Editing the Settings and Layout

Of Your Dashboard

Editing the Settings and Layout of Your Dashboard

This tutorial includes brief guides to:

Creating new pages (slides 3-5)

Designing your dashboard (slides 6-11)

Duplicating & refreshing a widget (slides 12-13)

Duplicating, moving, adding, & deleting tabs (slides 14-20)

Editing the layout of your widgets & tabs (slides 21-24)

Making your dashboard public (slides 25-32)

Creating and Deleting Pages

1. To create a new page, click the “Dashboards” link at the top right of your browser and then select “New…”

2. Enter the title of your book or of your project. Netvibes will populate tabs and widgets for you based on what you enter. You will have the option of

picking an image to base your template on. Netvibes often just uses the colors for the image and applies it to your design layout and sometimes the image

will be incorporated in the top wallpaper of your page. How Netvibes applies these designs appears to be arbitrary and will change from click to click.

Because of this, try not to spend too much time finding a design you like this way. Instead, see the instructions on designing your dashboard to create your

own design.

3. Many of the widgets (even entire tabs) that Netvibes automatically populates will not be relevant to your project. Simply click the “X” in the top right hand

corner of widgets you would like to delete. See directions for “Duplicating, moving, & deleting tabs” for directions on deleting unwanted tabs.

Sometimes it is helpful to create new pages so that you can play with your designs. If you create a design you like but you still might want to try out other designs,

instead of editing over the good design, simply create a new page. Once you decide on the design you prefer, you can move your tabs to that page (see

“Duplicating, moving, & deleting tabs” for instructions) and then delete your unwanted pages.

1. To delete pages, to go “Dashboards” and then “Manage…”

2. Select “Delete” towards the lower right of the page you no longer want. Be sure you select the correct page. If you are worried about deleting the wrong

page, don’t delete anything. Only the one page you make public will display to viewers so having extra pages won’t hurt anything. If you don’t like the

clutter, though, just be certain you are deleting the right page.

Designing Your Dashboard

There are many ways to change the design of your page. You can always follow the steps in creating a new page and see if you like any of the designs that Netvibes

arbitrarily applies to your template or you can take the design into your own hands.

1. To edit the design yourself, click on the settings toggle towards the top right of your browser window, to the immediate left of the “Dashboards” button.

2. From here, you can browse themes already on Netvibes, narrow it down to certain catagories, or search by keyword. Note: as you make selections of

different themes, those changes will immediately show. If you do not like the changes, simply click “Discard changes” at the bottom of the settings

window.

Browse all themes

View by category

By clicking “All

themes” to reveal

a dropdown menu

of theme categories.

Type a keyword

search to narrow

your theme choices.

3. You can also manually customize your design by clicking “Customize” towards the left-middle of the settings window.

4. Under customize, you can change your top wall paper, which is the image/design above your tabs, where your title appears:

Or bottom wallpaper, which is the image/design beneath the widgets in your tab:

Both the top and bottom wallpaper customization will allow you to choose designs already loaded on Netvibes or you can select the dropdown menu to retrieve

images from other sources, including a specific URL, flickr, myspace, or twitter. It is recommended that you use the Netvibes designs or the URL options.

5. Once you have made all your edits, you can either select “Discard changes” or “Done” to save your changes.

Duplicating & Refreshing a Widget

If you are going to include widgets of the same type with similar content, it is sometimes easier to duplicate an already added widget instead of going through the

“add content” process described in the “Adding a Text Widget” tutorial. The duplication shortcut only works with like widgets. For example, you can duplicate an

image widget and then edit it for the next image you would like to add. You cannot duplicate an image widget if the content you want to add is not an image.

In order to duplicate a widget, simply scroll your cursor over somewhere in widget. Usually, only three icons are showing on the right hand side of a widget (see

left image). When you have your cursor in the widget, two other icons appear (see right image).

The icon for duplicating the widget is the one on the far left. This is also where you can change the color of individual widgets to make them stand out.

The icon to the immediate right of the duplication/color option is the refresh icon. Sometimes, you need to refresh a widget for the content to show properly. This

is especially true when you move a widget from one place on your dashboard to another. Below is an example of a Slideshare widget that was moved in the

dashboard:

Simply clicking the refresh button and the content displays properly again:

Duplicating, Moving, Deleting, & Adding Tabs

If you have already added a lot of content to your dashboard and/or have made some edits to your layout, you may first want to create duplicate tabs to ensure

that you do not lose a version that you prefer over a new version with your edits. Follow the steps below to make copies of a tab so that you can keep one original

and have another tab you edit. Once your edits are complete, you’ll simply delete the version you do not like.

