George Mason University Antonin Scalia Law School

Author: scalialaw

How to Create A Flickr Photo Album

  1. Log into Flickr
  2. Click on the upload icon at the top right corner of the page
  3. Drag and drop photos into the page
  4. On the left bar, replace titles and descriptions
  5. Scroll down and click on Add to albums. A small window will pop-up. Click on Create a new album. Give the new album a name
  6. Make sure the new album is selected then hit Done
  7. Back to the left bar, scroll down to Owner setting. Choose Only you for private photos or Everyone for public
  8. Go over to the top-right corner, click on the Upload Photos button
  9. Once the photos are uploaded, the album will show up on the album landing page
  10. Hover the album, the icons will slide up. Click on the arrow icon and copy the URL to share the album

How to Create a PDF for the Student Profiles

Profiles for Incoming 1Ls needed to be created around August 19. Here are the instructions:

  1. Pull student submissions from the online form. Limit the export to the current year only. The only data needed are: First Name, Last Name, Undergraduate Institution, Undergraduate Major, and Photo.
  2. Open CSV file in Excel, move Last Name to Column A (first column), then sort all columns and rows in alphabetical order according to last names.
  3. Open up an Excel template that has HTML included, then paste in the columns accordingly.
  4. Copy all the rows and columns from the Excel file then paste into an HTML file template.
  5. Open the HTML file in Chrome browser and check to see if the photos cropped properly. If a person’s head got cropped out, add a CSS class (class=crop-center) in the person’s img element: <img class=crop-center src=lastname-firstname.jpg>
  6. Once everything looks good, print from Chrome browser (Save as PDF).
  7. With the HTML file still open, drag photos into a folder and rename the files to match the student’s last name.
  8. Put everything on the ShareDrive.

How to Post Around the Law School Photos

We recently added a new section on the homepage call Around the Law School to showcase photos from our Flickr account. Here’s the instructions for updating the photos:

  1. Choose the best photo from the Flickr album we want to showcase. Create a photo with the dimensions of  600px by 400px.
  2. Log into MODX then navigate to the Around the Law School (ID#13628) directory
  3. Pick an existing resource and duplicate it. Paste in the text that corresponds to the banner (this text will also be use for the alt tag). Check the Mark All Unpublished radio button, then hit Save
  4. Go to the new duplicated resource, make sure the Title and Long Title are the same
  5. Go to the Template Variable tab, upload the photo to Homepage Feature Image field (see screenshot)
  6. Scroll down to URL for In the News and enter a URL for the Flickr Album.
  7. Go back to the Document tab,  activate the Published radio button and then hit Save. To remove the banner from the line up, deactivate the Published and then hit Save or delete the resource.

Adding Class Notes in MODX

Instructions for adding Class Notes in MODX

  1. Navigate to the Class Notes directory (ID12416)
  2. Right click on an existing alumni, choose Duplicate from the dropdown.  Add a new name (last name, comma, first name. Example: smith, john). Check Redirect to duplicate. Select Make all unpublished. Hit Save.
  3. On the Document tab, change the name in the Long Title field with first name than last name (Example: John Smith).
  4. Go to Template Variables tab,  upload the alumni photo to Homepage Feature Image field. Make sure the image is 400px by 250px. If no photo is provided, use the default image: assets/images/alumni/thumbs/class_notes.png
  5. Enter text in the Spotlight Summary field.
  6. Scroll down to the Class Year field, add the year in digits. Example: 1991
  7. Return to the Document tab, activate the Published button, enter the Publish On date, then hit the Save button.

How to Post Homepage Hero Banners

The hero banners are randomly loaded each time a visitor land on our homepage. Here are the steps to publish or unpublished them:

  1. Create two banners: desktop (1600px by 800px) & mobile (400px by 600px)
  2. Log into MODX then navigate to the Home Banners (ID#12335) directory
  3. Pick an existing resource and duplicate it. Paste in the text that corresponds to the banner (this text will also be use for the alt tag). Check the Mark All Unpublished radio button, then hit Save
  4. Go to the new duplicated resource, make sure the Title and Long Title are the same
  5. Go to the Template Variable tab, upload the desktop version to Homepage Feature Image field and the mobile version to Spotlight/Feature Image (see screenshot)
  6. Scroll down to URL for In the News and enter a URL. A URL is required. If there’s no URL, the link will be defaulted to the homepage
  7. Go back to the Document tab,  activate the Published radio button and then hit Save. To remove the banner from the line up, deactivate the Published and then hit Save or delete the resource.

Emergency Alert Message

In case of an emergency, we have implemented an alert message that would appear on every page at law.gmu.edu. Here’s an example:

To Activate the Emergency Alert Message

  1. Log into MODX Manager, navigate to the Emergency container (id#12996), and open up the Emergency Message resource (id#12996).
  2. Go to the Template Variables tab, select the Uncategorized tab on the left. Write an emergency alert message in the Content2010 box, which is the first box. Return to the Document tab, click on the Published button, then hit the Save button.
  3. Search for the 2012_template_top chunk, scroll down to this line (around line 29):
    [[-getResources? &parents=`12995` &depth=`1` &tpl=`emergency_alert` &tvPrefix=`` &includeTVs=`1` &limit=`1` ]]
    Remove the first hyphen (-) to activate GetResources. (Because we hardly used this emergency alert message, activating this snippet might affect the site performance when we are not using it)

To Deactivate the Emergency Alert Message

To deactivate the Emergency Alert Message, simply unpublished the Emergency Message resource (id#12996). Comment out the GetResource snippet (by adding the hyphen back into the 2012_template_top chunk) is not required, but a good practice to prevent an extra dynamic call.

