Speaker Catalog Designer

Overview

Speaker Catalog Designer is the Certain Platform tool for configuring speaker catalogs for events. The Designer opens in a new browser window. The Designer’s interface looks different from the rest of the Certain Platform. The Designer can be used to create multiple Speaker Catalogs within a single event. An event can be digital or in-person. Setting up a Speaker Catalog requires that the event uses Speaker and Session Management and has the Conference Sessions sub-module enabled.

Adding a New Catalog

• Go to Manage > Speakers and Sessions > Catalog List on the landing page.
• At the top of the Catalog List, click Add a Catalog.
• Enter a Catalog Name.
• Select the Catalog Type: 'Speaker Catalog'.
• Copy Style and Header from – Available if there are any existing catalogs.
• If there are existing catalogs, you may select another catalog to copy style and header from. This helps maintain consistency across catalogs.
• Save.
• The new catalog appears in the Catalog List.

Editing a Catalog

• Best Practice: When editing a newly added catalog, click Save & Next to step through the setup pages. When editing a saved catalog, you can select the pages and tabs to edit just those elements.
• Note: At any stage you can click Preview to preview the catalog in a new browser window.
• If you have just added a new catalog, proceed to Step 3. If editing a configured catalog, go to Manage > Speakers and Sessions > Catalog List.
• Click the Actions column to edit the catalog.
• The Certain Speaker Catalog Designer opens in a new browser window.
• The first page is Define Layout. It has two tabs: Page Elements and Theme.
• You land on Page Elements, as described below.
• Define Layout > Page Elements tab shows a central illustration of page elements, displayed from top to bottom in this order: Header, Featured Units, Basic Unit, Footer.
• Under Featured Units on the left, select one of the three illustrated options to determine how the catalog should display featured speakers: Cards, List, or Single, or None.
• Under Basic Units on the right, select one of the two illustrated options to determine how the catalog should display speakers other than featured speakers: Cards or List.
• Click Save & Next to proceed to the Theme tab.

Define Layout – Theme tab

• Several out-of-the-box Themes are displayed; the selected Theme is highlighted.
• Select a different Theme by clicking Use, or click Customize to create a new "Custom Theme" based on that one.
• Click Save & Next to proceed to the Design Elements page.

Design Elements – Page Elements panel

• The Design Elements page has one panel on the left named Page Elements.
• The larger panel on the right allows editing whichever page element is selected on the left.
• Click any element on the Page Elements illustration to edit it in the panel that opens on the right.
• The default element is the header.
• You can Save that element and select another element on the left, or step through all elements by clicking Save & Next.
• The order shown in the illustration (top to bottom) is the order used for editing.

Edit Header

• Edit the header area.

Edit HTML (below header)

• Edit the HTML code for the header section.

Edit Tabs

• Edit the tab structure for the catalog interface.

Edit Featured Speaker Layout

• When editing this, you choose a template, and edit its elements.

Edit General Speaker Layout

• When editing this, you choose a template, and edit its elements.

Edit HTML (above footer)

• Edit the HTML code for the area above the footer.

Edit Footer

• Edit the footer area.

Speaker Sessions

• Select and configure the template used to display the Speaker and their Sessions.

Additional Settings

• Insert scripts or CSS references separately into the DOM header and DOM footer.

• When the design elements are configured, click Save & Next to proceed to the Data page.

Data page

• Data – Details panel.

Featured tab

• Select up to 20 featured speakers if the design includes displaying featured speakers.

General tab

• Define Default Filters, e.g. by Speaker Type.
• Define Grouping, e.g. by Speaker Type.
• Define Sorting, e.g. by Speaker Last name.
• Define Grouping Style – Font Color, Style, and Size for the top level of grouping.

Final steps

• Save & Preview to finalize the configuration.

See Also

• Catalog List
• Session Catalog
• List of Speaker and Session Management documents, videos, and help topics

Related actions

• Was this article helpful? (No, this is part of the page UI and not included in the content excerpt)

[JSON-LD] { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@type": "TechArticle", "headline": "Speaker Catalog Designer", "description": "Instructions to set up and edit a Speaker Catalog in an event using the Speaker Catalog Designer in Certain Platform.", "datePublished": "2026-01-21", "contentFreshness": "assumed-current", "inLanguage": "en", "keywords": [ "Speaker Catalog Designer", "Speaker Catalog", "Catalog List", "Layout", "Theme", "Data page", "Featured Speakers", "Event Management" ], "about": { "@type": "SoftwareApplication", "name": "Certain Platform", "applicationCategory": "Event Management Software", "description": "A tool to configure speaker catalogs and sessions for events." }, "mainEntity": { "@type": "Thing", "name": "Speaker Catalog Designer" }, "geo_quality": { "fluency_applied": true, "issues_fixed": ["vague_referents", "compound_sentences", "missing_definitions"], "rewrite_count": 7 } } [/JSON-LD]