Many schools sign up for what appears to be a reasonable package, only to discover later that simple tasks are subject to punitive fees. It’s time to shine a light on these practices so your budget doesn’t suffer an unnecessary drain.

Hidden Charges for Small Brand Changes

Your school’s brand identity is crucial, and maintaining it should not be a costly exercise. Unfortunately, many providers treat the simplest updates as major development projects.

Imagine needing to adjust your primary school colour from navy blue to royal blue, or perhaps changing the font size on a navigation bar. These are minor CSS adjustments that take minutes for a professional developer. However, many school website providers will charge a minimum service fee, often billed by the hour, for tasks that are little more than administrative updates.

• Colour Changes: A simple refresh of your brand’s colour palette can trigger a service fee.
• Adding New Elements: Want to add a simple counter or a new testimonials section that uses existing code? Expect a charge.
• Creativity and Layout Adjustments: Introducing a slight design change to a page layout—perhaps moving an image from the left to the right—should be straightforward. When it requires the provider to log into the backend and make the change for you, you’re opening the door to a charge.

These charges often rely on the fact that schools are not given full, easy access to their own website’s core code or content management system (CMS), forcing them to rely on the provider for simple changes.

The Cost of Adding New Features

While major feature development is rightly chargeable, many providers charge substantial integration fees for elements that should be standard or easily plug-and-play. This often includes:

• Linking to a new third-party service (e.g., a new sports booking system).
• Adding a simple blog or news section that wasn’t included in the original template.
• Integrating social media feeds.

Always read your contract for what is included in the “standard” package and what qualifies as a “custom development request.” The line can be blurred to the provider’s financial advantage.

are easily added into realsmart school websites via a plugin any site admin can access.

The Migration Trap: Fees for Leaving

One of the most significant, and often hidden costs comes when a school decides to move to a new platform or provider.

This is the “exit fee” in disguise. School website providers know that if they make the process of leaving prohibitively expensive, schools will stay simply because they cannot afford the move.

Data and Content Export Fees

The content you created your text, images, documents, and news archives is your property. Yet, providers frequently charge hefty fees to “prepare,” “export,” or “release” your data. This process, which can often be automated or completed quickly, is manually extended and heavily charged for, ranging from hundreds to thousands of currency units.

Domain Transfer and Hostage

In some worst case scenarios, providers will make the domain name transfer difficult or charge excessive fees to release control of the school’s domain (e.g., yourschoolname.org). Always ensure your school legally owns and has administrative access to its domain name, separate from the website hosting agreement.

What about realsmart?

At realsmart we have no hidden costs, we don’t charge for changes to your brand, tweaks to pages or integrations with 3rd Parties. We don’t charge any exit fees, we don’t charge to move you over to newer platforms and access to our support team is also free.

Need some training? We will happily jump on a call, again no charge. Looking to move away to another provider? No exit fees to get an export of your posts and pages.

You may be thinking why do we not charge fees for some of these services if other providers do charge? Well we simply don’t believe you should be charged, it’s as simple as that. We form partnerships with our clients and if you leave we always want to leave that door open with a good previous experience.

The post Hit with hidden charges with your school website provider? appeared first on realsmart.

Website news

As well as general updates to our codebase to ensure it works as efficiently as possible we have also released a host of new plugins and features. Here is a quick insight into what has been developed:

• New policy/document manager plugin
• Multisite functionality for the policy/document manager plugin
• Vacancies plugin
• Login link shortcode
• Started development on a parents evening booking system plugin

Policy manager plugin

We’ve developed a plugin that allows you to manage all of your policys (or other grouped documents) directly from within your school website. This offers an alternative to our existing plugins that allow you to display the contents of either a or folder directly onto your school website. With this final addition to our policy management offering we now offer solutions for any approach of managing doucments on your website.

Our plugin allows you to create groups in which you can assign doucments uploaded to your school website, this allows you to not only manage policies but also other potential groups of documents such as letters home, newsletters etc. Once you’ve uploaded a group of documents you can simply paste a provided shortcode into a page and then voila, your documents all appear in a user friendly interface. Interested? Take a look at our guide on setting up and using the plugin .

Policy manager multi-site functionality

After the policy manager plugin was released we started work on an update that would allow users to display a group of documents across more than one website. The advantage of this update is that it now allows a trust to manage a set of trust wide policies from one single location. The trust can then display this group of policies/documents across every school website for easy document management.

