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Giving Experiences Nice Images (Step-by-Step)

This guide is for organisers, not developers. It shows you how to make sure every experience on your programme shows an attractive image — even the ones nobody has uploaded a picture for yet.

You don't need to touch any code or settings files. Everything here is done by clicking around the normal pages, the same way you edit any other information.

One-time setup by your administrator first. Before you can upload a background library, someone with admin access has to switch on the "Background image options" field for your Gathering, camps, and experiences. That's a five-minute technical job described in Experience configuration. If you don't see the field mentioned below, ask your administrator to do that step — then come back here.

How the images work (the 30-second version)

Every experience card and page shows one image, picked automatically in this order:

  1. Its own picture, if someone uploaded one → that always wins.
  2. If it has none, a picture pulled from a shared library of background images you set up once (see below) → picked automatically and then kept the same forever.
  3. If there's no picture and no library at all → a plain, tidy coloured tile. Never a broken image.

So your job as an organiser is really just step 2: give the system a nice set of background images to choose from, and it fills in every gap for you.

You upload that library in one place and it covers your whole event.

Part 1 — Set up the shared background library (do this once)

This is the important one. Uploading a handful of images here means every experience across every camp gets a good-looking image automatically, forever, without anyone having to add a picture to each one.

  1. Open your Gathering page (the top-level page for your event — e.g. "Portugal 2026").
  2. Scroll down to the section that lists the event's information fields.
  3. Find the field labelled "Background image options".
  4. Click the "+ Add photo" button.
  5. Choose an image from your computer. It uploads straight away — you'll see it appear as a small thumbnail.
  6. Repeat "+ Add photo" for each image you want in the library. Six to ten images is a good number — enough variety that experiences don't all look identical.
  7. When you're finished, click "Done". There's no separate Save button — each photo is saved the moment it uploads.

That's it. From now on, any new experience created anywhere under this Gathering that doesn't have its own picture will automatically be given one of these backgrounds.

Image tips

  • Accepted formats: JPEG, PNG, GIF, or WebP.
  • Maximum 5 MB per image.
  • Pick images that look good when cropped into a card shape — landscape photos with the interesting bit in the middle work best.
  • To remove one, click the small × on its thumbnail.

Part 2 — (Optional) A different library for one camp

Most events only need the Gathering-level library from Part 1. But if one camp wants a distinct look — say a music camp with its own visual style — you can give that camp its own set of backgrounds:

  1. Open that camp's page.
  2. Find the same "Background image options" field.
  3. Add photos exactly as in Part 1.

Rules to know:

  • A camp's library completely replaces the Gathering's library for that camp's experiences (it doesn't mix the two).
  • If you leave a camp's library empty, that camp simply uses the Gathering's library. So you only fill this in when you deliberately want that camp to look different.

Part 3 — Give one experience its own picture

When you do have a specific photo for a particular experience — a flyer, a photo of the facilitator, artwork for a ceremony — upload it directly and it will always be used instead of any background:

  1. Open the experience's page.
  2. At the top, click its image area (it says "Click to change logo" when you hover).
  3. Click "Choose logo", pick your file, and click Save.

This picture now overrides whatever background had been filling in for it. If you ever want to go back to the automatic background, click the image again and choose Remove.

Good to know

  • The automatic pictures are "sticky". Once an experience is given a background, it keeps that same one every time — it won't shuffle to a different image between visits. This is on purpose, so your programme looks stable.
  • Adding images to the Gathering/camp library later only affects new experiences. Experiences that already exist keep the picture they were already given. This is the usual source of confusion: if you add photos to the library and an old experience "doesn't change", that's expected — it already has its picture. Uploading a picture directly onto that experience (Part 3) is how you change it.
  • You can never end up with a broken image. Worst case — no picture and no library — an experience just shows a clean coloured tile.

Quick checklist

  • [ ] Administrator has switched on the "Background image options" field (one-time).
  • [ ] Uploaded 6–10 background images to the Gathering's "Background image options".
  • [ ] (Optional) Gave any special camp its own library.
  • [ ] Uploaded direct pictures onto the few experiences that have their own artwork.

Do the first two and your whole programme will look complete — the rest is polish.