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The general site settings have to do with how your website visitors see your site. 

Site down for maintenance

Checking Yes for this option prevents visitors from viewing your web sitewebsite. The web site will instead display a message:

If you are an admin of your web site website you will still be able to login log in and manage the web sitewebsite. Check No for this option to allow visitors to view your web site website again.

User Email Alerts for Favorite Animals and Breeds

Enable this option to allow your web site website visitors to be able to receive favorite animals and favorite breeds email alerts. Disabling this option prevents your visitors from receiving these alerts.

Meta Settings

Metadata is information about data. Metadata is used to describe pages on a website, allowing search engines to understand what each page portrays.

Website Description

The website description is a meta tag that gives search engines a summary of what the page is about. Meta tags are hidden in the page HTML code, and are not visible to your website visitor, but are instead, visible to search engines. While a page's title may be only a few words or a phrase, a page description might be a sentence or two. For best results, keep meta descriptions between 150 and 160 characters. 

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Use the arrow to the right of the field to select an image from the drop-down list that you would like to use as your short cut (favicon) image. The image will be added as a "short cut" meta tag. 

The images you see in the drop-down list are those you uploaded on the Web Site > Images page. For information on how to upload images to your website, see the article Managing Web images in this guide.

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Use the arrow to the right of the field to select an image from the drop-down list that you would like to use as your logo image. The image will be added as an Open Graph (og:image) meta tag. Open Graph is a protocol that allows you to control content shown on Facebook. Using a logo image in the meta data metadata will ensure that when someone shares your page on Facebook, your logo will appear.

You can upload images on the Web Site > Images page.  Only the images that are at least 200px by 200px will be shown in the Use Logo Image drop-down list because Facebook requires that the og:image be at least that size, otherwise, it will be ignored.

Site Layout Options

The site layout options have to do with how you are arranging the visual elements of your websiteinformation in the Site Layout Options is used in some layouts, and in others that information is not used. If that information is used on the layout you've selected then that information will appear.

Layout slogan

Layout slogans are not supported by all templates and layouts available to you with the Website Service. You can preview your website template to see if your layout slogan is visible. A slogan is the a short phrase you want visitors to your website to remember about your organization. For instance, "Saving dogs in Reno" or "No kitten left behind." Enter the slogan you would like to use in the the Layout slogan field field. It will automatically be added to your website. Layout slogans are not supported by all templates and layouts available to you with the Website Service. You can preview your website . template to see if your layout slogan is visible. Remember, not all layouts use this information.

Active menu

The Active menu is that menu currently in use on your website. This settings selection is a drop-down list of all the any custom web menus you have created , or the default RescueGroups.org menu. Simply use the arrow to the right of the field to select the custom web menu you would like to use on your web sitewebsite.

To create a custom menu, please see the Changing your website menu article in this guide.

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Front Page Options are those options that have to do with your website's home pagehomepage. Each setting in this section will determine what your home page homepage will automatically display to your visitors.

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Select Yes if you would like to display your organization's logo on the front page of your web site. This is a separate option because most web sites have the logo incorporated into the front page already, and without this option you would see two logos.  logos  To see the logo on the front page you also need to enable the logo under the Logo Background section of the Layout Options page. 

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To show your upcoming events on your home pagehomepage, click Show in the Upcoming events settings, or click Don't show to prevent the events from displaying on your front page.

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Your highlighted animals can display right on the home page of your website. There are three home page homepage settings that help you to display your highlighted animals:

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If checked, this option will allow highlighted animals to be displayed on your front page and reorder animals on the animal browse pages.

For more information about the highlighted animals feature, see the article in this guide: Using the animal highlight feature.

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Click Show if you want the current currently logged-in user name username to appear on the sidebar menu next to the logout link. If you are using a custom menu, you add the menu item, Login/Logout to your custom menu. Click Don't Show to prevent the user name username from displaying.

Date/time the site was last updated

Click Show to display on the side bar to your site visitors the date and time of the last update you made to the web sitewebsite. The date and time is automatically updated when almost any change is made to the web sitewebsite. Not all layouts automatically include this feature. Click Don't Show to prevent the update date and time from displaying.

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You can select to highlight a search of your available animals on your website side barsidebar. Clicking Show for this option displays an Animal Search box in the sidebar. Visitors can search your available animal list by breed, color or name. You can also use the search box to find an adopted or deleted animal , or to search the online help.

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To provide you with better and more detailed information, you may want to sign up for an add the Google Analytics code for your website. You can then add the Google Analytics code to your Affiliates page. For information about adding affiliates, see the section, Adding PayPal, Facebook, and other affiliate vendors to your website.

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This option allows visitors to your site to email a link from your web site website to a friend of theirs. This is great when a visitor wants to show a friend an animal or article that interests them.

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Click Show to display the button with web site website sharing options such as Facebook and Don't Show to prevent it from displaying. Not all layouts support this option.

Sidebar width

Enter the width (in pixels) for the desired width of the sidebar.

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