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Looking to create a vendor page in the Spiceworks Community or need some information on how to manage an existing one? Then this is the How-To for you!<\/p>\n
For those of you who’ve been a part of this program for a while, please note that this How-To has been updated with the vendor page revamp that occurred in August 2013.<\/p>\n
If you have any questions that are not answered in this How-To, please post them at the end in the comments and we’ll answer them as soon as possible.<\/p>\n
![\"sign-up.png\"](\"https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/spiceworks/original/4X/e/7/2/e72d8746fce793270a1f61ec21d7e527e09db61b.png\")
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The first thing you need to do is see if there is already a vendor page in the Spiceworks Community for your brand. You can quickly see by doing a simple search:<\/p>\n
http://community.spiceworks.com/search?query=&tab=vendor_pages&utf8=<\/a><\/p>\n If you don’t find one or know there isn’t one already, you’ll want to sign up for one.<\/p>\n If you already have a user account in the community, log into it first before going to this link. That way it will create your vendor page but not a duplicate user account for you.<\/p>\n If you do not have a user account yet, we can create both for you simultaneously using this link:<\/p>\n https://community.spiceworks.com/pages/signup<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Once your vendor page request is submitted, it will go into our queue for approvals. We do our best to approve these within 24 hours. If you feel like your request is taking too long or it was disapproved and you would like to talk to someone about it, simply use the contact link displayed on the page.<\/p>\n While it is pending approval, you can make various updates to the content on it. Be aware that if you have already purchased an upgraded vendor page, though, that the upgrade will not occur until after the page has been approved.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n As a paid vendor page, instead of changing the color of your header, you can upload your own image! This will take any standard image type but the image itself should be 1080 pixels in width by 280 pixels in height.<\/p>\n Take note that the logo also overlays the Header Image. The logo is 200px by 200px and starts 100px down from the top of the header image and 20px from the lefthand side.<\/p>\n To update it, simply click the “Edit” button on your header and you’ll see a “Change Image” option appear in the top right hand corner. Click that and you’ll be given the option to browse your desktop to upload the desired image. Simply click “Upload” and the page will refresh, displaying your new header!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n To get to your vendor page, simply click on “Vendor Page” in your main navigation when visiting the Spiceworks Community.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Basic vendor pages come with the ability to change the background color of their header. To manage this, simply click the “Edit” button displayed on your vendor page and you’ll see a “Change Color” option appear in the top right corner. Click the color you desire and then “Save”. The page will refresh and you’ll see the new color on your header.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n When you are logged in as a vendor page admin, you’ll notice two buttons in the header area of your vendor page; “Edit” and “Admin Actions”. Note that your followers will not see these buttons.<\/p>\n Admin Actions will display a few options to help you navigate the various management areas of your vendor page. Currently it will take you to:<\/p>\n Edit page - To publish and unpublish your vendor page as well as update your logo and badge for the vendor page.<\/p>\n Manage Profiles - This is used to manage the vendor page profile, not your user profile. Things such as contact information, tabs, etc, are listed here.<\/p>\n Manage Tabs - While accessible under “Manage Profiles”, this is a quick link to the tab management area of your vendor page.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n First things first, let’s get your vendor page updated with your Logo and Badge. Let’s go back to Admin Actions >> Edit Page. You’ll see two areas for uploading these.