Getting Started

Summit Evergreen allows you to showcase your online products through a secure membership site. An example of a “finished product”, what your customer would actually login and see after their purchase, is shown below:

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Step 1:

  • Create and Initial Set up of Product
  • Name your product
  • Set the email address and name
  • Change the URL of the product login
  • Create courses and different price points
  • Create user profile questions for registration

Step 2:

  • Create your Product Syllabus
  • Create a course structure for your users to follow
  • Add chapters and lessons
  • Select which courses get access to certain material

Step 3:

  • Create your Product Schedule
  • Schedule when users will have access to certain content
  • Schedule emails for your course

Step 4:

  • Set up your Product Theme
  • Add personal branding
  • Add logo’s Change color and layout of user interface

Step 5:

  • Using the Editor
  • How to create your main content
  • Add images and videos
  • Formatting and advanced editing
 

Step 1: Create a Product

  • In the upper left corner, select “manage products” from the products drop down menu
  • In the left hand pane, select “Actions” and “Add a Product”
  • In the pop-up window that appears:
    • Enter the name of your product
    • Choose to start with sample content or an empty product
  • Select “Actions” and choose “Switch to this product”, so that the name of the product appears in the upper left hand corner of the screen.
  • Select and add your product logo from the main product dashboard (show below)

From here we will customize product settings, create courses and offers and add any user profile questions. Everything will be accessed through the product dashboard indicated below.

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Step 2: Select Product Settings

Select ‘the “Settings” tab from the main product menu

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  • Select Accessibility Options
    • “Front page for the product” - This is the main page your user’s will see each time they login to access material. Note: You will not have any options to choose from until you have created content pages.
    • Search Engine Visibility - Check this option if you want only pages that are listed as “public” to be visible in search engine results.
    • Set options to have private pages redirected to a specific page
    • Choose whether community members can or can’t view other’s profiles
  • Emails
    • Type in the name and email address you want emails sent to your users from
  • Appearance
    • You have the option to change your product theme here, this will be shown in more detail later.
  • Domain name
    • This is where your customers login to view the product, this can be customized to any domain you choose.

If at any point during the tutorial you want to view your work, and see what the site will look like to your users, follow these instructions:

  • Select the drop down menu from the upper right hand corner, it will either have your name or your companies name.
  • Select “Open Member Site”
  • You can also right click the “Open Member Site” option in Google Chrome to open in an incognito window.

Step 3: Create Product Courses and Offers

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From this menu you will set up the different courses within your actual product. Some products may only have 1 course and 1 offer, some may have multiple courses and offers. It’s all customizable to your particular product.

For example, let’s say your product is a weight loss program where you have 3 different pricing options for your customer’s to choose from:

  1. Gold Course for $599.99 - The customer will get access to video’s, pdf downloads, special bonus courses from affiliates, weekly live conference call and a weekly 1 hour motivation call.
  2. Silver Course for $399.99 - The customer will get access to video’s, pdf downloads, special bonus courses from affiliates and the weekly live conference call.
  3. Bronze Course for $199.99 - The customer will get access to video’s, pdf downloads and the weekly live conference call.

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To add a new course, simply click the “add a new course” button at the bottom of the “product courses” menu. From here you can choose:

  • The name of the course
  • The price of the default course offer
  • The day of the week the course should begin

Note: A SKU will be automatically generated, or you can create a custom SKU.

Note: Instructions for setting up 3rd party payment processors and/or Stripe are available, but not in the “product setup” help section.

Integrating with Stripe for payments/billing

Each course will also have at least one offer, or multiple offers associated with it. An offer is essentially, a price for a particular course. If you are integrating with Stripe, you will be using offers. You may have multiple offers if, for example, you want to offer a sale price on your course for those signing up during a webinar.

Note: The blue link underneath the SKU and listed to the right of the offer is the shopping cart link you will provide to your customers. Each course and offer will have it’s own individual shopping cart link.

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To add a new offer, simply click the “add a new offer” button at the bottom of the “product courses” menu. From here you can choose:

  • The name of the offer
  • The price of the offer
  • What “course” the offer will be assigned to

Integrating with a 3rd Party Shopping cart for payments/billing

If you are integrating with a 3rd party shopping cart you WILL NOT be using offers. All your prices will be set up within your 3rd party shopping cart.

