We’ve noticed that quite a few of our awesome users and customers use Hoop.la and we wanted to make sure you all know how easy it is to install one of our interactive widgets onto your site! Check out the instructions and graphics below for a comprehensive guide to get a widget up on your site and sharing your important bills.
Making a Widget on BillTrack50
As you know, you can use BillTrack50 to track bills that are important to you by saving important bills on a bill sheet. To create a widget for sharing those important bills with others, simply open the bill sheet with the bills you want to share. Then go to the widgets tab. You’ll see you have a choice of the bill list or the map widget.
You’ll also notice on the left-hand side of both widget set up screens that you have various choices for how to set up your widget. Here’s some advice for the bill list widget and the map widget. Once you are ready click on the red “generate script” button at the bottom of the screen; that’s the code you can copy and paste to add your widget to web pages, blog posts, including in most content management systems. Remember that the widgets stay automatically updated, so as bills get added or removed from your bill sheet, they will get added and removed from your widget(s) too.
You’ll also notice on the left-hand side of both widget set up screens that you have various choices for how to set up your widget. Here’s some advice for the bill list widget and the map widget. Once you are ready click on the red “generate script” button at the bottom of the screen; that’s the code you can copy and paste to add your widget to web pages, blog posts, including in most content management systems. Remember that the widgets stay automatically updated, so as bills get added or removed from your bill sheet, they will get added and removed from your widget(s) too.Using a Widget in Hoop.la
Now let’s talk about how to use the widgets in Hoop.la in particular. First, we have our interactive map widget. This widget would work great as a “content block” on the home page of your site. To add it:
- Click “Configure Home Page.”
- Click “add content block.”
- In the popup, select “Custom Content Block.”
- Give the block a name (you can choose to show it or not), and paste in the widget code. Click submit, and you’re done! You can use the up/down arrows to decide where the widget appears in the left column.
Second, we have our list of bills widget. This also can be great for a home page (use the same instructions as above) or it can go in the right column on any page as a widget. To add it:
- Click the gear icon on any page to go into your admin control panel.
- Click Design > Manage Widgets.
- Click “add custom widget.”
- Give the widget a name (you can choose to show it or not), and paste the widget code. To fit Hoop.la‘s widget column, you may want to change this line of code: width: ‘200’ to width: ‘300’.
- Now you can go to any page in your Hoop.la site and click “manage widgets,” and your new widget will be available to select under “custom widgets.” You can drag the widgets up or down to reorder them.
Examples and Screen Shots
Here are some pictures for you to reference:
About BillTrack50 – BillTrack50 is a user friendly free service that provides legislation research in all 50 states and federally. BillTrack50 also offers legislation and regulation tracking across the nation with tools to help organization stay on top of changes (bill sheets and alerts) and share legislation they are tracking with key stakeholders (legislator scorecards, widgets and stakeholder pages). If you are interested in learning more about how BillTrack50 saves organizations time and money, sign up for a demo and try it out BillTrack50 Pro for a month, for free.