Customize

The Customize section of the project manager offers several tools to modify the appearance of the website and, in part, its functionality. You can hide sections of the website, include code, choose a header image for the page and customize the template to the point of designing one completely different from those supplied with Symposium. Note that some of these tools require advanced knowledge of website design and layout.

This section is accessed from the Design submenu.

Information panels

Here you can decide which sections of the project website you want to hide, leaving visible the ones you are most interested in. You may not want to show some sections, or you may only want to show them from a certain moment and not before. Tick the boxes of the sections you do not want to show and click Save.

Click the Save button to apply the changes.

Include HTML in the template

This section was designed in response to some very specific customization needs, without affecting others at platform level. You can write blocks of HTML content, styles or functions here.

As the manager itself warns, this section must be handled with extreme caution to prevent an error in the code from seriously breaking the display of the website or making content disappear.

Header image

Among the many event design options Symposium offers, one of the most decisive is the header image, because the selected image will be the one that identifies the project and will appear on the website’s home page, as well as on the card shown on the platform’s home page.

Editing the header image

You can remove the current image, add a new image, or select the one you want from those previously uploaded to the portal.

Uploading an image

To select a header image, you first have to upload it to SYMPOSIUM. Click “Add image” and “Select file”. You need an image file larger than 460×200 pixels, which you must already have on your local computer.

There is a checkbox called “Check this checkbox to upload a large image (without cropping)” that has an important function.

• If it IS ticked: after uploading the image, the small cropping application is not shown and the image will be displayed on the page exactly as uploaded, so it must already be cropped to the dimensions you want to show. We recommend a minimum width of 1200 px. If it is smaller, it may be rescaled, making the image lose sharpness.
• If it is NOT ticked: after uploading an image, a small application to crop it will appear, and it will be shown on the website at the size set by the template.

This table shows what you see in the event manager and what result each option gives on the website. This result depends heavily on the template chosen. Symposium supplies a template for crowdfunding instances out of the box, but more templates can be created from it, both for a single project and at platform level, making new templates available to all project authors.

“Without cropping” checkbox	How it looks in the manager	How it looks on the website
Ticked
Not ticked

Cropping the image

When the checkbox is left unticked, the small cropping application will appear after uploading the image.

You can select the region of the image you want to show. For the image to fit correctly with the Symposium themes, it must have a specific aspect ratio, which is why you need to select a rectangular region. Once this is done, click the “Save” button.

When you return to the previous window, choose a name for the image (it can be the same as the file name or a more descriptive one) and click Save again to finish editing.

Selecting the active image

Among all the uploaded images, you can select the one you want by clicking the round button to its left. The selected image will be marked in green.

Project template

This tool allows advanced editing of the appearance of the project website, and advanced knowledge of web page design and layout is advisable for a correct and satisfactory result.

With the Download button you can get a copy, on your local computer, of the base website template selected in the Template menu. You will get a .zip file with the complete structure of this template and a README.txt file containing instructions for the designer or layout artist.

Once the look of the website has been customized, it can be uploaded again in the Customize template section immediately below. Just select the already modified file on your local computer and upload it. The changes will affect only the project website, and all of it, so again the involvement of qualified technicians is recommended. The new template will not be available to other projects on the platform.