Best Practices for Launching your Pack

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Best Practices for Launching your Pack

Branding your Pack
Branding your Pack

Make your Pack stand out with its own unique branding.

Make your Pack stand out with its own unique branding.

Naming your Pack

What you name your Pack is ultimately up to you, but it benefits both you and the maker if it is clear and concise. Makers will most likely be introduced to your Pack in one of three locations in Coda:

The Explore panel

The right-hand tray where makers add building blocks to their docs.

The Gallery

The Gallery where people can search for and view Packs at both the multiple and individual levels.

Published docs

Docs in our Gallery that already make use of Packs

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Each of these sources will feature the name of your Pack prominently.

Tips for naming your Pack

Pick a name that’s both unique and accurately describes your Pack’s purpose. Keep in mind the discovery process of Packs when finalizing your name. Makers typically search for Packs by three query types:

Primary action (e.g. ‘Celsius to Fahrenheit Converter’)

Application or service (e.g. ‘Robinhood’, ‘Slack’)

Topic (e.g. ‘weather’, ‘barcode’, ‘stocks’)

Do not use the word “Pack” or “Coda” in the name of the Pack itself (e.g. ‘Pack for [your app]’ or ’[your app] for Coda’).

Do not include leading spaces or special characters to the beginning of your Pack name. Doing so won’t help improve search ranking as Packs aren’t displayed alphabetically in the Gallery.

Do not represent a doc, template, or Pack as being officially endorsed by a company unless you have explicit, written permission from the company.

Lastly, your Pack name must comply with the

terms of use of Coda⁠

Coda’s publishing policies⁠

, and

co-marketing guidelines⁠

Renaming your Pack

We recommend only renaming your Pack before it is published to mitigate confusion by those who have installed it.

If you do for some reason need to rename your Pack, you can accomplish this from two places in the Pack Editor’s user interface:

Screen Shot 2022-01-06 at 11.44.29 AM.png

Pack listing page editor

In the line labeled “Name”, highlight and rename your Pack.

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Code editor

In the top left of the screen, click your Pack Name, highlight, and rename.

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Creating a Pack icon

Your Pack’s icon is as important as its name. The icon will accompany it in any place the name is displayed - except in the Coda formula editor where we’ll use the icon in place of the Pack name to make it easier for makers to understand the formula syntax.

Pack Gallery page

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Pack listing page

Explore panel, all Packs

Explore panel, individual Pack

Formula editor

Screen Shot 2022-01-14 at 4.49.51 PM.png

Sync tables and columns

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The Pack icon should therefore be unique; most often that means using an icon that represents the Pack. Keep in mind both dark and light modes when creating your Pack icon. Icons with transparent backgrounds may be difficult to see for some users. Make sure your icon always have a solid background; default to a solid white background if nothing else. Lastly, ensure your icon is 200x200 pixels and in either PNG or JPG format.

Here are a few examples of icons that work well:

✅ Examples of great Pack icons