When you set up your Pro Account within Sprout, the logo/share bar is disabled by default. Since your Personal Platform Account is not keyed off of a particular share button, a share/embed link must be made. You need to create a share button yourself via the Properties Panel "links and tracking" category. (See our video below.)

1. Create a text or image link (highlight a line of text or select an image so it has selection handles around it).
2. Go to the "links and tracking" section and select Page > share/embed page. This enables your Platform Account.
3. Select "Publish". Select the platform account associated with the link. Hit "continue".
4. Re-post your HTML code to your web page or quick-post to your social networking site.

Do you have an image, logo, color, tabs or navigation buttons that you want repeated on all or most of your pages? Need a yummy tip? Just think "SPROUT SANDWICH." The top of the sandwich is your foreground master page and the bottom of the sandwich is your background master page. Content pages are sandwiched in-between. To switch between the master and content pages go to the Pages Panel at the bottom of your screen. Designing this way keeps your work organized, your repeating elements aligned from page-to-page and saves you loads of time!

Objects (such as buttons or navigation tabs) on the foreground master page will appear above or on top of your content . Images, logos or a color fill on your background master page will appear below or under your content. To turn off a master page go to the Properties Panel (only accessible when nothing on the page is selected) and you will see checkboxes that let you turn off one or both pages.

See our bunny video below for more information (you may need to click on "Read more").

Add an iCalendar or Twitter to your Sprout to let others know your actions in the moment, your schedule for the day or your plans all month. Our two newest videos show you how to add these components to your Sprout - and keep friends and family in the loop on what's happening.

1. Navigate using a thumbnail menu: The thumbnail menu is a navigation bar that is comprised of teeny snapshots of all the pages in your sprout. When you click on the snapshot of a page in the menu bar, you navigate to it. Voila! It is usually best to have at least four pages in your project before you use a thumbnail menu and to have pages simple in design.

Dr. Feeser has done it again - a Sprout Competition at Purdue University . This time he encouraged his Entrepreneurship students to "do their own thing" with better results so he is going to follow this model in the fall when there will be 20-50 Sprout teams competing, including students from his new fall Marketing class.

First Place: far left is Austin Agarwal, a senior in science, center is Kevin Nuest, a senior in management, and Hank Feeser. Kevin is holding a $50 bill Hank Feeser donated to the MS cause/winning widget. Second place: far right is Gregory LaFavers, a senior in science, next to him Patrick Doherty a senior EE, then Chris Rush, a senior in biomedical engineering, and Hank.

Hank Feeser writes a blog that covers student entrepreneurs and their innovative ventures, anything involving technology, captology, brain-computer interfaces, and boomers as entrepreneurs.

We have four new videos for you! You can get a sneak peak above or access them anytime by clicking on the blue help icon in the upper right corner of the builder. We also are creating some special tutorials for adventurous sprout designers, so stay tuned.

Is your mind blank contemplating the white canvas? Do you want to share your photos, music and videos but lack awareness? Are you seeking answers? In only three easy steps, you will understand.

Relax. Breathe. Download.

We have two step-by-step tutorials especially for novices, "Getting Started" and "Adding Asset". Enjoy the moment.

Getting Started
Adding Assets

Only three weeks of school to go and your students are squirrely. . .

How about putting them to work making sprouts for your school web page? If it is a typical school, the web site probably suffers from diminished funding and from static bling (or lack of pizazz).

To address the first issue, Sprout Builder is web-based and is free (no P.O. needed). To address the second, sprouts leap with multi-media bling! College-age and elementary students alike can add audio, video, slideshows, charts, surveys, polls, forms, maps, countdown buttons, and of course content and information - all by simply dragging and dropping.

What if your school doesn’t have a web page or your site is lame? Let students design the whole site without size being a factor. Sprouts can be as large as 960x800 and contain over twenty pages. Check out Kelly’s sample San Fandango site below and put those squirrels to work!

In schools we worry when heads are down; we worry when hoods are up. Are students secretly texting each other, listening to music, watching YouTube? Several years ago, at a Multi-Media Advisory Meeting, Mark Sturges from Autodesk, Inc. was asked what courses he thought schools should be teaching; he answered, “multi-media for hand-held devices”. Did we listen? But then came the multi-media power widget to the rescue - sprouts!

Schools understand the power of information but possibly under-estimate the power of multi-media. With schools competing, because of declining enrollments, the school web page is the first stop for parents. What if, instead of the traditional web site, parents and potential students found multi-media sprouting everywhere: sprout jukeboxes with the latest band or choir concerts, multi-page sprouts containing video highlights of each sport offered on campus, slideshows touring the classes and labs, welcoming audio from the principal and sprouts showcasing outstanding student works. Now that is power!

And heads-up . . . it’s free.