Cover story is a Spark feature designed to feature and highlight important initiatives and be visually engaging. It is a large photo with text that can be customized and can be linked to any page specified by the program administrator. It is located at the top of the Spark dashboard.
In this article:
- Who can create a cover story?
- Step 1: Create and customize
- Step 2: Feature
- Step 3: Review
- Troubleshooting image sizes and requirements
Who can create a cover story?
Cover stories can be created by any person assigned the Dashboard Manager role in Spark.
Step 1: Create and customize
- Select Manage from the top right corner of your Spark site.
- Go to Content > Create Cover Stories.
- As you complete the form, the preview section at the very top of this form will begin to change with the information you are inputting.
Select an image
By default, the cover story populates with your site’s brand or theme color as the background. If you’d like to add an image, you can upload one here as well. Or you can use one found in our image library.
Image requirements:
- At least 1920 px wide by 1080 px high
- Less than 15 MB in size
- JPEG format
Edit text
Add your call to action. Here you can add a title text and an optional subtitle. If you’d like to publish an image only, select the checkbox ‘I do not want to add any text’, and it will remove this mandatory Title Text box.
The ‘I do not want to add any text’ checkbox, will only be selectable if an image is added. If you choose to use your theme colours only, adding a Text Title is mandatory.
Select a button
We’ve prepopulated three text options for your call-to-action (CTA). You can select one of the three, and you will add any URL you’d like to CTA to take your users to. The full url (including ‘ https:// ‘ ) must be included.
Step 2: Feature
On page two of the cover story form, you can do your scheduling and targeting.
Start time and dates
Select your start times and dates. The Start date and time will default to the day you begin the form and the time zone in your personal account settings, so keep this in mind when you get down to Targeting below. The time selection is also set to a 24 hour clock, so you won’t have to worry about setting AM/PM times.
You can also choose to set a cover story to run indefinitely by checking the box “Keep this Cover Story featured until I decide to set an End Date/Time”.
Targeting
Here is where you select who sees your cover story. By default, you will see an ‘All’ group in the dropdown. If selected, everyone across your sites will see this cover story. The extra selections will be mapped according to columns in your demographic file and will be set up for your during your implementation or through an email request to the Client Technical Support team.
Tip: Adding multiple groups will INCREASE the number of users who are eligible to see the cover story. In other words, the groups are combined using or logic.
For example: There is a company which has created two groups —one for User Country (Canada) and one for Preferred Language (French). They create a Cover Story and add these both to the targeting section. The cover story will appear for ALL Canadian users AND All Francophone users. Users in European France, with their preferred language set to French, and any English speaking user, with their country set to Canada would see it too.
Step 3: Review
The review page summarizes all of the changes or updates you will be making. If everything looks alright, go ahead and publish your cover story!
Troubleshooting image sizes and requirements
If you followed the image requirements listed in Step 1 above, but the image is still blurry or not right, try these troubleshooting tips:
- Set the overall size of the image to 1920 x 1080 pixels, but only place the material you want to focus on within the 435 pixel cropped height size.
- Make sure the image file is a “true” jpeg file and has not simply been renamed as .jpeg.