1. Scroll over the “Dashboards” button at the top right of your browser window and then click “Manage…”:

2. Then click “Rearrange tabs”

3. You can move the tabs from one page to another, create copies on the same page, or copies on a new page. Simply drag and drop the tabs to move them

from page to page. Below, I’m moving my Recs & Tutorial tab to a different page.

To copy the tab, simply click “ALT” while dragging the tab. You can even copy the tab on the same page in which the tab already exists by holding the ALT

key while dragging the tab up and then dropping it back in the same page:

4. When you are finished click “I’m done”, “Save changes” towards the bottom of the page, and then “Back to my Dashboard” at the top of the page.

5. After you are finished editing your tabs and you are ready to remove duplicates, then click the arrow beside the tab you want to remove:

And then click the “Delete tab” button:

6. If you would like to add a tab, click the “+” sign on the far right of the screen, in line with the already existing tabs.

From here, you can type in the title of your tab and click “Create.” Netvibes will populate the tab using the title as a search term for various widgets. If you

do not want Netvibes to populate this tab with widgets, simply click “Or leave tab empty.” You can always change the title of the tab after it has been

created. See directions “Editing the Layout of Widgets and Tabs” for instructions on changing the title of your tab.

Editing the Layout of Widgets and Tabs

See the “Adding a Text Widget” tutorial for directions on moving your widgets around in the page. You can also move your widgets to a different tab using the

same technic to drag your widget and then drop it in the tab you would like to move it to. Below, is an example of what moving a widget from the last tab to the

middle tab looks like:

You can also change the layout by click on the arrow beside the tab name in which you are currently working:

From here, you can change the icon to the left of the title of your tab, the actual title of your tab, and the layout of your widgets.

Try clicking the different numbers to show you different options for your widget layouts within the tab you are editing:

After you have selected a layout for your tab, you can also change the width of your widget columns within the tab itself. Look between the columns towards the

top part of the tab in which you are working. You should see small, vertical bars in the space between the columns.

Grab the bar and move it according to the width you’d like the tab(s) beside it to be. Below, I’m moving the left column bar in order to make my first column wider

and my middle column narrower. You should play around with the column width to improve the readability of the widgets in a given column.

Making Your Dashboard Public

All pages are private and only viewable by you when you are logged-in unless you make the page public. Only one page can be public at a time per

account. When you are logged-in, you can still make edits to your public pages in the exact same way you would while the page was private. You can also

switch which page is public at any time. Other viewers will not be able to make edits to your public page. To see how your public page looks to other

viewers, either open your page in a different browser or simply log-off Netvibes and then go to your public page. Your public page web address will be

www.netvibes.com + “/” + “your user name.” For example, my public page web address for one of my accounts is: www.netvibes.com/mmoore17

1. To make you page public, you will first have to add a date of birth in your account to show that you are over 13 years old. If you do not like providing your

DOB, simply use January 1 of the year you were born. To do this, scroll over your username at the top right over you screen and then click “Account”

2. From here, you can enter you date of birth (or your fake date of birth) and be sure to check the box beside “Don’t display my age.” Once your edits have

been made, click the “Save changes” button and then the “Back to my Dashboard” link at the top left of the page.

3. Once you are back to your dashboard, scroll over the “Dashboards” button at the top right of your page and then click “Manage…”

4. Click the radio button to the left of “Enable.”

5. Select “Save changes” at the bottom right of the settings screen.

6. Click the “Status” link to the right of the page you would like to make public and then click the “Public” radio dial that appears and then click “save.” Click

“Ok” for on the warning that pops up. Every time you change which page is public, this warning will appear. You will not lose the current public page. It will

simply be renamed as “Old public.”

7. Your changes are already saved so simply click the “Go back to my Dashboard” link at the top left of your page.

8. Your dashboard page is now public. Usually after you make a page public, your dashboard will direct you back to your general dashboard page. To switch

to your public page, scroll over “Dashboard” and then click on your public page at the bottom of the list.

9. From there, you can continue making edits. Please note that Netvibes remembers which tab you as the owner of the page last edit. If you want viewers to

always start at a certain tab, be sure you leave on that tab when you finish making your edits for the time being.