USER GUIDE
Site Alerts
Post a banner or pop-up notice across your website — a snow emergency, a boil-water advisory, a holiday closing — and schedule it to appear and disappear on its own.
Before you begin
You do not need to set anything up first — alerts work on an empty site. The very first time you open Site Alerts, EvoCloud automatically creates a Global alert module for you, so you can go straight to adding a message.
Two quick terms:
- An Alert Module is a container. Most sites only ever need the one Global module.
- A Message is the actual notice a visitor reads. A module can hold several messages, each with its own on/off schedule.
To add or edit alerts you need the Communications Officer or Content Admin role. Everything here lives under Left menu › Site Alerts.
1 Understand what a site alert is
A site alert is a short notice that appears on your public website, on top of your normal pages. By default it scrolls across the top of the site so every visitor sees it. You can also make it appear as a pop-up when a page loads. Alerts are the right tool for time-sensitive news — closures, weather, service disruptions — that should stand out from the rest of your content.
2 Add a global alert message
Open Left menu › Site Alerts. If you have only the one Global module, it opens straight to its edit screen; otherwise pick Global from the list.
- In the Messages section, click Add Another Message.
- Type the notice into the Message box (for example "City Hall is closed Monday for the holiday").
- Optionally add a Hyperlink so visitors can click through for more detail. The link is limited to 200 characters — use a shortener like bit.ly for very long web addresses.
- Leave Active? checked so the message can show.
- Click Save.
The message now appears on your public site. Open your website in another tab to confirm it looks right.
3 Schedule when an alert appears and expires
You rarely want to turn alerts on and off by hand. Each message has a Start Date and an End Date so it appears and disappears on its own.
- Set a Start Date and End Date, and the message is only shown to visitors during that window (and only while Active? is checked).
- Leave both dates blank, and the message shows whenever Active? is checked — useful for an ongoing notice you will turn off manually.
Click Save after setting the dates.
4 Set how the alert behaves
On the module's edit screen, under Behavior, three toggles control how alerts in this module look and act:
- Is Urgent — marks the alert as urgent; the text appears slightly larger to draw the eye.
- Is Popup — the alert appears as a pop-up when a page loads, instead of scrolling across the top.
- Display As HTML — renders the message text as HTML. Leave this off unless you know HTML; invalid HTML can break the alert.
Click Save to apply.
5 Manage alert modules
Most sites work entirely inside the single Global module. If your site has more than one module, Left menu › Site Alerts shows a list of them; click a module to open it. Inside a module you can add as many messages as you like — each with its own text, link, schedule, and Active setting — and click Add Another Message to keep going.
6 Edit or remove an alert
To change a message, open the module, edit the text, link, or dates, and click Save. To take a message down, either uncheck Active? (quick and reversible) or click Delete Message on that message to remove it entirely.
Message field reference
| Field | What it does |
|---|---|
| Message | The notice text visitors read. |
| Hyperlink | An optional web address the alert links to. Limited to 200 characters. |
| Active? | Whether the message is eligible to show. Uncheck to hide it without deleting. |
| Start Date | The date the message begins showing. Blank means no start limit. |
| End Date | The date the message stops showing. Blank means no end limit. |
Next steps
Link an alert to a fuller page about the event, or to a map of an affected area. To see how many people are visiting during an alert, check the Analytics guide.