Updates Blog

2020.12.15 - Quick link to edit page

In the bottom footer on all SiteManager-powered dev and prod sites, the "Powered by SIteManager" link now points to the edit page within the SiteManager app to facilitate quick access to the editor.

2020.12.07 - Breadcrumb Link Labels

Until recently, the link labels in breadcrumbs were derived directly from the page path.  If a page lives at /abc/def/ghi then the breadcrumb would look like:

Home / Abc / Def / Ghi

If the page at, for example, /abc/def had a name or menu label different than "Def" that name would not be reflected in the breadcrumbs.  We have recently updated the breadcrumb function to show the page title or menu label for each segment of the breadcrumb to better reflect the actual names of parent pages in the navigation hierarchy.  This change will enable better handling of special case capitalization as well as more descriptive page/section titles (e.g. /alumni being labeled as "Alumni & Friends").

2020.10.29 - Link to a page within the site

When linking to files within the site use reletive path links. As an example instead of https://marcom.grainger.illinois.edu/blog, you would insert "/blog" into the link field. Alternatively, you can add a link to a file by:

1. Selecting the text or image to link.
2. Select Insert/Edit Link icon.
3. In the dialog box that pops up, select the path icon.
4. Select what type of files you want to view. In this example we want to link to Standard Pages Book.
5. Select the path of your file/page.

2020.10.29 - Section Showcase: Add new section and access to examples

We made some style changes to the interface to make "Preview Section Options" and "Add new section" more obvious.

1. Preview Section Options will take you to our demo site that has all of the sections demonstrated in-action to help decision-making a little easier for design layouts.
2. To add a new section click "Add New Section". The Showcase will slide out from the left and present all of the predesigned options from the Section Showcase (see example below). Select the layout to edit and include into a page.

2020.10.01 - New styles added to Style Drop-down

When editing a Section, there are new options available from the style drop-down. Use this feature to style text headers, different font sizes, and buttons. A special note, to style text as a button, the text must contain a link.

2020.09.08 - Button styles added to toolbar

Button styles have been added to the Toolbar in Sections on the Site Manager editor. Text must be a link for the button styles to work. 

2019.11.20 - Updates to Page editor

(Updated fields highlighted in yellow)

The blue [+] icon used to activate the section showcase panel that slides in from the left edge of the browser has moved down by the Page Sections heading just above the tabular listing of sections included on the page.

2019.11.20 - Creating "Books"

We've added a new step to the content creation process in Site Manager. When you click on your site, you'll land on a new page called Books. To get to your pages, just click on the "Standard Pages" item and everything should work as it did before. This update will:

1. Enable us to gradually begin incorporating content currently managed via the blog tool directly within Site Manager
2. Enable us to create different types of pages or non-page content that may require different fields or structure (such as news stories)
3. Enable us to tag pages/items by topic and query a given book's pages to produce lists of content (such as lists of news stories)

Additional notes on the Edit Page interface:

• A few of the fields at the top of that page have moved around slightly.  But everything that was there is still there and should be labeled the same.
• There is a new “external link” field.  This is mostly just used for redirects currently but will become important as we move news lists hosted in the blogtool over to new “news” books in sitemanager. This field will function the same as the external link field in the blogtool; allowing you to post a news item that is simply a link to an article hosted on a third-party site.
• There is a new “meta description” field.  This field will allow you to customize the meta description for a given page.  By default, if you leave this blank, the page title will be placed in the meta description field.  You may override that by setting a value in this new field.
• The Body Class field was formerly a text field that required you know the various possible class names you could use.  That has changed to a multiselect dropdown with the available options you can use listed in a dropdown.

2019.10.21 - Slideshow initialization aesthetics

This updated involved setting feature slideshows to start off transparent and then fade in after the slideshow initializes,preventing the often terrible looking rendering you see during the first half second or so before the javascript runs to make raw html be a slideshow. Essentially, we smoothed out the load sequence for large feature slider modules.

2019.10.21 - H2 Style

Slightly reduced size and increased weight of H2s

2019.10.21 - Hero Image Sizing

Updated the responsive sizing of hero images for homepage and landing pages, improving the proportions of these modules and the elements within them (h2, subtitle, button, sliders) at all desktop and mobile browser sizes.

2019.10.21 - Interior Subnavigation

Section menus for interior pages have been updated from the horizontal pill-style navigation to a drop down menu inside the page header. This was done to improve user experience and decrease scroll depth on interior pages. Through user testing, we found the pill-style nav to be confusing and unfamiliar; so we have updated to a more familiar and compact "In this section" drop down menu that mirrors the mobile experience. We have also moved the breadcrumbs above the page title in the header space, to more clearly indicate the user's location in the site.