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School-level feature — managed within your school portal at yourschool.deandesk.com. For institution-wide branding defaults, see Institution settings.

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Video walkthrough

This walkthrough uses the real DeanDesk interface with the fictional Northstar Academy demo school and a calm, AI-generated English voice. Payments and outside services are not connected in the demo.
Each school can have its own logo, color palette, and visual identity. Manage branding under Admin Dashboard → Website → Design. Hostname and custom domain settings remain under School Configuration → General. Changes on the Design tab are saved as a draft. When you edit a setting, a You have unsaved changes bar appears. Click Save changes to apply your edits, or Discard to throw them away. The Preview section shows your draft header and footer before you save.

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Logo and favicon

Your school uses one logo in the header. Click Remove next to the logo or favicon to clear it.
The favicon applies as soon as you choose it. It isn’t part of the draft, so you don’t need to click Save changes for it.

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Typography and title

Under Typography & Title, choose a Font Theme for headings and body text across your site, and set the Title Size of your school name in the header. Turn on Hide title on header to show only your logo. Turn on Auto-hide header on scroll to slide the header out of view while visitors scroll down.

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Color palette

The Colors section sets four brand colors: Enter each color as a hex value, such as #1565C0. The Header Links section styles the navigation links in your public header:
  • Header Link Color — the color of the links. Leave it blank to use your primary color.
  • Header Link Size — the font size of the links, from 8 to 48 pixels. Larger sizes work well for schools with short menu labels. Smaller sizes are best when you have many nav items or nested dropdowns.
The links themselves are managed on the Site Navigation tab.

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Top bar navigation

The top bar links shown to public visitors and signed-in users are configured under Website → Site Navigation → Header Navigation. Enable Hide register option in Header Navigation to remove Register from the public header account menu and hide the signup prompt on the login page, while keeping Login available. Direct signup links continue to work. Each item has: Dropdowns can be nested up to five levels deep, so you can build hierarchical menus like Programs → Summer Camps → Sports → Soccer.
Use nested dropdowns sparingly. Two or three levels is usually enough for a school’s public site — deeper menus can be hard for visitors to navigate.

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Login and signup branding

Your color palette automatically drives the look of your login and signup pages. The Auth Branding Pane is a decorative left-side panel on the login and signup screens that displays a gradient generated from your Primary and Header colors, along with your logo. You don’t need to upload anything separately — DeanDesk derives the gradient from your color palette every time you change it.
1

Set your colors

Go to Website → Design, update Primary Color and Header Color, then click Save changes.
2

Preview

Open your school’s /login page in another tab. The branding pane reflects the new colors immediately.
Use distinct Primary and Header colors to give the gradient visual interest. Two near-identical colors produce a flat-looking pane.

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Apply Now intent through login

When a visitor clicks Apply Now on your public site without being signed in, DeanDesk preserves their cycle/track choice and routes them through the login or signup screen. After authenticating, they land directly inside the application workspace they were trying to enter — they don’t have to re-pick the cycle. This is automatic; no configuration is required. See Admissions for details.

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Custom page theme

If your school uses the Pages module to build public landing pages, program pages, or staff pages, you can set a school-wide page theme that applies to every page. Go to Admin Dashboard → Website → Design to configure your page theme: Font uploads and deletions apply immediately. Other theme changes apply when you click Save changes. Per-page typography (set inside the page editor) overrides the school-wide theme for that page only. See Pages for details.

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Marketing analytics

In Website → Marketing, paste a Google Analytics 4 Measurement ID or Google tag snippet, and optionally a Meta Pixel ID or snippet. DeanDesk detects and saves the destination IDs. Save the settings after resolving any validation errors. The tags run on public website pages and wait for the visitor’s cookie choice. These settings do not install arbitrary scripts throughout the signed-in school portal.

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Custom domain

Schools can be served on a custom domain (e.g. enroll.yourschool.org) instead of the default yourschool.deandesk.com. The DeanDesk support team sets up custom domains for you.
1

Request the domain

Open School Configuration → General. Under Custom Domain, click Request custom domain (or Request a change if a domain is already set).
2

Send the request

Enter the Domain you want to use and any Notes (optional), such as who manages your DNS. Click Submit request.
3

Add the DNS records

DeanDesk follows up by email and in Support with the DNS records to add at your domain provider. Once the domain is set, School Configuration shows its DNS records.
DNS changes can take time to propagate. The support team confirms when the custom domain is live.