Public Pages

What you’ll learn

• What public population pages are and what they show
• How to enable and configure a public page
• How to select featured individuals and customize the call to action
• How to create and manage highlights
• What data is and is not exposed publicly

What are public pages?

Every finwave population can have a publicly accessible landing page at its own subdomain — for example, srkw.finwave.io. These pages give your population a search-engine-indexed, shareable web presence separate from the authenticated finwave app. They help visitors discover your research, learn about your population, and sign up as contributors.

Note

Public pages are not part of the finwave app. Visitors see curated highlights and aggregate statistics, not raw datasets. They cannot search, filter, or export data.

Enabling a public page

Navigate to Population Settings > Public Page to get started.

1. Toggle Enable public page on.
2. Enter a subdomain slug — this becomes the {slug}.finwave.io URL.
3. Submit the slug for platform admin approval.

The slug must be 3—24 characters, lowercase letters, numbers, and hyphens only, and unique across all populations. Examples: srkw, biggs, norkw.

Caution

Once your slug is approved, it cannot be changed. Changing it would break external links and search engine rankings. Choose carefully before submitting for approval.

Page sections

Your public page displays the following sections from top to bottom. Some are auto-generated; others you configure directly.

• Hero — Full-width image with your population name, species, and region overlaid. You upload the hero image and provide an image credit in the Public Page settings. If no image is set, a default gradient is used.
• Stats bar — Key metrics computed automatically from your data: known individuals, encounters, images, contributors, and tracking period.
• About — Your population description (from Population Settings) followed by organization cards showing each managing organization’s logo, name, and website.
• Featured individuals — A grid of 4—8 individuals you select via the multi-select picker in Public Page > Featured Individuals. Each card shows the profile image, name or alpha code, encounter count, and first-seen date. If you select none, the four most-encountered individuals are shown automatically.
• Highlights feed — The three most recent published highlights. See Managing highlights below.
• Call to action — A prominent CTA encouraging visitors to contribute. You can customize the text, button label, and button URL. Defaults point to the finwave registration page with your population pre-selected.
• Footer — Links to the main finwave site, terms, privacy policy, and any social links you have configured (website, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook).

Tip

Choose featured individuals that represent the diversity of your population — a mix of well-known animals, recently discovered individuals, or those with compelling stories makes the strongest impression.

Managing highlights

Highlights let you share news, papers, and milestones on your public page. You manage them from Population Settings > Highlights.

To create a highlight, click New Highlight and fill in the form:

• Type — Story, paper, announcement, or milestone.
• Title — A short headline (up to 200 characters).
• Summary — A brief description (up to 1,000 characters).
• Image and External link — Both optional. For papers, link to the DOI.
• Published — Toggle on when you are ready for the highlight to appear publicly. Leave off to save as a draft.
• Pinned — Pinned highlights always appear first, regardless of date.

Type	Use case
Story	Field reports, seasonal updates, general news
Paper	Published research papers citing your population data
Announcement	Events, calls for contributors, funding news
Milestone	New individual discovered, encounter count milestone

What is not exposed publicly

Public pages limit what is visible to protect sensitive data:

• No GPS coordinates — Locations use general names (e.g., “Salish Sea”), never raw latitude/longitude.
• No contributor information — Only an aggregate count, never names or contact details.
• No full image library — Only admin-selected images appear. The library is not browsable.
• No encounter details — Encounters appear as aggregate counts, not individual records.
• No data export — No download or export capability.

Related

• Population Settings — editing the population description and other settings used by the public page
• Member Management — managing who can administer the population
• Organization Settings — configuring the organization cards shown on the public page