<\/p>\n Your logo is the image that will show up on your vendor page in the upper left-hand corner. This image should be at least 200 pixels in height and width but it can be larger. If it is, the image will be shrunk down to the constraints of 200 pixels.<\/p>\n Your badge is the smaller image that will display on user’s profiles when they are following your vendor page (to include your own) as well as in Follower’s feeds when they get your vendor page updates. This image should be about 80 by 80 pixels for best display.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Once your vendor page is approved, you may want to keep it unpublished until you have the basic content fields filled out. If you did this while you were pending approval, go ahead and skip this step.<\/p>\n If it is published, simply go to Admin Actions >> Edit Page >> Edit Information and turn “Published?” to “No”. Then click “Submit”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n For this part, you want to go back to your vendor page and then click on “Manage Profiles” under Admin Actions.<\/p>\n The first tab is labeled “Details” and this is where you can update the Display Name for your vendor page, add a description, and other contact details. Once you have those set up, simply click the “Submit” button at the bottom and it will save your update(s).<\/p>\n If you have an upgraded vendor page, you may also have multiple Spiceworks Partner accounts attached to it and want to modify who is displayed and in what order. If so, simply check out this How-To:<\/p>\n http://community.spiceworks.com/how_to/show/23392<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n You will notice that the Overview Tab (in the example) is faded out and only appears under the “More” navigation if you are vendor page admin. This means the tab is currently unpublished and can only be viewed by vendor page administrator(s).<\/p>\n Tabs are hidden (unpublished) so that you can update them with content while keeping them out of the view of others so they do not see a blank tab. The “default tab” is the first tab a visitor will see upon their very first visit to your vendor page. By default, this is set to the Activity Tab. But if you have an upgraded Vendor Page, you may want to set this to your “Overview Tab” and if you are a Commercial Vendor Page, you may want to set it to “Overview” or the Custom Tab. More information on those tabs further below.<\/p>\n You will only see the “default” option if your tab is published. If it is, simply click on “Tab Settings” and you will see this option just below the “Hidden” toggle. To turn a tab into the default tab, simply checkmark the “Set this as the default tab for the profile.” and click the “Update” button.<\/p>\n Note only one tab can be the default tab at a time.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n You can access your tab management in two different ways. First is by going to Admin Actions, Manage Profiles, and then Tabs. Or you can simply go to Admin Actions and then Manage Tabs.<\/p>\n Here you will see a list of tabs displayed in order of how they will appear on your vendor page. To modify the order of your tabs, simply click and hold down your mouse over the three lines that appear to the left of the tab you wish to move and drag it to the location you’d like it now to appear. This will automatically save – no need to click a “save” button. Note that visible (published) tabs will always appear before unpublished tabs and that your Activity Tab will always be the first tab.<\/p>\n From here you can also “Hide” (unpublish) or Show (publish) tabs, see which one is currently the default tab for your vendor page, or access the options for each individual tab. To accomplish the latter, simply click on the tab name and you will be brought to the management screen for that particular tab.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The Activiy Tab (previously called the Discuss Tab) is the one tab you will notice has limited settings - you can only change its display name. Unlike your other Tabs, this will be the tab you are most active on. All your other tabs you will set up and then generally not have to update but once every 6 weeks or longer. Whereas your Activity Tab is the one you want to post on at least once but probably no more than three times a week - every time you do, it goes out to your Follower’s feed as well as gets displayed in the weekly Vendor Page digest that users receive.