AU Spotlight

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Adds context-sensitive three-column footer to every page

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Recommended Releases
Elgg Release Download Date Links
1.122.0.0 (10.27 kB)2015-Oct-23
1.112.0.0 (10.27 kB)2015-Oct-23
1.102.0.0 (10.27 kB)2015-Oct-23
1.92.0.0 (10.27 kB)2015-Oct-23
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AU Spotlight adds a context-sensitive footer to Elgg sites. You can use this for many purposes, such as to provide site information, context-sensitive help, announcements, etc, customized for different pages. You can also provide different footer content for logged-in and not-logged-in users. It revives and extends the spotlight that was found in some earlier Elgg versions.

It uses Elgg's contexts to identify which page you are on. You don't have to be an Elgg expert to use this but it does help if you know a bit about contexts - see the community help pages for more info on that. If you don't want to delve into that, in many cases you can guess the context from the URL. Common contexts include groups, group, blog, bookmarks, thewire, file, pages, photos, profile, dashboard, etc. If you cannot guess, the plugin provides a tool to identify contexts for your site, optionally displaying the context for each page to admin users.

Features

- Provides admin-configurable three-column footer on every site page

- Optionally, provides different footers for logged-in and not-logged-in users

- Different footers can be added for any context

- Option to restrict specified contextual footers to only logged-in users

- Admin-only feature to allow admins to discover the context of any page

- Responsive (resizes to fit mobile displays)

Using the plugin

Put it in the mod folder and enable it.

You must configure the footers using the plugin's admin settings - by default it contains no text at all and the footer will appear blank until you enter some. The plugin provides whatever rich text editor your site uses and can use all of its features so you can add pictures etc too if you like (make sure the permissions are set correctly!).

Make sure that you enter some content for every column for the default footer to prevent odd formatting errors (notably odd when the first or second column are left blank).

Optionally, provide different default text for logged-in users. if you leave any field blank then the main default text will be shown instead. If all that you need is a single footer across the site, everything is now set up and ready to go.

If you want context-sensitive footers...

Start adding contexts - you can add as many as you like, though you can only add one at a time (a similar approach to the default Elgg editor for optional menu items). If you are not sure where to start or which contexts relate to which pages, there is a checkbox that, when checked, shows the context to admin users for every page. Check the box and save the settings, then just visit the pages for which you'd like to add a custom footer and make a note of of their contexts. Beware that some contexts (e.g. 'group') pop up in more than one place and that this plugin cannot distinguish between them, nor is it particularly smart at recognizing every context in the system, though it should identify most correctly.

To delete a context, just remove the contents of the context field - associated footer text will be deleted when you save it.

If you leave any fields blank, the default (or logged-in default) will be displayed instead.

Each context has a checkbox that allows you to show it only to logged-in users. This can be very useful if you are using it to provide help for your logged-in users.

 

 Produced for and with the support of Athabasca University, Canada's Open University

Jon Dron

Prof at Athabasca University

Stats

  • Category: Themes
  • License: GNU General Public License (GPL) version 2
  • Updated: 2015-10-23
  • Downloads: 2094
  • Recommendations: 6

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