Hopefully Helpful Tips on New Site

chaselton

When I was two or three my dad caught me unscrewing a lightbulb from a lamp. After telling me to stop (which I didn't) he asked me what I was doing. My response? "I want to see where the light comes from."

This pretty much defined my relationship with stuff that interested me, going forwards. Take it apart, pick at it, see what works and how it does. So when the new site design rolled out yesterday, that's exactly what I did.

I found out a lot. Mostly that this new design will make my life much easier. I thought it would be helpful to...when I have time...post what I've found here so that others can benefit.

I'm not sure if I'll add multiple tips in this one thread, or post them separately. I'll see how it goes and adjust accordingly.

chaselton

That Grey Bar
Or, as I'm calling it: The Management Bar.

This appears when logged in to your account and can, as far as I can tell, get you to anywhere you need to go.

To customize your current layout or choose a new site design to customize or apply:


To organize the content of your site or add a quick organizational element...i.e. page, folder or gallery


To upload to a new or existing gallery


NOTE: Galleries are NOT the same as Folders

To manage your account, profile, get to your homepage or log out:



Key Note: The Management Bar does NOT appear to the visitors of your site.

Logged In Page:


Visitor View


Next Up: Where The Hell Are Site-Wide Settings

chaselton

Where The Hell Are Site-Wide Settings?!?
In the new site settings, you can configure stuff that will apply to the entire site...folders, galleries, pages, etc...by navigating to what I call (for lack of better terminology) the Site Design Node. Which looks like this:



Within this node there's the top panel with locations and the bottom panel with three tabs: Content, Theme and Layout. Haven't come up with spiffy names for any of this yet.

On the Locations panel (hey, there's one!) within the Site Design node, click on Entire Site.



NOTE: You'll see something different depending on what what site design template you're currently using. The screenshot above was from a mod of Dash.

Here's the same screenshot with a Title content block (dragged from the Content tab) to the Header section



As mentioned earlier, stuff applied here gets applied to the entire site (unless overridden by customizations lower in the hierarchy which will be (hopefully) later post). Since I already have a title on my homepage, when I add a title to my header while the Entire Site node is selected, here's what happens:



BONUS: There are visual guides for which content blocks are applied at different levels...helpful when working on different areas of your site.

Red appears to be for the Entire Site location:


Blue appears to be for the Homepage location:


There are probably others but I haven't found or seen them yet.

Next Up: Surprise! Or: I Have No Idea