The SKU is the glue between Summit Evergreen and 3rd party shopping carts. After completing specific integration instructions for your shopping cart, you will need to make sure the SKU listed in the 3rd party shopping cart matches the SKU in Summit Evergreen.

Note: All shopping cart links to provide to your customers will be obtained from your 3rd party shopping cart, you will not use the links listed underneath the SKU in Summit Evergreen.

Step 4: Create User Profile Questions

During the registration process you can ask your users questions, great for data mining. The user profiles menu shown below allows you to set up these questions.

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From this menu you can add a question by:

  • Selecting a Long Answer, Short Answer or Question Group
  • In the text box that appears, type the question you want to ask your users
  • Check the radio box if you want the user to be required to answer the question
  • Click “Apply” and “Save” on the popup box that appears
 

The syllabus is the outline of subjects in your course. New chapters and lessons added to the course syllabus menu will appear to the user as shown in the example below.

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Step 1: Access the Syllabus Menu

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  • Hover your mouse over the grey vertical menu bar on the left of the screen
  • Select “Syllabus” from the menu

Step 2: Unlocking and Selecting the Course Syllabus

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  • Select “Unlock & Edit” from the upper left corner to gain access to the syllabus editor. You will need to select "Lock & Save" to secure any changes made to the syllabus.
  • You can toggle between the different course syllabus’ by selecting one from the “courses” dropdown menu.

Note: You will need to create a syllabus for each individual course.

Step 3: Create your Syllabus

  • Click on the “actions” drop down menu
  • Select “Add a New Chapter”
  • Name your new chapter (i.e. Chapter 1, Week 1, Day 1, etc.)
    • To edit hover your mouse over the word chapter, and start typing
  • Now you must attach a lesson to your new chapter - a lesson is essentially a page of content. If you have already created content pages, you can add an existing lesson. If just getting started, select the “New Lesson” button.

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  • Enter the name of the new lesson (content page)
  • Select which course to assign your new lesson. This makes it easy to set up different courses within the same product, without having to enter individual content for each separate course.
  • Select “Add Page”

Note: Your chapters can have multiple lessons, or pages of content.

Below is an example of a completed course syllabus. The image shows internal and public perspective of one syllabus.

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The syllabus and the schedule are related but do not have to go hand in hand.

Users will be always be able to see the course structure provided by the syllabus, but they will not be able to access certain content until the schedule dictates they can.

The example below shows what a new user would experience upon logging in to access their content. The user can see the entire syllabus, but only the Program Instructions and the Week 1 material can be accessed. Notice the lock icon next to the weeks that are not available.

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Step 1: Access the Schedule Menu

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  • Hover your mouse over the grey vertical menu bar on the left of the screen
  • Select “Schedule” from the menu

Step 2: Set up Your Schedule

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  • Select “Unlock & Edit” from the upper left corner to gain access to the schedule editor. You will need select "Lock & Save" to secure any changes to the schedule.
  • You can toggle between the different course schedules by selecting one from the “courses” dropdown menu.
  • When you access the schedule menu and it’s empty, there will be a large blue button that says “Set up My Schedule.” By clicking the button, the schedule will automatically populate to match your syllabus. This action allows you to skip re-entering the syllabus.
  • All of your pages assigned to the course will be listed under the “Always Available Pages” section until they are assigned to the schedule.

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  • Select “Unlock & Edit” from the upper left corner to the schedule editor. You will need select "Lock & Save" to secure any changes to the schedule.
  • Click on the days and times that are automatically populated to set the schedule. Note that everything is listed in days, i.e. 1 week = 7 days, 2 weeks = 14 days, etc.
  • Additional content can be added to the schedule by selecting the “New Lesson” or “Attach Existing Lesson/Email” buttons.

Step 3: Schedule Emails

Emails can be scheduled to go out as new content becomes available, or any time you want to send information to your customers.

