CMS – Web Design and Services

Aligning Icons with Text on Landing Pages in Cascade

Example codes for aligning icon image with text. The class fcm (First Child Margin) is needed to align the first child with all rest of the children.

<div class="grid3 fcm">

<section class="icon-24">
<img alt="Mason Email" src="/render/file.act?path=/assets/images/icons/24-email.svg" width="50" /> 
<a href="https://mail.gmu.edu/">Email Login (Office 365)</a>
</section>

<section class="icon-24">
<img alt="Password Management Link" src="/render/file.act?path=/assets/images/icons/24-password.svg" width="50" /> 
<a href="https://password.gmu.edu">Password Management</a>
</section>

<section class="icon-24">
<img alt="Scalia Law Blackboard" src="/render/file.act?path=/assets/images/icons/24-blackboard.svg" width="50" /> 
<a href="https://mylawschoolportal.gmu.edu/">Blackboard (Law School)</a>
</section>

</div>

Set Default Destination in Cascade

Go to Manage Site > Destinations > (select a destination to edit) Edit >
Scroll to the bottom, check/uncheck the Publish to this Destination by default option

These steps have to be repeated for each destination in each site that needs to be updated.

Global Updates In Cascade

To update alert, footer, and header, go to _includes folder and publish the include.

Adding Google Analytics to Cascade

There are a number of formats that are applied to all pages, but the Head Format makes the most sense for adding Google Analytics. Apply [system-view:external] tags so that it is only applied to live pages and not in Cascade.

Strip Out Extensions in Cascade

Go to Manage Site. Select Destinations on the left hand bar.
Click on the server. Hit Edit.
Go to Extensions to Strip field and enter: .html,.php

Source: Destinations

Adding Class Notes in MODX

Instructions for adding Class Notes in MODX

Navigate to the Class Notes directory (ID12416)
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 Select Make all unpublished.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.
On the Document tab, change the name in the Long Title field with first name than last name (Example: John Smith).
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
Enter text in the Spotlight Summary field.
Scroll down to the Class Year field, add the year in digits. Example: 1991
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:

Create two banners: desktop (1600px by 800px) & mobile (400px by 600px)
Log into MODX then navigate to the Home Banners (ID#12335) directory
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
Go to the new duplicated resource, make sure the Title and Long Title are the same
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)
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
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

Log into MODX Manager, navigate to the Emergency container (id#12996), and open up the Emergency Message resource (id#12996).
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.
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.

Fixing MODX Snippet Output

Here’s the TV page for Subjects Taught with the old output “Checkbox Options”:

@EVAL return $modx->runSnippet('eval_get_subject_category_id');

Just change it to:

@SNIPPET eval_get_subject_category_id

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:

Log into the cloud dashboard and temporarily add phpMyAdmin to the cloud
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
Manually clear the cache by logging into sFTP and delete everything in the core/cache directory
Log back into the cloud dashboard to turn off phpMyAdmin

Antonin Scalia Law School

Category: CMS