Bublup Best Practices: Making Your Roll Look and Perform Its Best

Rolls are a brand new idea, so to make them look and function just the way you want, we’ve pulled together a list of best practices to consider.

Bublup Best Practices: Making Your Roll Look and Perform It's Best

Rolls are a brand new idea, so to make them look and function just the way you want, we’ve pulled together a list of best practices to consider.

  • First, What Is a Roll and Why Would You Create One?

    A "roll" is an instant web page anyone can create with Bublup. Rolls let you tell stories, present information, document events, share resources, memorialize or honor a person, and more. Click here for inspiration and examples of different things you can use rolls for.

Design Tricks To Make Your Roll Look Awesome

When you click "create roll" from your Bublup folder, your content should look pretty good straight away; but there are lots of ways you can customize your images and layouts. In fact, you can even choose a theme to make sure your content looks as stunning as possible.

  • Select the right theme for your content

    Themes can dramatically change the color palette and “feel” of your roll. Each theme also frames your images differently. If some of your section headers are cutting off more than you'd like, try a different theme. Some themes show more of the section headers than others. For example, "Express" hides less than "Cosmo".

  • Pick the perfect cover image by referring to these dimensions

    While rolls are designed to look good on screens of all sizes, here are some dimensions that may help you choose the best possible image for your cover photo. If you want to change the cover image on your roll, just click the three dots in the upper right hand corner and select “change image.” From there you can select, upload and choose a file, and finish by clicking “apply.”

  • Know your image options: Full Area or Medium?

    You can choose the size of your image under "image size." If you choose "Full Area," the image will take up the entire allotted space in the layout you chose. The image will be big and beautiful, but sometimes edges get cut off. If you choose "Medium," the image may not take up the full space, but no part of it will ever be cropped. In other words, "Medium" makes the entire image display within the boundaries of the item.

  • Set image “focal points” of your photos and thumbnails

    By clicking on the “•••” at the top right of a tile you will open our edit menu. Select the option called “Set Focal Point” to adjust the center-focus of the cover image for that tile. This will make sure that Bublup crops your photo correctly on both desktop and mobile devices, and the point of interest stays in frame.

Content Organization

A roll is not a static piece of content! You can add, delete, reorder, and edit stuff as you please at any time.

  • Sort your content in MyStuff first

    When you create a roll, all of the content will match the same order of the content in your MyStuff folder. This means, if you want to save yourself from re-ordering content in the roll, you should get it in the order you want while you're still in the folder. Use the different "sort" options in the upper right corner, or simply alphabetize your titles with an A), B), C), etc.

  • Oops! Forgot to add a link (or file)?

    If you want to update an existing roll with new content, simply add your link or file to the folder of the appropriate section in MyStuff, navigate to the roll you want to update, click the hamburger menu in the top left hand corner of the roll and select “sync from folder.” Your new link will now appear in the roll.

  • Show/Hide items to control what viewers see in real time, without deleting

    If you want to temporarily hide something from your roll, or don't want to delete it completely, just "hide" it. You can show items again by visiting the rolls menu, clicking "show/hide" and selecting the item.

Collaboration Methods

Two heads are better than one, right? You might want to work on a roll with someone else, and that's totally possible.

  • Give editor privileges to someone else

    If you're collaborating on a group folder with another person, you can easily transfer the editor privileges to them. Just use the ••• menu on the roll in your My Stuff folder, and you can change the author and avatar at any time, or give anyone in that group folder permission.

  • Work with a friend

    That folder you're creating? It's collaborative. Invite friends to view or edit the folder with you.

SEO

Since a roll is essentially an instant web page, basic SEO principles apply for indexing your content. Set your rolls to be discoverable via the roll settings, create a descriptive "easy link" that's easy for people to remember, and share your roll on social media to establish links back to your content.

  • Claim Your Username And Roll Domains Here

    Until now, rolls had cryptic links. Now you can claim your username and up to three roll subdomains that reflect your personal brand(s). You can set this from your preferences in the My Info menu. Standard users get one custom roll domain and premium users get three.

  • Bublup Premium Feature: Hook Up Google Analytics

    Keep tabs on your roll traffic by hooking up Google Analytics. Do it right from the roll itself, or set up a master Google Analytics account within your preferences in MyInfo.

  • Include SEO keywords and create backlinks

    SEO for rolls is a lot like landing pages. Bublup will automatically index all published rolls on its site map, but there are things you can do too to get discovered. 1) If you want your roll to be discovered by search engines, make sure to craft more original written content and leverage popular keywords for the topics you’re writing about. 2) Building links back to your content helps it get discovered. 3) Don't forget to share the rolls you're proud of! Soon enough, it will be displayed in public on Bublup's Discover page as well as our social channels.

  • Bublup Premium Feature: Password Protect Your Roll

    So you’re working on a roll and it’s not ready for Prime Time. It isn’t going to go anywhere until you share it, but for an extra layer of security you can password protect your roll at any time, right from the hamburger menu.

  • Get Facebook to Update The Thumbnail Image For the Link to Your Roll, Automatically

    Turn on the "Roll Cover on Facebook" setting so that every time you change the cover image of your roll, Facebook will automatically update the link's thumbnail image.