<\/p>\n To create a new conversation, simply click the input box under “Ask My Company a Question” and you’ll see an area where you can give your topic a subject and then the message itself. For the message, you’ll see a WYSIWYG where you can format your text (bold, italicize, lists, hyperlink, etc).<\/p>\n You can also add an attachment to your post that will be displayed at the bottom. Note that you cannot attach an executable file and your attachment can be no larger than 1 MB. If the attachment is an image file, you’ll see a thumbnail (smaller version) of it displayed at the bottom of the message.<\/p>\n See this for more info about posting content on your Activity Tab:<\/p>\n https://community.spiceworks.com/topic/1290503-sharing-content-on-your-vendor-page-activity-tab<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n One of the new elements of the Activity Tab is the Promotions area that is displayed at the top of the tab.<\/p>\n This is an area where you can feature an item to help promote to your followers and others who visit your vendor page. The display area for this is 715 pixels in width and while the height is flexible, we recommend no more than 300 pixels (due to anything more pushing down your Activity content too far from the fold).<\/p>\n Like the Custom Tab (below), edits to the Promotions can only go through Spiceworks Administrators. If you’d like to have your Promotions area updated, simply contact your account representatives here at Spiceworks or you can contact me and I’ll get you in touch with them.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n This tab is where you can have information from a RSS Feed(s) pulled into your vendor page such as your official blog. To update this, simply go to the “Tab Management” screen, and then click on the name of the “Feed” tab you want to change.<\/p>\n Here you must but a link to the actual RSS feed (it will generally be a url that ends with RSS). For example, the Spiceworks Blog is found at http://community.spiceworks.com/forum/3<\/a> but that is not the URL for the RSS feed, that is just the URL for the public webpage for people to view it in the website. If you do not know the URL to your RSS feed, you may wish to contact your web developer or us and we may be able to assist you with that.<\/p>\n Every few hours, our system will go look at your RSS feed(s) and see if there is new content. If so, it will put it into your vendor page. Also notice that you can have multiple RSS feeds.<\/p>\n If there is an error with your feed, it will display that information here.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n If you have an upgraded vendor page, you will have access to the Overview tab. As you’ll see, this is where you can put a variety of content for your Followers.<\/p>\n With new vendor pages, you’ll notice some stock content in your Overview Tab. You can edit those and/or delete them. You can also create new ones; note you are not limited to four pieces of content in your Overview tab, that is just how the default version is set up.<\/p>\n Each content piece has a Title and Description and you can also add a URL which will hyperlink both the title and the image associated with it. The description has a maximum of 200 characters.<\/p>\n Each one can also have an image changed via Edit Image where you can use any of our stock images or upload your own. For your own images, note that if the image is larger than 80 pixels in width or height, it will resize it.<\/p>\n You’ll also notice you have “Move Down” and “Move Up” options. This is so you can prioritize your content. You want the most important items at the top and then work your way down.<\/p>\n Here are a few examples of Overview-type tabs done well:<\/p>\n •\thttp://community.spiceworks.com/pages/abbyyusa?tab=11840<\/a> This is a tab where you can essentially do anything in it that you can do with HTML.This is the only tab type that must be purchased individually and does not come by default with the upgraded vendor page.<\/p>\n You will notice, though, that when you access Tab Settings, you can only change the Tab’s name, publish or unpublish it, and set it to default. To actually update the content of the Custom Tab, you will need to notify your Account Manager here at Spiceworks who will work with our creative team to get this properly updated. Why can’t you update this? We use some custom HTML and CSS and, if someone doesn’t know how to update it properly, they can accidentally not just affect the tab but also put the vendor page in a bad state. So much that we may have to remove the vendor page and restore it from a backup.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n<\/a>Step 2: Awaiting Approval<\/h3>\n
