Understanding the vast and unmatched website and portal design tools available in Axis LMS.
It may not be evident, but you can create a custom, fully functional website using tools in Axis LMS. As a mater of fact, you can create both the public-facing, and private-access sites, and even create e-commerce stores on both sites.
While certainly not the substitute for a seasoned website designer, you will most likely be pleasantly surprised how easy it is to create beautiful, functional site designs that align to your business processes and branding, using the tools available to you in Axis LMS – with no design experience needed.
When branding your site, aside from assigning your own page banners, you have complete control over CSS and JavaScript (including jQuery) on a site-level and page-level basis (so, if you have a web designer on your staff, they will love the fact that these tools are available to them). There are also tools that enable entry of meta-data for your public-facing site – which works towards creating SEO friendly pages.
Axis LMS Website Designer
As a Partition Administrator, one of the most powerful tools you have control of is the Account Website. This publicly accessible site will function differently from company to company; some choose to have it redirect straight to their Learning Portal. But for others, the extensive customizability of the Account Website allows their company to use it as their company website.
If you’re considering using your Account Website to any degree, you’ll want to first make sure it is accessible, then become familiar on these different topics:
- Widgets
- Banners & Background
- Tips for Mobile Design
- SEO & Metadata
To decide whether or not your Account Website redirects to your Learning Portal login, go to System > Site Design > Account Website > Settings, then select how you’d like your Account Website to handle its visitors.
Widgets
All three Axis LMS Websites are created using a grid system, which allows you to produce produce high quality, professional websites even if you may not be a website designer.
When you’re working on your Account Website, you’ll want to remember that this is a level of your site where anyone -not just logged in users- can visit. And your selection of widgets is going to reflect this; widgets that look up, reference, or interact with user data may not be accessible.
If you’re setting up the Account Website as your company’s main website, you may want to use a combination of Text Block, Articles, Calendars, and Navigation Bars.
Text Blocks allow you to add text, images, and videos to your page; and are best for text that is not likely to be updated frequently.
The Articles widgets are best when used together, and are best used when you release new articles regularly; as it provides the visitor with the ability to choose what article they want to read.
Calendars are a great way to relay the different events going on in your company; or if you’re already using Google Calendars, you can integrate it right into your site – read more here.
Navigation Bars are customizable through CSS, and give your users a way to move from one of your website pages to another.
Banner and Background
Every page in Axis LMS uses a banner at the top by default. To swap out this banner for your Account Website, select the gear icon from the top right of the Account Website Page Manager. From this page, you can choose from your desktop or File Library to select a new banner.
display: none !important;
}
Similarly, you can also choose the background of your Account Website. There’s a few gradients already available; but if you choose custom, you can use the CSS below to create something closer to your company’s vision (anything after // is just notes to the admin):
background: url(“file_location.jpg”); //add a background image
background-repeat: repeat !important; //repeat the background on both X and Y axis
background-color: #ffffff !important; //add a solid white page background
}
Tips for Mobile Design
While your target audience may not be mobile users, the best thing you can do is assume that it is going to be accessed from a phone or tablet eventually. This doesn’t mean you need an entire new layout for these visitors, but you do want to design the site with some mobile-friendly principles in mind:
For more tips on mobile friendly designs, check out this article here.
But for broad strokes
- Avoid using Flash
- Minimize User Input
- Don’t cram Content / Extend Down
- Simple is Better
SEO & Metadata
If you’re not already familiar with the SEO acronym, it stands for Search Engine Optimization, and helps your website appear higher in the search results in search engines, such as Google and Bing.
While this article won’t go into the different ways you can improve your company’s SEO results, it will go over some of the different tools inside Axis LMS, that are commonly used to do so.
Metadata, in general terms, is used mostly by search engines and can be helpful towards bringing more traffic to your site. To add metadata to one of your Account Website pages, edit the page, then select the gear icon. You should now see an “Edit Metadata” icon. Selecting this icon will prompt you with 3 fields:
Page Title: This will default to the page caption if you do not specify otherwise
Page Description: This will be used in search engines when listing your site.
Page Keywords: These comma separated words will be picked up by search engines