Adding Content and Pages to Your Site and Top Navigation

 

Required time: About 20 Minutes

Adding Content and Pages to Your Site and Top Navigation

This article and video show you everything about adding pages of different types, adding content to your pages, and adding items to your Ticketor's site's top navigation and to use Ticketor as a CMS (content management system) and official website.

Introduction to Ticketor's pages

Your site consists of several pages. Pages on your site are of different origins.

1- Auto-Generated Content Pages

Some of the pages are generated based on the items you add to the site. For example, when you add an event or merchandise, a page is automatically generated for that item. The page is generated with a dedicated, SEO (Search engine) friendly URL (address) that can be posted on social media or messaging apps and can be linked to from other sites or they can be embedded inside other sites or pages.

For example, https://www.ticketor.com/demo/tickets/a-kids-show-1323 is the URL to the dedicated page for the “Kids Show” on our demo site. The URL is very user-friendly and SEO friendly and includes both the name of the site or business, “demo”, and the name of the event, “A Kids Show”.

Note: You can also create a more user-friendly short-link for your events. For example, you can create ticketor.com/demo/KidsShow or YourDomain.com/KidsShow as a short link that is easier to announce, type and remember.

2- Management and Utility Pages

These are the pages that are automatically included in your site, most of them accessible from the top menu and are used by the users to manage their orders and accounts. Pages such as the Checkout page, My account page, My Orders Page, Cookie Manager page, Print My Tickets page, etc.

You cannot add or remove those pages.

3- Custom Content Pages

Custom content pages are the pages that you can add to your site to add content, explanation, and some functionality to your site. Sample of content pages are “List of Events” page, “About Us”, “Contact Us”, “Photo Gallery”, “Our Reviews”, “Donation”, “Landing Pages” or any page with custom textual, graphical or video content.

Adding Pages to Your Ticketor Site and Top Navigation

To add custom pages to your site and to edit the items in your top navigation, use the Control Panel > Account and Settings > Pages and Navigation.

On this page, you can add pages of multiple types, delete the pages that you don’t need or re-order the items in your top navigation.

If there is a page that you don’t need, for example, if you do not have any merchandise or food to sell, then you can simply delete the “Store” page.

You can re-order the items in the top navigation by dragging them around.

The first item in the top nav is considered your home-page and when the users enter the address of your site without specifying any specific page, the homepage is shown.

To add a new page, you can click on the “New Page” item either on the main list of item or you can add a sub-page to any nav item by clicking on the “New Page” in that nav item.

Note: Pages do not have to show up on the top nav and can be removed from the top nav and you can link to them from other areas such as the content of the pages.

New / Edit Page Popup:

The page settings pop-up allows you to add a new page or edit an existing page.

You can select the:

Page type:

Page type determines the type and functionality of the page. Some available options are:

  • Tickets / Upcoming Events Page: This is the page that lists all your events and is usually the most important page of your site and the starting point of the purchase. Having a page of this type is highly recommended and the page should be added to the top nav so that users can easily navigate to your events page. If you only have one event you may want to not add and “Upcoming events” page and instead add the link to your only event to the top nav. You can potentially create multiple upcoming events page for different categories of event or for multiple cities. Or you can have one upcoming events for shows and another for classes or other type of events.
  • Contact Us Page: This page has a contact form as well as links to your social media. It comes with an FAQ section that can help answer buyers’ question and reduce your customer support effort. This page is also highly recommended.
  • Store Page: This page lists your merchandise and gift cards for sale. You may have multiple store pages. For example, one store page for gift cards, another for merchandise, another for food and concession and one for the bar and drinks.
  • Donation page is a page to ask for and collect donations. You can create one donation page per causes that you support and the collected donation from each page can potentially go to different bank accounts or reported separately.
  • Reviews page is where you can show your user reviews.
  • Event organizer sign up page is a page where a user can sign up to become an event organizer on your site and post events. It technically makes the site open to public to post events. If you do not add this page, general public will not be able to post events on your site and only administrators and users who you grant them the event organizer role can create events on the site.
  • Galley page is where you can display your pictures and videos organized in albums. The gallery page connects to your Facebook page and shows pictures from selected albums so it is maintenance-free and as you upload pictures in Facebook, they automatically show on the page.
  • Free-form page is a blank page that you can add content to it including text, pictures and videos. You can use this type of page to create landing pages, blog, article or any type of custom content.
  • Link to Other Pages. This type is not really a page. It is just an item in the top navigation that will link to an internal or external URL. For example, if you only have one event and want to add it in your top nav or make it your homepage, you can add a “Link to other pages” page with the title of the event and the URL that points to the event page. Or if you are integrating Ticketor with an existing site, you can add items to the top nav that point to the other site and so create a matching nav for your Ticketor site, with some items pointing to the other site and some items pointing to your Ticketor site. For example, you can add a “Home” item to the nav, of type “Link to other pages” that links to the homepage of your main site. Similarly, you can add an “Upcoming Events” item in the nav item of your main site, that points to your upcoming events page on Ticketor and so you can create a consistent nav on your main site and Ticketor site, that allows the users to seamlessly navigate between the 2 sites. Another use-case is to integrate a 3rd party site and their features. For example, you can have a link to a 3rd party site that you use for certain purpose.

