Some common questions and answers about Announcement Bar Hero. We will keep them updated regularly, so check back often.
Q: Why do I need Announcement Bar Hero? How do I create announcement bars myself?
A: Announcement Bar Hero exists to make life easy for you. You can absolutely create your own announcement bars if you wish. But you need to be a bit of a programmer. You would need to edit your store’s liquid script files and add HTML tags inside the body tag along with CSS to style your announcement bar. Your message would have to be hard-coded in the tags. After saving your liquid file and assuming you have done your job right – you would see your announcement bar.
We take the struggle out of creating your own announcement bars. Once you have created your announcement bars and targeted them to the pages you want to then they magically appear in your store front. We do this by using some smart JavaScript and our special ‘Bartender’ server which is designed for high scalability and to support many customers on many stores at the same time.
You create the announcement bars and we take the grunt work out of the programming.
Q: What do I get if I only install the free version of Announcement Bar Hero.
A: The free version of Announcement Bar Hero allows you to create up to two announcement bars that can be placed on any page on your store front. You have access to the same features as a Premium user but you are limited in how many announcement bars you can create. As we add features over time we may lock these for Free users.
Q: How do I create an announcement bar?
A: When you first run Announcement Bar Hero you will see the page titled ‘Manage your announcement bars’. Press the ‘Add an announcement bar’ button. This will take you to the ‘Add a new Announcement Bar’ page. Here you can enter the announcement bar details such as name (what it’s called), the announcement you wish to convey to your customers, an optional Page URL (more about this below) and you can choose the color of the background and text. You can also choose whether or not your announcement bar is displayed on your store front by pressing the Enable button.
Q: The announcement bar doesn’t look quite right on my Theme. Is there a problem?
A: There is no sure-fire way to make sure announcement bars are rendered 100% accurately on a storefront 100% of the time. This is because Theme designers all build their themes differently, with different UI placements and rendering instructions. Take a look at our Themes Tested Page for more information. We are continually testing themes and fixing Announcement Bar Hero to make sure that as many themes as possible are supported.
Where you DO find a problem, the best course of action is to get in contact with us. Include your store URL as well as the name of the theme you are using (if it’s a bespoke theme built especially for you, then no problem) and we’ll take a look. Chances are we just have to add an entry in one of our database tables for your theme and everything will be just fine. Either way we will work with you to make sure Announcement Bar Hero works for you as quickly as we can.
Q: What is the Page URL text field for?
A: The Page URL is an optional field on an announcement bar that allows you to ‘target’ this bar to a specific page in your store. If you leave the Page URL blank then the announcement bar will be displayed on every page of your store front. We call it a global announcement bar. Targeted announcement bars will always be displayed on the page that they are targeted to an take precedence over a global announcement bar.
A Page URL should be a full URL from your website. You can get this by navigating to the page you wish to target and then cutting and pasting the address in the browser to the Page URL text area. You cannot use partial URLs.
Q: I created my first announcement bar but I don’t see it on my store front. How come?
A: When you create an announcement bar, make sure you toggle the Enable/Disable button at the bottom of the add screen. Only announcement bars that have been enabled will be visible on the store front. On the My Announcement Bars list page, you will see a list of announcement bars and to the right of each bar a small green icon that shows if this bar is enabled. If you don’t see the green icon then your bar is not enabled.
Q: Why can’t I change the font, size or other aspects of an announcement bar?
A: Announcement Bar Hero has just recently been released and may seem a little bit limited. We have an extensive road map of features we are going to add, including font type, font size, background images, announcement bar positioning, size and behaviour, as well as many other ideas. We also want to hear from our subscribers to see what features you would like. Keep an eye on our app updates as well as road map to see what’s coming.
Q: The ‘Add a new Announcement Bar’ link is not clickable. How come?
A: As a subscriber to the Free plan you can only create two announcement bars. If you upgrade to the Premium plan you can create an unlimited number.
Q: Those information cards are really annoying! How do I get rid of them?
A: When you first use Announcement Bar Hero, you will see ‘on-boarding cards’ that give you brief instructions of how to use the App. Once you have read them, simply press the ‘Dismiss’ button and you will never see them again!
Q: How come one of my announcement bars ‘auto’ disabled itself after I created a new one?
A: If you create/edit and enable an announcement bar and the Page URL is the same as an existing one that is already enabled, then the old announcement bar will automatically switch to ‘disabled’. The latest announcement bar will become enabled instead. This is because you can only ever have one announcement bar enabled on a page at a time.
Q: Why should I upgrade to the Premium Plan?
A: Firstly upgrading to the Premium Plan gives you the ability to have an unlimited number of announcement bars for your store. This means you can create multiple announcements that can be active on any number of pages. You will also have access to upcoming features at no extra cost. We also promise that we won’t increase how much we charge you while you continue as a subscriber on the Premium Plan. You also get support directly from our app developers who will try to respond in super quick time when you need them. We love building apps and unfortunately this costs money. With your support we can build more apps and better products to help your store be more successful.
Q: I went back to the Free Plan from the Premium Plan and only have two announcement bars now. How come?
A: Downgrading from the Premium Plan to the Free Plan is a destructive operation. We can only allow you to keep the two most up to date announcement bars and we’re sorry to say we delete the others. This lowers our costs and also frees up space for our Premium Plan customers.
Q: I uninstalled and re-installed Announcement Bar Hero but my data has gone. Why?
A: When you uninstall Announcement Bar Hero I’m afraid we bid a swift goodbye and delete all your data. It won’t be there if you come back – sorry!
Q: If I go back to the Free Plan from the Premium Plan, but don’t use a full month of my subscription can I get money back?
A: Shopify takes care of all financial aspects of pro-ratering payments owed or costs accrued and does this through your Shopify merchant account on a monthly basis.