![\"pending-approval.png\"](\"https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/spiceworks/original/4X/1/6/4/164bd177543a34a29ed4c660da20d1e01c4a7440.png\")
<\/p>\n\n<\/a>Step 3: Updating your Header [Upgraded Vendor Page]<\/h3>\n
![\"header-change-image.png\"](\"https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/spiceworks/original/4X/c/f/3/cf36141c8009e61196e81d73ed6a49e7f3b71fa2.png\")
<\/p>\n\n<\/a>Step 4: How to get to your Vendor Page<\/h3>\n
![\"dashboard-to-vendor-page.png\"](\"https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/spiceworks/original/4X/f/5/2/f5280f219f2dc8671364bfaf901545eb2261c230.png\")
<\/p>\n\n<\/a>Step 5: Updating your Header [Basic Vendor Page]<\/h3>\n
![\"header-basic.png\"](\"https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/spiceworks/original/4X/6/7/b/67b66f031658ff1ab992127ee288d74520aaaea6.png\")
<\/p>\n\n<\/a>Step 6: Admin Actions Menu<\/h3>\n
![\"admin-actions.png\"](\"https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/spiceworks/original/4X/8/2/3/823defe18a6efcc2f250b425e704e7eb3c3a7257.png\")
<\/p>\n\n<\/a>Step 7: Add a Logo and Badge<\/h3>\n
![\"edit-page-logo-and-badge.png\"](\"https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/spiceworks/original/4X/a/f/0/af0c553c3aeea5369397886ac090edfaef493606.png\")
<\/p>\n\n<\/a>Step 8: Keep it unpublished until ready<\/h3>\n
![\"approved-but-unpublished.png\"](\"https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/spiceworks/original/4X/b/0/f/b0fbf57db269639eeb2048bf16339de2887c04a5.png\")
<\/p>\n\n<\/a>Step 9: Updating Description and Contact Info<\/h3>\n
![\"manage-profile.png\"](\"https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/spiceworks/original/4X/4/6/1/46180a2688f4dc08ed78d5e1b502495be833e956.png\")
<\/p>\n\n<\/a>Step 10: Unpublished Tab(s)<\/h3>\n
![\"manage-tab-unpublished.png\"](\"https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/spiceworks/original/4X/8/3/9/8392c00f641a9839c4c70297c545d6673d61006f.png\")
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\nTo publish it, simply go to the Tab Settings for that individual tab and then simply change “Yes” to “No” under the Hidden? area.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n<\/a>Step 11: Default Tab<\/h3>\n
![\"manage-tab-activity.png\"](\"https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/spiceworks/original/4X/b/b/a/bbaa28669c4e5e6affe5235387194726ef739f91.png\")
<\/p>\n\n<\/a>Step 12: Tab Management<\/h3>\n
![\"manage-profile-tabs.png\"](\"https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/spiceworks/original/4X/d/e/1/de11fff3667f34c1c9d8ce44b3ab89a6daa91d7f.png\")
<\/p>\n\n<\/a>Step 13: Activity Tab [Basic+ Vendor Pages]<\/h3>\n
![\"manage-tab-activity-welcome-post.png\"](\"https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/spiceworks/original/4X/a/e/2/ae24ffab73792865ebb0f7d60dd0277fface0e47.png\")
<\/p>\n\n<\/a>Step 14: Promotions on the Activity Tab [Upgraded Page]<\/h3>\n
![\"manage-profile-activity-with-promo.png\"](\"https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/spiceworks/original/4X/1/4/3/1436aa8da1adbd84017382a52b836c6d27983fd1.png\")
<\/p>\n\n<\/a>Step 15: Feeds Tab [Basic+ Vendor Pages]<\/h3>\n
![\"manage-tab-activity-feeds.png\"](\"https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/spiceworks/original/4X/8/a/a/8aa048f50cae7a9bcd658fbac330ccc3bf66ee02.png\")
<\/p>\n\n<\/a>Step 16: Overview Tab [Upgraded Vendor Pages]<\/h3>\n
![\"manage-tab-overview.png\"](\"https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/spiceworks/original/4X/9/b/2/9b23cae8c5eed1fb3df068a9474c335e40eb9640.png\")
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\n•\thttp://community.spiceworks.com/pages/arcticwolfnetworks?tab=13112<\/a>
\n•\thttp://community.spiceworks.com/pages/cyberoam?tab=8209<\/a>
\n•\thttp://community.spiceworks.com/pages/dlink?tab=6738<\/a>
\n•\thttp://community.spiceworks.com/pages/pertino?tab=8766<\/a>
\n•\thttp://community.spiceworks.com/pages/smartdeploy?tab=7018<\/a>
\n•\thttp://community.spiceworks.com/pages/unitrends?tab=201<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n<\/a>Step 17: Custom Tab<\/h3>\n
![\"manage-tab-custom.png\"](\"https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/spiceworks/original/4X/b/9/e/b9edf6f5343d16e58f82afb05529786ed3cb6c7a.png\")
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