Menu Text:

Then you can determine if the page is showing in the top nav (menu) or not and if it does, you can set the text.

Page Title:

Each page may have a title that shows in the browser tab and in search engine results. It is recommended to have a relevant, SEO friendly title.

Page Description:

Is used for search engine optimization and may show up on search engines.

Short / Friendly URL:

You can set a friendly URL (address) for the page that is easy to announce, post and remember.

Page Headers:

If you need to add any html headers or meta tags to the page, you can add it here.

Configuring Page:

After adding a page to your site, you can go to the page to configure it or to add or edit the contents.

On the page, depending on the page type, there is usually buttons or icons such as gear icon, pencil icon or settings button to configure that page or functionality.

You can also get and copy the address or URL of the page to link to or post on social media or blog.

Create Content / Landing Pages and Add Content to Your Pages

Web / Content Editor

You can edit most of the text and content of your site and add content pages.

Page Content

Most pages, including the upcoming events page, donation page, contact us page and obviously the free form pages have an area that you can add or update the content.

Ticketor uses a powerful editor, also known as rich text editor or Web Editor, to allow you to create any form of content and web pages. You can access the editor using the gear or pencil icon on the page.

The same editor is also used for events or merchandise description or in the newsletter to create email templates.

The editor is very similar to Microsoft Word or any other document editor.

Web Editor – Standard Controls

Using the menu at the top of the editor or the buttons in the toolbar, you can create any type of content.

It allows you to add text (headers and paragraphs) with different colors, fonts, sizes, background colors and with different styles such as bold, Italic or underlined.

You can also align the content to the left, right or center.

You can add lists and bullet points.

You can also add special characters, smileys or choose from 100s of icons.

It also allows you to upload picture or find a stock picture to add to your content.

You can also embed a video that you have uploaded to YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook or other streaming providers.

Tables with as many rows or columns can also be added. They can be used to show tabular data or to create a layout for the content. For example, you can create a 2-column layout, using a table with 2 columns. The border, colors and backgrounds of the table or each cell can be set in the table properties.

You can also add buttons that link to a certain page, such as a “Buy Tickets” button or “Register for Newsletter” button. The buttons control allows you to create buttons of type “Primary” or “Utility” which get their color and style from your theme and match with other buttons on the page or you can create buttons with custom style.

You can also create links. Just select a piece of text or a picture and convert it to a link by adding a URL.

All the items mentioned above are pretty standard in word processor applications and can be used to generate an article or blog.

Web Editor – Web Design Controls

The next set of controls are more of web-design controls and are there so that you can create beautiful web pages.

Section:

The main control in web design controls is “Full width Section”.

Usually, a web page consists of multiple full-width sections or strips stacked on top of each other.

For example, if you look at www.Ticketor.com , the homepage consists of multiple sections including a slide-show, followed by some headlines section, followed by features section, pricing section, testimonials section and reviews section.

Section is actually the container for “Cards” control and allow multiple Card controls to line up horizontally. The cards in the section either scroll or wrap to the next row, depending on the section’s settings.

Start you web design by adding a section. You can set the sections settings, including the background color or picture, border and animation effect. Animation effect will trigger when the section is scrolled into the view.

