George Mason University Antonin Scalia Law School

Author: scalialaw

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 Select Make all unpublished.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 Here are the steps to publish or unpublished them: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 Check the Mark All Unpublished radio button, then hit Save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.

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.

Image Sizes for Scalia Law Websites

A quick reference for image sizes on Scalia Law websites. The measurements are in px unit. The dimensions are listed as width by height: w x h.

Banners for the Main Site

Spotlights & In the News

Icons

Banner for WordPress Sites

Layout Guides for the Law School Main Website

Here are some quick layout guides for the main law school website.

To create a simple button (see visit campus page), add the button class. 

<div class="button">
	<a href=""></a>
</div>

To create three buttons in three columns with three different colors (see homepage), add grid3 and color-buttons classes:

<div class="grid3 color-buttons">
	<a href=""></a>
	<a href=""></a>
	<a href=""></a>
</div>

To create four boxes in four columns with four different colors, (see homepage), add grid4, color-buttons, and boxes classes:

<div class="grid4 color-buttons boxes">	
	<a href=""></a>
	<a href=""></a>
	<a href=""></a>
	<a href=""></a>
</div>

For a two-column layout (see the top of the People Finder page), use the grid2 class:

<div class="grid2">
	<section></section>
	<section></section>
</div>

For a three-column layout (see contact information on the Records Office page), use the grid3 class:

<div class="grid3">
	<section></section>
	<section></section>
	<section></section>
</div>

For a four-column layout (see icons on the Career page), use the grid4 class:

<div class="grid4">
	<section></section>
	<section></section>
	<section></section>
	<section></section>
</div>

For a two-column layout with one column takes up two-third of the space (see JD Admissions page) , add span2 class on that column:

<div class="grid3">
        <section></section>
	<section class="span2"></section>
</div>

For a two-column layout with one column takes up three-forth of the space (see the footer link and social media link at the bottom of the footer) , add span3 class on that column:

<div class="grid4">
	<section class="span3"></section>
	<section></section>
</div>

To add icons for the second level pages (see Admissions landing page), use the icons24 (24 is the dimension in pixels that all the icons were downloaded) class: 

<div class="grid3 icons24">
	<a href=""><img src="" width="50" alt=""></a>
	<a href=""><img src="" width="50" alt=""></a>
	<a href=""><img src="" width="50" alt=""></a>
</div>

Instructions for Restoring Course Schedules in MODX

  1. Duplicate the entire course schedule directory. For example: 2016 Course Schedule and rename it to 2015 Course Schedule.
  2. Open up the directory you just copied, select Duplicate of 2016 Fall. Rename Title and Long Title to 2015 Fall. Rename Source Alias to 2015_fall.
  3. Open up the static HTML page.
  4. Search ../../.. and replace with nothing (blank).
  5. Search for .html and replace with nothing (blank).
  6. Search for ../../courses/ and replace with /academics/courses/
  7. Search <img class="icon" src="assets/images/icons/pdf.png" alt="PDF file" width="16" height="16" /> and replace with nothing (blank).
  8. Search <br /><img src="/assets/images/icons/weather_sun.png" alt="" width="16" height="16" /> and replace with nothing (blank).
  9. Search <br /><img src="/assets/images/icons/moon.png" alt="" width="16" height="16" /> and replace with nothing (blank).
  10. Replace <img src="/assets/images/icons/pencil.png" alt="" width="16" height="16" /> and replace with nothing (blank).
  11. Copy the page starting from the list (ul) all the way down to the end of the table (<!-- END HERE-->).
  12. Add this class <div class="table-wrap"> before the opening table element and </div> after the closing table element to make the page responsive.

For anchor links on pages prior to modx, replace:
2000fall.html#
with:
[[~[[*id]]]]#

Add this to the top:

<ul>
<li><a href="[[~[[*id]]]]#schedule">Schedule</a></li>
<li><a href="[[~[[*id]]]]#assignments">Assignments</a></li>
<li><a href="[[~2481]]">Archives</a></li>
</ul>

Remove the following entirely:

<img src="https://www.law.gmu.edu/images/new.gif" alt="" width="25" height="12" border="0">

<img src="assets/images/icons/pdf.gif" alt="PDF Document" width="16" height="16" />

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">

<span>

</span>

_2012summer001.html

Replace:

../../courses/

with

/academics/courses/