Program Page and Dashboard

Your program page is the public-facing home for everything an entrant or sponsor needs to know: what the program is, what categories they can enter, what awards they can win, the deadline, and how to submit. It is the link you share in your marketing emails, social posts, and member newsletters.

Program navigation

When you open a program, the left sidebar lists everything you manage, in this order:

• Overview: the lifecycle bar with your dates, setup progress, stat tiles, the program URL, and the go-live card
• Categories: the categories entrants choose, the awards you give out, entry fees, pricing periods, member pricing, discount codes, and tax
• Entrant pages: three views, Program page (description, hero, and how the public page reads), Entry page (the entry form), and Branding (your brand identity and this program's hero image)
• Entries: every entry submitted, with filtering, search, bulk actions, gallery visibility, and CSV import / export
• Judging: rounds, voting method, criteria, judges, and audience voting
• Results: leaderboard, winner assignment, and publishing

Duplicating, archiving, and deleting a program happen at the organization level under Organization settings > Programs. See Organizations.

The Overview

The Overview is the program's control room:

• Lifecycle bar: Build, Entries, Judging, and Results, with the dates for each phase and the program's timezone. "Your program is:" tells you which phase is active. Entries Open and Close here, the judging window has its own Opens and Closes (or Use timeline dates to follow the entry dates), and results are Announced on the date you set. Every deadline is read in the program timezone, on the entry form and at checkout alike.
• Setup progress: the checklist that walks a new program to go-live, from Set your entries deadline to Go live.
• Stat tiles: Participants, Entries, Revenue (when the program charges fees), Judges, and Votes, plus recent entries with their payment badges.
• Program URL: the public address, with a rename control.
• Ready to go live?: the card that takes the program out of Test mode. See Test mode and going live.

Your program's address

Every public program page lives at awardkit.io/your-organization/your-program: your organization's public handle, then the program's slug. The entry form, the gallery, and each entry page follow the same shape, so the address on a poster is one a person can retype from memory.

• The handle is set once per organization in Organization settings > General and shared by every program. awardkit.io/your-organization is a page of its own listing your live programs, so it works as one durable link year after year. See Organizations.
• The program slug is generated from the program name. Change it from the Program URL card on the Overview. The confirmation is blunt for a reason: anyone holding the current link (entrants, judges, invite emails, QR codes, printed materials) hits a dead page the moment you save, and there is no redirect from the old address. Rename before you share the link, not after.
• Links survive capitalization differences: a shared address typed with capitals resolves to the same program.

Setting up the public page

The public program page is generated from your settings. To customize it:

1. Open Categories and configure your categories, awards, and entry fees. Categories render as a grid with their descriptions, grouped under any headings you set; awards show in their own card; fees show with the note "Applied automatically at checkout." when a multi-entry discount is on.
2. Open Entrant pages > Program page and write the description (markdown supported). This is also where you can crop or replace the hero directly on the page.
3. Set the timeline on the Overview: entries open and close, judging, and the results date. The page shows the deadline countdown from these dates.
4. Copy the address from the Program URL card and share it.

The public page also shows who runs the program ("Hosted by" your organization name and logo), and it keeps entrants oriented: a visitor with a saved draft sees it under "Your Entry" with the note "Saved automatically. Continue where you left off.", and an entrant with unpaid entries sees the amount due with a button to settle it.

Branding

Every public page of your programs (the program page, entry form, judging and voting screens, and the gallery) runs in your brand. Your brand identity belongs to the organization, so every program shares it; the hero image belongs to each program.

• Logo, name, and brand color are set under Organization settings > General. Upload a logo, choose whether to show the organization name next to it, and pick one brand color; AwardKit derives readable shades for buttons, links, and highlights automatically, so any color stays accessible. The Branding view under Entrant pages previews the result and links to Edit organization branding.
• Hero image is per program: the wide banner across the top of the program page, cropped to 1800x500 (3.6:1). The crop you set is exactly what renders, so text in your banner is never trimmed. Upload it from the Hero image card, or edit it directly on the Program page view.

Your social share images are composed from the hero, logo, and brand color automatically. A small "Powered by AwardKit" pill stays on public pages.

Running the program year after year

Most awards programs run on annual cycles. When the next edition comes around, Duplicate the program from Organization settings > Programs: categories and groups, the entry form and its visibility rules, judging rounds and criteria, awards, pricing, and discount codes carry over into a fresh Test-mode draft with no dates, entries, judges, or results. If the name carries a year, the suggested name rolls it forward. See Organizations.

To bring last year's panel and entrants forward, use judging CSV import for judges and entries CSV import for any prior entries you want to surface (for example, a "previous winners" reference category).

What's next?