower-case, to the name of the page or file. Do a COPY and PASTE!

How long can my page be?

You could make a page of any length. But think whether people want to read that much at once! If you find yourself creating a very long page, consider designing a "menu" page which links to several subpages. People will find that much easier to read online than one long page.
See How should the pages on our Web site be organized? for more information.

What can I do to make my page more readable?

People reading things on the Web tend to scan or read quickly. Some ideas:

Try to use bullets whenever you want to draw attention to your most important information
Use "bold" or "italics" for key words. Don't bold everything!!
Keep paragraphs short -- edit those sentences to the bare minimum
Don't use "Leaguese"

Can I make subheadings on my page?

If you have several topics on one page, create "sections". Each section can have a subtitle that will be listed and linked from the top of your page.

My League wants a section of our Web site to be read only by members of our League. Can I do that?

Yes. Please see Members Website.

Can I add a PDF file to our Web site?

Yes. Just look for the "Upload PDF File" button to the right of "Create New Page". See also the section on Uploading and Using Other Files

Can I add our VOTER with its own table of contents?

Many Leagues are putting their VOTER in PDF format (see above Q&A), then linking to it from a main page. Some hints:

Use the term "Newsletter" in the table of contents; people who are not League members will probably think "Voter" refers to people who vote -- like them.
On the page, include a link to your VOTER. If it is a PDF file, it is best to make the link open in a new window or tab.
Give people a good reason to click! You could list the titles of significant articles in a bulleted list. Then if people see a subject that interests them, they are more likely to read the article. See http://lwvncsd.org/Newsletter.html for an example.
You will probably want to keep an archive of past VOTERs. You and your board can decide how many to keep. You could keep that list on a separate page linked to the main page.

Or you may copy and paste selected articles from your VOTER in a set of LEW pages. Rather than making one very long page with your VOTER articles on it, consider having one page with the titles of each article, then define a subpage for each article. This gives you the opportunity to organize articles both in their published order and into a major topic list. See instructions on how to link.

Can we use PayPal to collect money online? How do we do this?

Through the use of PayPal, League members or others can utilize their personal credit cards online to pay for membership dues, make donations, purchase merchandise, pay for attendance at League annual meetings or other events, etc. PayPal will regularly transfer such payments, net of its fees, to the League bank account you designate and provide detailed reporting of the source and purpose of each payment.
Many Leagues have already signed up for PayPal's services, and are very pleased.
Leagues can visit PayPal Merchant Services to learn about PayPal's services to businesses and other organizations. Within Merchant Services, Leagues would want to sign up for a class of service called "Web site Payments Standard," and PayPal's Web site details what is involved in choosing a service, setting up an account and what the fees structure for PayPal's services are. Call the PayPal Sales Department at 1-888-818-3922--they are extremely helpful and knowledgeable.
Note that if your League has a separate Education Fund, you should set up separate PayPal accounts for your League and your Education Fund, as the latter can qualify for a reduced fee structure.
Once you have created a PayPal account, you want to direct your online users to use PayPal. There are two options:
1. Embed the PayPal form on your LEW web page by copying the HTML code from your PayPal administrative panel. See a great example at LWV Greater Tucson. This example, with its 6 data fields, requires additional coding in PayPal. Here are more details about how you can do coding to support a form like this.
2. Create one or more links on the appropriate LEW page(s) on your Web site to a page on the PayPal server. Within PayPal, look specifically for a link to generate code for "Email".
After you paste <form...> code on to your LEW page, you will need to approve the page before you can use it.
If you have a question with using or linking to PayPal, it is best to talk with the PayPal sales person helping you set up your account, or PayPal's Technical Support (1-888-221-1161), rather than addressing questions to LEW support personnel.
If you would like to add a PayPal icon to your page to draw people's attention (this is not necessary, as you can see from the above examples), go to Graphics You Can Use.

Exactly how do I define a PayPal account?

Below are more explicit instructions to define a PayPal account so you can link to your PayPal page from one or more of your LEW pages. These were graciously provided by one of our LEW users (Thank you, Karen!) and worked as of Jan. 2011, but as time passes, PayPal may change its interface and these instructions may no longer be accurate.
After logging into PayPal:

Click on tab "Merchant Services"
Under "Create Button", click on one of the buttons
In the space "Organization name/service", fill in label and click on yellow "create button"
On the next page, there is a box filled with computer code labeled "website". Click on the adjacent tab "Email". The URL will appear below the "Email" tab.
Create as many "items" as you wish to sell. If you are collecting online dues, for example, you will want a separate item or button for each unique dues amount.

PayPal suggests that you create a page that says "Thank you for using PayPal". You should hide this page so it is not in the table of contents.

Are there other payment services we can use? And which one do you recommend?

Google Checkout is discontinued as of November 20, 2013. Any users will be migrated to use Google Wallet. We have not investigated Google Wallet, so let us know if you do!

Deleting/Changing Pages

One of my published pages is now out-of-date and I no longer want the public to see it. How can I remove it from public view?

You may hide it by removing it from the table of contents or delete it. See hide a page for a description of how and why to do that. The rest of this answer discusses deletion.
Before you delete a page:

Remove the link to this page from all other pages in your Web site.
Decide whether you want to keep the page around for your future use or whether it should completely disappear.
Decide whether links to this page (from other web sites) should be automatically redirected to another page on your site.