Cards:

Cards are boxes of information that go into the Section. You can have multiple cards in a row. If the cards don’t fit on the screen, they either wrap to the next row or they will scroll, depending on the section’s settings.

Cards must be inserted into a section. Insert a section, then click inside the section and insert proper cards.

Different types of cards have different layout and can be used for different purposes. Here is a list of cards:

  • Generic card, which provides a box
  • Vertical card, that contains a picture, text and a button at the bottom
  • Horizontal card, with a picture to the left and text to the right
  • Profile card, with a profile picture at the top, area for name and title, social media icons and a button
  • Text card, that allow you to add some styled text
  • Cutout text card, showing a cutout text on a background
  • Glowing text card
  • Social card with social media icons that can be linked to your social media pages
  • Contact us card
  • Coupon card, representing a coupon or promotion code
  • Counter card, representing a counter on your site
  • Google map card, displaying a location on Google map
  • Star-Rating card, showing star rating for a product or service out of 5
  • Price-Table card, representing a plan or product with its feature

There is also a Site-footer card, suitable for the site footer and a Callout card that shows on the site as a pop up.

One Card can be inserted inside another card to create a more complex layout.

Each card may contain other cards or elements such as images, links, icons, etc. You can click on each element to customize it. For example, a profile card comes with a default picture and social media links and contacts. After adding the card, you can click on the image to change the picture. You can also click on each social media icon to set the URL or you can add icons and links to other social media.

The best way to experience the cards is to create a section and start adding cards of different types to have a better understanding of each card.

To change a card or element properties, simply click anywhere inside the card or element and from the “Tooltip” toolbar, select the card type. If multiple elements are nested inside each other, clicking on one allows you to edit or delete the element or any of its container (parent) elements.

Each element has a group of attributes that allow you to control the size, color, border, animation or other attributes of the element. Web developers can also use the more advanced attributes to add CSS or a Class to the elements.

Templates

The templates icon allows you to add pre-designed section with multiple cards or individual cards. There are templates for the whole section and there are templates for each section item, in case you want to add more items to the section.

Select different templates from the drop down to preview the template.

The templates allow you to quickly and easily create a landing page by adding multiple sections of your choice.

Here are some of the templates:

  • Featured products
  • Page Header (title)
  • Product Detail section
  • Counters section
  • List section
  • Testimonials section
  • Our team section
  • Product features section / Counters section
  • Plans and Pricing Section
  • Contact us page
  • Videos section
  • Blog section

Site Footer

You can also edit the content of your site footer, that shows up on all your pages.

Site footer can be edited from Control Panel > Account & Settings > Edit Content > Site Footer, using the same rich text editor.

Terms & Policies

Your terms and policies including your “About Us” page, return policy, privacy and cookie policy, terms of use, terms of purchase should be edited from Control Panel > Account & Settings > Edit Content

Emails and Confirmation

When users sign up on your site or make a purchase or take other actions, they usually receive a confirmation message and email.

Ticketor is highly customizable and configurable.

The content of the confirmation emails and confirmation pages, including the Welcome Email, Sales, Return or Payment Confirmation pages and email can be reviewed and if necessary updated from Control Panel > Account & Settings > Edit Emails and Confirmations

Email Header, Footer & Signature

All outgoing emails, including welcome emails, contact us, confirmation and newsletters, go out from your Ticketor.com (or your own domain) address and will include your email header, footer and signature.

The email header and footer can be uploaded as an image in Control panel > Account and Settings > Design.

Your email signature can be created using the rich text editor from Control Panel > Account & Settings > Edit Emails and Confirmations > Email Signature

Terminology

There are certain words and terms that may be different in different regions or cultures. For example, the term Tax may be called VAT, Sales Tax, Entertainment Tax, or something else in different countries or industries.

Also, some event organizers may want to use different term for “Service charge”.

Other examples are “Accessible or Handicap” seats or “Cell Phone” vs “Mobile”.

You can change these terms from Control Panel > Account & Settings > Site Settings > Languages

Available and Default Language

Your site can be multi-language and the user can pick their language among available languages. You can select the supported languages of your site as well as the default language from the languages that Ticketor supports from Control Panel > Account & Settings > Site Settings > Languages