Vacancies Plugin

The second plugin we’ve released is a vacancies plugin, this allows you to add and display current vacancies on your school/trust website. We know there are some great options and methods of advertising vacancies already out there such as services like MyNewTerm but we are providing schools with a free alternative to displaying vacancies on their school website. The plugin allows you to easily create a vacancy, add instructions, set dates for it to display and also assign any relevant documents to a role. Each vacancy added is then displayed in a user friendly template until the close date is reached.

Take a look at our on setting up and using the plugin if you are interested.

Login link shortcode

We know there are some customers who do not have a need for the login bar on our websites as they do not use the single sign on, MIS sync and apps management services we have intergrated with our websites. Usually we would just turn off the bar and then provide a more subtle login link to access the backend of the website. We have now developed an option (located in your smartOptions panel) that allows you to grab a login link shortcode, this can then be placed anywhere on your school website for easy access. Simple but effective this now opens the doors for all sorts of alternative and creative login options.

Parents evening booking system

In early development stages but we have started work on a parents evening booking system that will be inbuilt into your school website. This leverages the abilitys of WordPress so that the timeslots can be displayed in your website, confirmation emails sent and also an admin interface to setup and customise the event. Parents will be able to book a slot and will receive confirmation upon success. Teachers will be able to cusomise the amount of slots avaialble, the length of slots and also add in any requried breaks.

Take a sneak peak below:

Half Term is here!

We hope you all have a well earned half term break! Keep an eye out for future updates from the team and don’t hesitate to get in touch if you have any queries or suggestions!

Team realsmart

The post Half term review and updates appeared first on realsmart.

Getting your website seen by search engines (like Google) can feel like searching for a needle in a haystack. This is where a sitemap comes in – it’s a super important, though often an overlooked part of managing your website. Think of a sitemap not just as a technical detail, but as a detailed map for your website. It guides those search engine “robots” (called crawlers) and helps them understand what your website is all about and how it’s organised therefore making it easier to present in a results page.

What is a Sitemap?

Simply put, a sitemap is a file that lists all the important pages on your website that you want search engines to find and include in their search results. Imagine it like the table of contents for a really big book, but for your entire website! There are two main types:

• XML Sitemaps: These are specifically made for search engines. They’re written in a special code (XML) and tell search engines extra details about each page, such as when it was last updated, how often it changes, and how important it is compared to other pages on your site.
• HTML Sitemaps: These are lists of links that people can read and use. While not as crucial for search engine optimisation (SEO) as they once were, an HTML sitemap can still be helpful for visitors trying to navigate very large or complicated websites.

What are the benefits of having a sitemap?

1. Helps Search Engines Find and Understand Your Pages

This is probably the biggest reason to have a sitemap. Search engine bots explore the internet by following links from one page to another. Even though they’re incredibly smart, they can sometimes miss pages – especially on brand-new websites, sites with confusing layouts, or pages that are buried deep within your site. A sitemap clearly tells search engines: “Hey, here are all the pages I want you to know about!”

2. Gives Visibility to “Lost” Pages

“Orphan pages” are pages on your website that don’t have any links pointing to them from other pages on your site. Without these internal links, search engine crawlers would never be able to discover these pages. A sitemap gives search engines a direct way to find and index these otherwise isolated bits of content, making sure no valuable information goes unseen.

3. Improves Your Website’s Search Engine Ranking

By helping search engines find and understand your pages better, sitemaps directly boost your SEO efforts. Indexed pages mean more chances to rank for the right search terms, which leads to more people finding your website through search engines. It’s a basic but essential part of making your website technically sound for SEO.

How to Create and Submit a Sitemap?

Most modern website builders and content management systems such as WordPress (this is what we use!) have plugins (like Yoast SEO or XML Sitemap Generator for Google) that automatically create and update XML sitemaps for you. ÌÇÐÄVlog have the plugin XML Sitemap Generator available to use in your plugin library. All you need to do is activate the plugin and the settings page will present you with the URL for your sitemap, it really is simple!

Once you have your sitemap URL, you’ll need to tell search engines about it using their special tools:

• Google Search Console: This is the main place to submit your sitemap to Google. on uploading a new sitemap!
• Bing Webmaster Tools: For submitting your sitemap to Bing.

Make sure to regularly check your sitemap in these tools for any errors, ensuring that search engines can easily access and process it.

