Skip to main content

Theming and the Homepage

Customise the look and feel of your public portal, and choose what visitors see on the homepage.

Go to Settings → Public Portal → Appearance and Homepage tabs.

Portal templates​

Choose from three homepage templates, each built for a different curatorial purpose:

  • Catalogue — a discovery-focused template with faceted search, recent additions, and collection hierarchy.
  • Showcase — a curator-focused template featuring selected highlights, featured items, and themed galleries.
  • Community — an engagement-focused template emphasizing featured collections, announcements, and visitor access.

Each template can be customised with your own zones, hero image, colours, and content.

Branding and colours​

Under the Appearance tab:

  • Display title — shown in the header. Defaults to your organisation name if left blank.
  • Description — shown beneath the title on the homepage.
  • Logo — upload a PNG, JPEG, or WebP image (ideally with a transparent background). This replaces the URL-based entry in older portal versions.
  • Hero image — upload a PNG, JPEG, or WebP image for the full-width background behind your homepage title. The Focal picker lets you choose which part of the image is kept in focus when the viewport is narrow (mobile devices).
  • Portal language — English or Welsh, for the portal's own chrome (navigation, labels). Record content isn't translated by this setting — see Welsh language interface (beta).
  • Primary colour — a hex code (e.g. #B8860B) picked with a colour swatch or typed directly.

Accent validation​

Whatever colour you pick, the platform derives an actual button colour that keeps text readable against it, to WCAG AA contrast standards. A live preview shows the exact button and swatch the portal will render. If your chosen shade had to be nudged slightly to stay accessible, you'll see a note saying so — the portal never ships a colour combination that fails contrast, even if the value you typed technically would.

Dark mode​

Visitors can toggle dark mode at the top right of your portal. The theme adapts automatically — use the live preview to see how your chosen colours render in both light and dark modes.

Fonts​

Choose from five curated font presets:

  • Serif (default) — a traditional serif face for heritage institutions.
  • Sans-serif — a modern sans-serif for accessibility and clarity.
  • Monospace — for technical or editorial archives.
  • Display serif — an elegant serif for high-impact presentation.
  • Display sans — a bold modern face for contemporary institutions.

Font changes apply immediately across the portal.

Zones​

Zones are customisable sections of your homepage. Each template comes with a pre-set zone layout, but you can reorder, rename, or reconfigure zones to match your curation:

  • Hero — your main image and title, with automatic statistics showing the number of published top-level collections, accessions, and items in your portal.
  • About — a text section describing your institution or collection.
  • Featured — showcase selected accessions or fonds.
  • Recent — show the most recently published items.
  • Exhibits — group items into themed collections or galleries.
  • Pathways — browsable category tiles (e.g. "Photographs", "Audio Recordings").

Drag zones to reorder them on the page. The live preview updates as you edit.

Custom pages​

Create static pages for your portal — displayed in the footer and accessible from the main navigation. You can author up to four standard pages:

  • About — tell visitors about your institution.
  • Visit — opening hours, location, contact information.
  • Collections policy — explain your collecting scope and policies.
  • Takedown — a dedicated page for takedown requests or rights concerns.

Write in Markdown. The page is sanitised for security (scripts and embed code are stripped) and published separately — toggle each page's Publish flag to decide which ones appear on the portal.

Image display and watermarking​

  • Watermark display images — off by default. When on, public images are watermarked at publish time with your organisation name (or custom watermark text).
  • Max display image size — the longest edge, in pixels, for images served publicly (400–4000px).
  • After changing watermark settings, use Regenerate all display images now to refresh already-published images with the new setting — this can take a few minutes for large collections.

Audio and video playback​

Toggle audio and video playback independently. Both also depend on a platform-wide switch — if that isn't on yet, your settings are saved and take effect automatically once it is. Turning these on means visitors can play files you've separately marked as publicly playable; you're confirming you hold the rights to stream that media publicly.

Search engine indexing​

Allow search engines to index this portal is on by default — recommended so your collections are discoverable. Turn it off if you want the portal reachable only by direct link.

Homepage curation​

Under the Homepage tab, choose what the portal's front page features. Pickers use your internal vocabulary (Dossiers, Fonds, Accessions) and only list already-published records:

  • Featured Dossiers, Featured Fonds, Featured Accessions — tick up to 12 of each to feature.
  • Latest additions to show — how many of the most recently published records to list (1–24).
  • Intro copy override — optional text that replaces the default homepage introduction.

Under the Content tab:

  • Announcements — post a banner message at the top of your portal. Set a tone (info, success, warning, error), optional start and end dates, and markdown-formatted text.
  • Footer — customise links, social media icons, opening hours, and address information displayed at the bottom of every page.

See also​