How to add and manage Promotional items

Site managers can create Promotional items, sidebar features that can appear on any or all of your web pages. They can be used to display an identical sidebar item on multiple pages. This is helpful for promotion of events, for the repeated use of a Call to Action (CTA) button, or even for creating a miniature navigation pane on more complicated pages/archives. By default, a Promotional item will appear beneath any existing sidebar content on a given page.

• Create a Promotional item

• Visibility

• Rearranging sticky and non-sticky Promotional items

• Randomization groups

Create a Promotional item

1. From the Administration bar, select My Workbench.

   Open

   

2. Click on the Create/Manage Content tab.

   Open

   

3. Click on the Promotional item button.

4. Select Add Promotional item link.

5. Insert an appropriate heading for the item. You can choose to not have this heading display above the promotional item by clicking on the Do not display heading checkbox.

6. Add the desired Body content.

7. Set the Promotional item Visibility. This dictates on which pages the item will appear.

   
   Visibility is dictated by inserting the URL paths of the specific pages on which the item should appear. See the notes on promotional item visibility below.

8. If desired, enter a Randomization group.

   
   Entering a Randomization group allows the promotional item to change
   to a different item from that group every time the page is refreshed.
   See the notes on Randomization groups below.

9. If desired, check the Sticky at top of lists checkbox.

   
   Checking this box will force this Promotional item to appear at the
   very top of the sidebar no matter the existing content on the page.

Visibility

If left blank, the Promotional item will appear on the sidebar of every page in the website.

To limit where the Promotional item will appear, first select the page you want it to appear on. Copy the URL path (after the domain name) for that page and paste it in to the Visibility text box. Paste as many URL paths as you would like in to the Visibility text box, one path per line.

To include all of the pages nested under (but not including) a given page, add an asterick (*) at the end of the path of the parent URL. For example, if I wanted the Promotional item to appear on all of the pages under About, but not on the main About page I would type in the following:

If I wanted the Promotional item to appear on all of the pages under and including the About page I would type in the following:

To exclude a page from a URL path, prefix the line with "not". For example, if I want the Promotional item to appear on all of the pages under and including About page but not on the Our people page I would type the following:

To put a promotional item on the home page, type in the following:

Rearranging sticky and non-sticky Promotional items

To re-arrange Promotional items, go to My Workbench and click on Create/Manage Content. Select Promotional item. To rearrange non-sticky items click on Rearrange promotional non-sticky items. To rearrange sticky items, click on Rearrange promotional sticky items. Use cross arrows to arrange order of items and Save.

Randomization groups

If a Randomization group is added, the Promotional item will change to any of the Promotional items placed in this group every time a page is refreshed or re-entered. The Randomization group name can be any meaningful term and does not appear on or with the Promotional item on the user end. In order for Promotional Items to cycle between each other upon refresh the Randomization group name must be the same.

Here are some things to note:

• Visibility takes precedence over Randomization.

  • If two or more separate Promotional Items are placed in a Randomization group and their visibilities match, every time the page is refreshed the Promotional item will randomly change to another item from that group. The items will appear at the bottom of existing sidebar content by default.

  • If two or more separate Promotional items are placed in a Randomization group but none of their visibilities match, the Promotional items will appear as normal according to their visibility. These items will not change if the page is refreshed.

  • If two or more separate Promotional items are placed in a Randomization group and some, but not all, of their visibility paths do match, then Randomization will take place only on the pages where the visibilities match. On the remaining pages, each Promotional item will appear as normal according to their visibility.

• A Promotional item can be removed from a Randomization group and still be published on its own. Once removed from the group, the Promotional item will behave as normal and not change upon refreshing the page.

• Selecting "Sticky at the top" for a given Promotional item within a Randomization group will affect where that particular Item appears on a page once the page is refreshed.

  For example, if I place four Promotional items with the same visibility in one Randomization group, but make two of them Sticky at the top, the two set to sticky at the top will rotate between themselves upon refreshing the page. The two non "sticky" items appearing at the bottom will also cycle between themselves upon refreshing the page. The sticky at the top Promotional items would never appear at the bottom of the sidebar upon refresh and the Promotional items from the bottom would never appear at the top. Promotional items can only be replaced upon refreshing a page with another Promotional Item that shares its visibility and position on the sidebar of a page.

Other site templates

Conference

The Promotional item content type is not available for this template.

Publication

• Promotional items are optional, and if enabled, will appear on the sidebar of Web pages.

• Promotional items cannot be promoted to the front page.

• Promotional items can have an optional background image.

Single page

The Promotional item content type is not available for this template.