Follow Site blocks in the WMS


OVERVIEW

Target audience: Site Administrators, Site Managers

The Follow Site block in the Web Management System (WMS) provides a set of icons that allows visitors to easily follow the site's RSS feed and/or social media services (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and others).

example of follow site block

In this article:

By default, the Follow Site block will appear in a site's footer, beneath the Contact Information and Address, and above the McGill logo. An additional Follow Site block can be configured from the Block admin (/admin/structure/block) to appear on specific regions on specific pages.

Add links to the Follow Site block

  1. Click Configuration from the site administration interface. Then click Follow under Web Services.

    Note: There are two panels. The top panel includes the services that have been configured to display, the bottom panel shows services that are available, but have not been configured to display.

    • By default, all new sites include the URL for the site's RSS feed (rss.xml) in the top panel.
    • Whenever a URL is entered for a social media service listed in the bottom panel, it moves up to the top panel. Similarly, if a URL is removed, the service returns to the bottom panel.

  2. Enter the URL of each social media service.
    • Use the corresponding field for each service.
    • Apart from the This site (RSS) field, all links should be entered starting with https://
  3. If a link to a page is needed but does not belong to any of the listed services, use the More field (located at the bottom of the list).
  4. To change the order in which the icons will appear in the rendered block, click next to a service to move it to a different position within the list. An asterisk will appear next to the name.
  5. Click Submit when finished.
  6. The social media icons will appear in the site's footer.

Edit links in the Follow Site block

Once the links appear in the top panel, further changes can be made.

Remove an icon

Any social media links that have been added can be removed by deleting the URL and clicking Submit. This includes the RSS feed icon.

  1. Go to /admin/config/services/follow and delete the URL. In the case of the RSS feed, delete the text rss.xml.
  2. After clicking Submit, the field returns to the bottom panel which contains the other unused fields.

Configure and edit the additional Follow Site block

  1. Any customization made to the Follow Site block will also be applied to an additional block in the Block Administration page on /admin/structure/block. If the block has not already been configured to appear in a region, it will be found in the Disabled section.
  2. Click on the configure link and follow the instructions on how to position blocks as described in Manage blocks in the WMS.

    Note: It is not possible to modify the Follow Site block specific options for Alignment and Icon Style.

  3. After placing the additional Follow Site block in a region, the links can be accessed easily for editing. Mouse over the upper right-hand corner of the block, click on the gear to display a menu, and then click on Edit Follow Links.

references

ADDITIONAL REFERENCES: