Give visitors something extra with seasonal effects on your school website

Your school website is for the whole year – not just for Christmas. Or Easter. Or the King’s  coronation. But it still makes us smile when you celebrate special times of the year through your website with our seasonal special effects. Do you know about all of the options available to jazz up your website? And do you know that you can set the dates of each of the special effects in advance so that they change automatically throughout the year?

As you can see above, we have effects to show the weather of a particular season – snow in winter, falling leaves in autumn, and delicious-looking ice creams for summer (we wish those did really fall from the sky)!

We also have effects to fit in with special days throughout the year such as Valentine’s Day and fireworks night. Nothing cheers us up quite like seeing love hearts and fireworks brightening up the screen. And we won’t judge you at all if you use those outside of Valentine’s and fireworks nights too – they are always welcome, in our opinion!

When it comes to the upcoming King’s coronation we have our ‘British’ special effect to highlight such a historic day in history – a glorious combination of British flags, crowns and sceptres.

We also help you to celebrate religious festivals throughout the year with symbols for a variety of Islamic, Hindu, Sikh, Jewish, and Christian festivals. 

Our seasonal effects cover Easter and Christmas as well as Chinese New Year and Halloween. Switch them on in advance of the days or set up your dates to celebrate for even longer if you wish! The falling symbols help to remind visitors of upcoming celebrations and holidays which may also point them towards your term dates and diary entries too!

As well as the important festivals, we also want to help you to highlight other important occasions in school and those which capture the attention of your students outside of school too, From sports day through to supporting any particular teams in international competitions – we have English, Welsh, Scottish and Irish effects which can also be used for special days such as St Patrick’s day and St George’s day. And we even have Wimbledon covered with our tennis theme. Football has its own special effect, of course, and our Olympics theme is very popular each time those years come around too!

Although we hope you never need it, we also have a ‘mourning’ effect which was used for the Queen’s sad passing. Although a very upsetting time, schools used this theme to mark their respect. Our poppies effect is also used each November by schools wishing to pay their respects to fallen soldiers and our veterans. 

Sometimes you want to celebrate something outside of the usual days – perhaps a successful Ofsted or winning the local sports trophy or an award? For that we have our stars theme which could be used as often as you wish – you can leave it on permanently if you like (you are all superstars, after all!) Our rainbows theme is also popular for anytime or specifically for use during Pride Month. 

Cannot find the effect you want? Let us know which ones you think we should add in future as the list keeps growing!

Don’t forget you can set the dates for your festivals throughout the year by going to Utilities and then Seasonal Effects from your admin account. Once you save all the dates, your website will automatically turn effects on and off at the right times through the year. And you can still go in and be spontaneous too if you want to add something extra at any time.