Remove or Keep? If the page describes an event or subject that is recurring (for example, details of an election), you might want to keep it in your list of pages. This means that your page will still be displayed in the list of pages on your LEW site generation home page (with a black dot), but it will not be public. Then the next time you want to publish something about this event, you can edit the page, update it, and approve it. But if you don't foresee needing this page again, you should choose to completely remove it.
Redirect links? Do you know or think that other Web sites are linking to the page you plan to delete? If so, you should plan to ask LEW to automatically redirect any such links to another page on your site. In other words, if a user on another web site clicks on a link to your page "a", your page "b" can be displayed instead (a link to page "a" will be redirected to page "b"). If you do not do so, any links made will result in a "broken link" or "page not found". If your page has been published for a while, we recommend you plan to redirect accesses to it. If your page has never really been published before, you should just plan to delete it as if it never existed.

How do I delete a page?

After planning how the delete should work (above), preview the page, then click on "Delete". This will take you to a form that asks you to tell the system how you want this delete to be handled.
Remove or Keep? If you decided to remove the page from your list of pages, then click on the circle before "Delete both approved and preview pages forever".
If you decided you want to keep it in your list of pages until needed again, click on the circle before "Remove approved page, keep an unreleased preview"
Redirect links? In either case, if you think other sites may have links to your page, click on "Redirect Access to another page" and then, in the pulldown, choose the page closest in content to the one you are deleting (or choose your home page). Otherwise, just click on the circle before "Just remove the page as if it never existed".
If you delete a page that we provided for you, you can bring back the original contents of that page by selecting it in the Create a New Page selection list.

How do I move a page to a different position in the list of pages?

First, edit the page (click on its name in the list of all pages). Then:

If you want to change the order of a top level page (the value of "Sub-page of" is "home"), click on the down arrow under "Place After" and select the name of the page you wish this page to be after.

If on the top level (a sub-page of "home") and you want it to be moved to be under another page that is also on the top level, follow these instructions.

Preview, Approve, then Update Released Pages.

May I change the pagename of an existing page?

Yes, you can change the name of the page (the part of the full web page name that ends in .html). On your site generation home page, click on the name of the page like you do when you edit the page. At the top of the preview page, click on "Rename". When you change the name, the LEW system will automatically update the table of contents for you.
WARNING: the system will not change links you made in the body of a web page to the newly-deleted page. Also other sites may have been linking to this page.
Use this feature very carefully -- probably only when you are creating a new page and, on second thought, want it to have a different page name.

Can I create a new page and copy the existing contents of another page?

You can "clone" the original page, give it a new page name and headers, then simply remove the text that you don't want leaving the section or paragraphs you do want.
There are several circumstances where you may find this function useful, for example:

A page is too long and you want to keep the older information, but on a separate page. Then people will more easily see the most current information on the original page (which would link to the new one).
A page is very long and you want to have one menu page with each original section on its own, new page.

To clone a page:

On your site generation home page, in the area headed "Create a New Page" in the box labeled "Clone Page Contents", select the name of the page you wish to clone. Then click on "Create".
The next page gives you the content of the old page already filled in the form fields except for the Page Name.
You must type in a new name for this page (keep it simple, but descriptive). Decide where in the order of pages it fits, then edit the contents of the page as you want for the new page.
Preview
Edit the original page and make desired changes or delete it.
Approve all changes

How do I remove a section within a page?

Edit the page with the section to be removed. Then look at the section definition. At the bottom of the large edit box, click on the "Erase this section" button. All content from all boxes within the section will be cleared. When you click on "Preview", you will notice the section is now gone.
If you did not mean to erase the section, you may restore the content by scrolling to the bottom of the edit page and clicking on "Cancel" (as long as you have not yet clicked on "Preview"). Any other changes you made since the last time the page was previewed will be forgotten.

How do I update the starter pages like Join the League, the Join form, Donate, and Contact Us?

Although you can add sections before or after our content, the rest of the data can only be changed by updating the registration data. See Updating Starter Pages above for more information.

The Heading Area on a Page

What should I put in the Title?

The words should simply and clearly describe the contents of this page or this group of pages in words the public understands.
The Title area becomes the title of your page that you see at the very top of your browser window and it becomes the main heading in the main body of the page.
These words are also used by search engines to match this page with the words people use when they are searching the Internet.

Are some values in the Title in the Page Heading area restricted?

HTML is not allowed in the Title. We will remove any HTML and give you a warning message.

My section headings are displayed in the header of my page. Why?

The purpose of the page table of contents line(s) is to tell people what is on this page. It is especially important if you have a long page. Then a person can find the section of most interest and click on it to go directly to the section.

All or some of my section headings in the heading area of the page have no links to the sections. How can I make that happen?

Edit the page and scroll to the section. If you want a shorter heading for the top of the page (make it very similar to the Section Heading), type that into "Section Short Heading". To make the link, put something in the "Section Heading Name". This will be a name that can be used in a link to go directly to this section within the page. It doesn't show up on the page itself, so enter something short, but similar to the contents of the section. You can type a number of series of letters. We recommend you do not use capital letters.

I want to link to a section of one page from another page on my web site. How do I do that?

Create the link to the page the same way as usual. For example:

See more about "Registering to Vote"<elections.html>.

Then immediately following the "html", add a pound sign (#) then the "Section Heading Name" of the section you want to link to. For example:

See more about "Registering to Vote"<elections.html#register>.

"Go Live" Process

What is the "go live" process?

When you are ready to "go live" (have your new League Easy Web site made available to the public), follow the basic Go Live process. If you already have a web site using a private domain name like lwvleaguename.org, refer to the Go Live - Transfer Domain Name process.

Comments, suggestions, questions? Contact our webmaster. Last revised: January 14, 2019 21:23 PST.