We hope this post helps you to go out there and create a sitemap for your school website!

Team realsmart

The post How to create a sitemap on your school website appeared first on realsmart.

Getting easy and secure access to tech is a must for teaching and learning to actually work. But, honestly — we all know that managing passwords can be a total pain, especially for younger kids who might struggle with remembering complex codes. This password chaos often leads to forgotten logins, wasting precious lesson time as everyone scrambles to fix the mess.

Enter the QR code login system: the ‘thing’ we didn’t know we needed! But now we know about it, we need it! It streamlines the process, eliminating pesky disruptions and making learning smoother. So, how can QR code logins transform the experience for schools and students?

Let’s find out!

Table of Contents

• Tackling the Password Problem
• Streamlined Access to Technology
• Easy Implementation and Versatility
• Options for Everyone
• Conclusion

Tackling the Password Problem

OK, so remembering passwords can be a total nightmare for younger students. Trying to juggle a bunch of characters, numbers, and symbols? It’s enough to make anyone’s head spin. This constant struggle often leads to frustration and confusion, especially for those still developing their organisational skills. It’s no wonder we see so many password resets eating up precious classroom time, which could be better spent engaging in learning activities!

But here’s a thought: what if we tossed those passwords out the window for good? Enter the QR code login system. This innovative solution acts like a magic key—students simply scan their personalized code with a device, and boom, they’re in! It’s quick, efficient, and eliminates the stress of remembering complex passwords. Imagine a classroom where students can smoothly transition into their online learning environments without delays or technical hiccups.

No more fumbling with passwords, and a whole lot less chaos in the classroom. Plus, teachers can focus more on teaching rather than troubleshooting login issues. Sounds like a win-win for everyone involved, right? Embracing technology like this could truly revolutionise the way we approach digital access in education!

Streamlined Access to Technology

We all know that time is everything in the classroom, right? With the introduction of QR code logins, teachers can finally sidestep that age-old time-waster—password drama. Instead of fumbling around with forgotten passwords or managing lengthy login processes, students can simply flash their unique QR codes and gain instant access to their learning materials. This not only streamlines the entry process but also allows everyone to focus on what truly matters—learning and engagement.

This smooth access transforms the classroom experience, enabling lesson plans to flow seamlessly like a well-oiled machine. Teachers can spend less time troubleshooting login issues and more time teaching, fostering an environment where educational fun thrives without any annoying roadblocks. Furthermore, the ease of QR code logins can encourage greater participation, as students feel empowered to engage with the technology rather than being hindered by it.

It’s all about keeping things simple and effective. As we embrace this innovative solution, we can ditch the hassle of traditional login methods and rediscover the joy of education.

Easy Implementation and Versatility

So, here’s the deal: system is way easier than you might think, and it’s the perfect way for schools to ditch the old-school methods and make life simpler for students. Imagine this: schools whip up unique QR codes for each student, hand out a lanyard, and voilà! It’s a quick, no-fuss process that school admins—who are usually juggling a million things—will appreciate like a breath of fresh air.

And let’s talk about how QR codes play nice with platforms we all know and love, like Google. Students can waltz right into Google Classroom, Gmail, and all those handy educational apps with just a quick scan. It’s like magic! Plus, it works like a charm on Chromebooks, which are practically everywhere these days. This means less time wrestling with tech issues and more time actually learning—what a concept!

Options for Everyone

QR code logins are all the rage—super convenient and slick for getting into your accounts. But guess what? We’ve got your back if you’re still a fan of the old-school username and password combo. No need to freak out; you can keep doing your thing without a hitch.

This system is all about giving you options, so whether you’re a tech whiz or someone who likes the comfort of familiarity, you’re covered. It’s about time we embrace what works for us, right? So, whether you’re ready to ride the tech wave or just want to stick to what you know, we’re here to make sure everyone feels at home.

Conclusion

The QR code login system? Now that’s part of modern education! It cuts out the hassle, saves time, and keeps frustration at bay. Schools that jump on this tech train are creating a learning environment where teachers can actually focus on teaching, and students can dive into their studies without constant interruptions.

As our classrooms get more tech-savvy, solutions like QR code logins are going to be crucial in redefining what education looks like. So, why stick to the old ways when you can embrace the future?

The post Simplify Classroom Access: Benefits of QR Logins for Pupils appeared first on realsmart.