CSS Style

CSS style for emergency alert can be modified in the emergency_alert chunk.

How to Disable Plugins Outside MODX Manager

Since we are using CAS Authentication plugin to add an extra security layer to our MODX Manager, we need a way to disable the plugin in case something goes wrong and we don’t want to get locked out of our own site. Here are the steps to disable plugins outside the Manager:

  1. Log into the cloud dashboard and temporarily add phpMyAdmin to the cloud
  2. Log into phpMyAdmin, browse the modx_site_plugins table for the CAS plugin, double-click on the disable column to change the value from 0 to 1 to disable the plugin
  3. Manually clear the cache by logging into sFTP and delete everything in the core/cache directory
  4. Log back into the cloud dashboard to turn off phpMyAdmin

Creating a Spreadsheet for Full-time Faculty

A request to pull the following information from the full-time faculty directory:

  • Last Name
  • First Name
  • Title
  • Degrees and Schools
  • SSRN link
  • Subjects taught
  • Area(s) of Expertise
  • CV (PDF link if they have one posted)
  • Email
  • Bio (link to profile page)

Create a chunk (ditto.faculty_list_2021_ABA) using tr and td tags:

<tr>
<td>[[+lname]]</td>
<td>[[+pref_name:default=`[[+fname]]`]]</td>
<td>[[+title_main]]</td>
<td>[[+degree6:isnot=``:then=`[[+degree6:ReplaceDegrees]]`]][[+alma_mater6:isnot=``:then=`, [[+alma_mater6]]; `]][[+degree5:isnot=``:then=`[[+degree5:ReplaceDegrees]]`]][[+alma_mater5:isnot=``:then=`, [[+alma_mater5]]; `]][[+degree4:isnot=``:then=`[[+degree4:ReplaceDegrees]]`]][[+alma_mater4:isnot=``:then=`, [[+alma_mater4]]; `]][[+degree3:isnot=``:then=`[[+degree3:ReplaceDegrees]]`]][[+alma_mater3:isnot=``:then=`, [[+alma_mater3]]; `]][[+degree2:isnot=``:then=`[[+degree2:ReplaceDegrees]]`]][[+alma_mater2:isnot=``:then=`, [[+alma_mater2]]; `]][[+degree1:ReplaceDegrees]][[+alma_mater1:isnot=``:then=`, [[+alma_mater1]]`]]</td>
<td>[[+ssrn:isnot=``:then=`https://ssrn.com/author=[[+ssrn]]`]]</td>
<td>[[+faculty_subject_category:convert_ids_to_pagetitles_1]]</td>
<td>[[+expertise:convert_output_list_1]]</td>
<td>[[+cv_pdf:isnot=``:then=`https://www.law.gmu.edu/[[+cv_pdf]]`]]</td>
<td>[[+email]]</td>
<td>https://www.law.gmu.edu/faculty/directory/fulltime/[[+alias]]</td>
</tr>

The square brackets ([[+lname]]) correspond with the form field inside MODX. To see how the fields were created, take a look at the 2015_faculty_profile chunk.

After creating the ditto.faculty_list_2021_ABA chunk, put it inside the script below:

<table>
[[getResources? &showHidden=`1` &includeTVs=`1` &tvPrefix=`` &limit=`0` &sortbyTV=`lname` &sortdirTV=`ASC` &parents=`5842` &depth=`1` &tpl=`ditto.faculty_list_2021_ABA` &sortBy=`lname` &sortDir=`ASC` &display=`all` &filter=`hide_all,1,2`]]
</table>

Past the script above on any page inside MODX to populate the table. The tag &parents=`5842` refers to the ID number of the full-time faculty directory.

How to Create a New Event

Instructions for adding an event to our Calendar of Events. Please note that we only publish events that are open to law students, faculty, and staff. Our target audience for the public calendar is law students. Please do not list private or “by invitation only” events on here.

  1. Login into the Calendar of Events website. If you access the website outside of the George Mason network, you would need to log into our VPN first.
  2. From the Event section on the left-hand menu or the drop-down menu at the top, choose Add Event.
  3. Add Title, Description, Time & Date, Location (check to see if the location existed), Organizers (check to see if the organizer existed), and Event URL.
  4. Ignore Event Cost, Excerpt, Custom Field, and Slugs.
  5. For Discussion, uncheck Allow comments.
  6. For Event Categories, check all that are appropriate or add new category if necessary.
  7. For Event Options, leave it blank unless you want to hide it from listing.
  8. Ignore Custom header.
  9. For Featured image, please crop your image to 1200px x 675px for consistency.
  10. Hit Publish when you are finished.