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Banner Manager; How to Add or Update the Banners on Your Site
Banner Manager; How to Add or Update the Banners on Your Site

Adding and tagging banners to display on your website. How to promote or advertise specific products or categories on your website.

Dan McCarty avatar
Written by Dan McCarty
Updated over a week ago

Note: We design banners and social media images for monthly releases. Find banners and images here: Go to Downloads > Marketing Materials

To see your current Banner Manager:
All of the banners in your banner manager are actually products, just like the rest of your inventory. The main picture associated with each banner product is where your banner image files are stored. To see your Banner Manager category, you will need to go to Inventory > Products and search for the category of the same name. Some clients choose to use a Parent/Child category relationship to keep all of their banners organized into groups, which may be helpful but this is not necessary. You can have all banners on your site right in the Banner Manager parent category.

To add new banners:
Because banners are just products, you can add a new banner by simply creating new custom products, using the blue "+" (plus) button on the Inventory > Products page. As with any other category that contains products, you will need to make sure that the appropriate product type is assigned (Banners product type, in this case).

If you have multiple levels of organization in your Banner Manager category, make sure to select the correct subcategory as the category where this new product will be created, otherwise all the correct descriptor data may not be assigned to this new banner. It is imperative that the banner descriptors are properly populated in the banner product - if you do not see these descriptors, your banner is not being created in the correct category and will not work.

Learn what to do if the proper descriptors do not appear here.

How to display banners and products on your site:
Each dynamic display on your site has one unique text value that it is coded to listen for. If a banner or product in your inventory has this text value attached to it, then that banner or product image will appear in that display. We attach these text values by "tagging" products. To tag a product, find that product in your Inventory > Products page, and click the "edit" button on it:

Banners tagged for the same display will all use the same tag, and will be displayed in alphabetical order. If the banner display is a slider, they will slide in that order. If the display is a static display, multiple banners will display stacked on top of each other. For static banners, it is recommended to just have one banner tagged.

By editing your banner products in the inventory page you can change/add:

- Enable on Date: Display the banner beginning on this date
- Disable after Date: Take the banner down after this date
- Link: Takes the user to this URL when they click on the banner

Using the link descriptor, it is possible to have a banner link to any URL on your site. This can be a link to a specific site page, or to an page of Advanced Search results.
Learn how to link your banners to different URLs here.

How to find what tags to use:
As explained, all dynamic displays are populated using tags. Depending on which generation of template you are using, there is a different method through which to see your tags:

For H2 template sites (sites completed before October 1, 2014):
On your homepage, in the URL bar, add "/tags" after the last character in the homepage URL

For H2.3.8 template sites (sites completed after October 1, 2014):
On your homepage, in the URL bar, add "?mytags" after the last character in the homepage URL

Notes:

Tagging a banner for the first time: The first time any dynamic display is used (new site design, etc.), that tag will likely take around 30-45 minutes to be recognized by the site. After the first banner has appeared, any banners tagged will appear faster.

Liquid error: undefined method `split' for nil:NilClass: This error will appear if a regular product is tagged with a tag that is reserved for a banner product. Only banner products will display correctly in these area of your site. Remove the tag from the incorrect product and apply it only to products in your banner manager category.

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