  • Locate the content on its scheduled day and select “New Email.” You can also select “Attach existing Lesson/Email” if you have already created the email.
  • Type in the email subject line
  • Hit “Create Email”
  • If you want to schedule an email on a day that is not already on the schedule
    • Click the “actions” drop down and select “Add a New Interval”
    • Select the day and time of the interval
    • Select either “New Email” or “Attach existing Lesson/Email”
 

Using the appearance menu you can change and modify your products theme. Changing the theme will alter the interface for your customers. Through the theme you can easily change colors and logos, allowing for personal branding.

Step 1: Access the Appearance Menu and Choose your Theme

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  • Hover your mouse over the grey vertical menu bar on the left of the screen
  • Select “Appearance” from the menu
  • Here you will see a list of all the available themes, by default the “Evergreen Learning Theme” will be set as your current theme. We currently recommend using the “Laravel” theme, however, more beautiful themes will be added in the future.

To set “Laravel” as your theme:

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  • Click on “Laravel” in the left hand pane, more information regarding the theme will pull up in the right hand pane.
  • Click the “Actions” drop down, and select “Set as Product theme”

Step 2: Customize Your Theme

In the right hand pane, you can easily change your branding colors, logos, etc. Be sure to click the “save” button once it pops up to secure any changes.

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Step 3: Advanced Customization

If you have a tech team, the theme can be completely skinned and customized.

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  • First step is to make a copy of the theme you wish to customize by selecting the “Actions” drop down in the upper right corner. Select “copy.”
  • The copy of your theme will now appear in the left hand pane under “My Themes”
  • Select your theme copy in the left hand pane, and the details will show in the right hand pane.
  • Select the “Actions” drop down menu in the upper right corner, and select “edit.”
  • From here you can edit the code for the emails, CSS, layout, etc.
 

Now that you have set up the framework for your online product, its time to load content!

You will set up the content of your online product through Summit Evergreen’s easy to use editor. The pages of content that you create within the editor appear to the user as shown in the example below.

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Content is always created and changed via the editor, however there are a few different ways to access the editor:

  • Syllabus Menu
  • Schedule Menu
  • Content Menu

Step 1: Access the Content Menu

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  • Hover your mouse over the grey vertical menu bar on the left of the screen
  • Select “Content” from the menu
  • From the “Content” menu you have access to all your pages, emails, surveys and uploads.
  • Select “Pages”

Step 2: Select the Page to Edit and Access the Editor

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  • All of the pages you created while building your syllabus will appear in the left hand pane.
  • Click on the page you wish to load content onto. Once you select the page the editor will appear in the right hand pane.
  • Now you can start loading content!

Step 3: Enter your Content with the Editor

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There is an additional menu bar in the top right corner of the editor (shown below) that allows for a few more features:

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  • Comments Menu - Allows you to view any comments users have left on this specific page
  • Settings Menu - Allows you to update the page name, URL, comments, page style and template
  • Actions Menu - Allows you to edit the courses in your product that this page is attached to

TIPS:

Once you start editing content a pop up will appear at the bottom of the screen that will allow you to either save or cancel your changes.

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Adding videos to your content can be done by clicking the “insert video” link on the editing toolbar and entering the embed code. If your videos are hosted on YouTube or Wistia just copy your video link directly into the editor and hit enter. That’s it!

Step 4: Edit Email Content with the Editor

Select “email” from the “content” menu on the left hand menu

The email editor is identical to the content editor with the exception of your email subject line. See below for example:

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TIPS

The content of the emails is changed via the editor. However, changing the timing of emails must be done via the “schedule” menu.

We offer Aweber, Infusionsoft and 1ShoppingCart integration if you prefer to send emails through a third party.

Step 5: Create Surveys

Select “email” from the “content” menu on the left hand menu

Select the “actions” drop down menu, and “add a survey”

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  • Type the name of your survey
  • A survey can be added as a “followup” to a page. Meaning the survey will display directly underneath the content on the page.
  • The survey editor will show in the right hand pane after adding a new survey.

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From here you can add different types of questions by selecting the type you want from the left side “Add a Question” box. * After typing the question in the box, select the “Apply” button * Select the “required” checkbox if the user has to answer the question before submitting Select the “Settings” Tab shown below to customize the survey thank you message, URL, name, etc.

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After your product is live, you can click on the “Results” tab shown below to view the answers submitted to your survey

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The results show the users first and last name, the response, the date and time submitted.

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