Creating a Dog
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- Creating a Dog
Creating a Dog
When you log onto your site, you’ll find yourself in your Dashboard. The Dashboard is where you’ll manage everything on your site, from styles to pages and, yes, your dogs. Adding a dog is like adding any other page on your site.
Hovering over the Dogs menu item will bring up a secondary menu where you can add a dog by clicking Add New. Clicking directly on the Dogs menu item will bring you to the All Dogs page.
When you add a new dog, you’ll arrive at the Dog Single editor page. You control all aspects of your dog from this page, and any change you make here will show up anywhere this dog is featured.
Dog Single Sections
At first glance, the Dog Single editor page can be pretty overwhelming. There are a lot of different data pieces attached to each dog. If you’re using the Better Breeder Pedigree Software (available at the Gold level), you’ll see all of that information here as well.
To make this a little easier to navigate, we’ve split this up into sections.
Template
The template toggle determines the layout of the Single Dog page on the front end of your website (ie. what visitors to your website will see). Throughout this section we will include screenshots of same sample dog so you’ll be able refer to the template examples below to see how that data gets displayed on the frontend of your website.
Presently, the two template options are Default and Simple. We plan on adding more options in the future.
The Default template.
The Simple template.
Type
If you’re using the Pedigree functionality, you’ll see an option to switch the dog Type from Page to Pedigree-Only.
Pedigree-Only dogs are used to build pedigrees only and will not create a Dog page on your site.
If you choose to make this dog a Pedigree-Only dog, you’ll no longer have the option to choose a template for this dog because it will not show up to users on your website. You will, however, be able to fill out all the relevant information for this ancestor dog. If at any time in the future you wish to feature a page on your website for this dog, you can always toggle this back to Page.
Basic Information
This section includes information that is important for the page created for this dog on the frontend of your website. The Headline and Byline are important tools for SEO optimization and are featured prominently on the page.
Call Name and Owner are optional fields, but we recommend using them if applicable, even if the owner is the same for every dog.
Pedigree
The Sire and Dam entered in this section will be displayed prominently on the Dog Single page. In the example below, the frontend will display (Wyndlair Avalanche, ROM × GCh. Twin City Cleopatra).
If you’re using the Better Breeder Pedigree Software (available at the Gold level), you’ll be able to enable or disable the pedigree.
If you are not using the pedigree functionality or if you choose to disable it, you can enter the Sire and Dam manually (as text).
Details
The Details section includes particulars about the dog. When a visitor views this Dog Single page, they will see the specs listed as a key/value pair.
The fields available include Breed, Sex, Color, Date of Birth, Breeder, and AKC# (or UKC or CKC depending on your registration type).
You can change the default Breed for your entire website as well as set your registration type (AKC, UKC, CKC) by going to Appearance > Customize > Better Breeder from your Dashboard.
Health Testing
Health Testing will display on the frontend of your website as a key/value pair, much like the data from the specs section.
Checking either of the certification logo boxes will show the respective logo on the frontend of your site. Go ahead and try it!
The Health Testing section includes common measurements, but you can add any you like under the Additional Testing section. Any additional testing added here will display on the frontend after the default tests
Display
This part of the Dog Single page provides a lot more flexibility than the rest and provides some areas for you to enter freeform text in. A word of caution: with great power comes great responsibility! We recommend sticking just to plain text if you can. The Dog Single page has a lot going on already, and you want your users to easily be able to read the text you enter here.
Visibility
When set to Archival, this Dog Page will still exist for search engines but will not be included when displaying dogs elsewhere on your site.
Price
When you set your dog as For Sale, you’ll be able to display a Price on the frontend.
About
The About section is the longform biography of the dog and will make up the body text of the Dog Page.
Video Gallery
You can embed any number of videos from sources such as YouTube. These will display below the About section.
Additional Features
You can also specify additional features that will display as key/value pairs on the frontend. An example might be the key “Ear Length” with the value “Very Long”.
Photography
You’ll be able to choose a Profile Picture for this Dog and add photos to its Photo Gallery. The Profile Picture is especially important because that’s the photo that will be used when the dog is displayed elsewhere on the website.
A Note about SEO
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is critical if your pages are to rank high on Google. We auto-generate a featured image (from the Profile Picture), a title (from the Dog Single Title), and an excerpt/meta description (generated from the Breed, Sire, Dam, and Breeder) to display whenever these pages are linked to. This critical work that used to be manual of every page is automatically done for your Dog Pages on the Ultimate platform.
Example Excerpt:
(Wyndlair Avalanche, ROM × GCh. Twin City Cleopatra) Blue Merle Collie (Rough). Bred by Matt/Anita Stelter & June Morris.