Configuration settings
The Configuration section of your exhibit consists of several pages where you manage the most important aspects of the exhibit site, including the exhibit title, subtitle, appearance, and the team of users authorized to help build it. To configure settings for an exhibit, you must be logged in as a user with admin privileges.
The General Settings page is divided into several tabs.
The "Basic settings" tab enables you to describe the most fundamental aspects of your exhibit:
- Title
- Every exhibit must have a title. The title is displayed as a large heading in the exhibit site masthead.
- Subtitle
- The subtitle is displayed directly beneath the exhibit title. [Optional]
- Description
- A short description of the exhibit. The description is not displayed within the exhibit itself, but your institution might use it elsewhere, such as in a catalog record. [Optional]
- Contact emails
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If you add at least one email address as a contact, a link labeled "Feedback" is displayed in the very top right of your exhibit. This link displays a form by which users can ask questions or send feedback about the exhibit. Each contact you add will be sent a one-time confirmation email; after confirmation, each contact will receive a copy of any feedback sent by an exhibit user via the Feedback form. [Optional]
To add additional contacts, click the plus icon in an existing contact entry.
- Published
- An exhibit is not accessible to end-users until it is published. