#TipTuesday: Simplifying (Hacking) Your Graphic Storage

Heather Wendt

One of the things that I needed for my Gain Grow Retain community was an easier way to add images and graphics, especially when it came to ads on the landing page.

Being able to utilize categories along with the html widget allowed me to simply paste them into place was a huge time-saver as my sponsor ads were updated weekly.

Steps to Replicate

• I created a category that was only visible to Administrators that I named Graphic Storage.

• This is a Discussion category with custom permissions.

• Each graphic has it’s own discussion post with a title that makes it easy for me to know which one I need at a glance (I used a side bar ad and a large banner ad for each week).

• The only content I added to the discussion post was the image.

• Then I added a comment with the entire html code I would need to embed.

• URL for a link when clicked is <a class-"promo-spot" href="https:……
  • Notice that they included a UTM cide at the end of the URL to make traffic tracking more effective since that isn’t (currently?) possible on HL Vanilla
  • URL for image - <img src=…is obtained by right clicking on the image (once it has been published) and selecting ‘Copy Image Address) and pasting it in the appropriate space

• The ad can then be displayed using the Custom HTML widget as either a side bar or a banner format.

• Set up any permissions and if it is an ad, be sure to toggle on that button to comply with privacy rrequirements.

• You can use the html code to add any additional formatting you would like (such as centering the image) quickly and easily.

So, if you are looking to include ads (either from external sponsors or from internal opportunities), this is the easiest way I have found to do it!

Let me know what you think, and I would love to hear any additional methods teams might be using to make this image inclusion in html more simple!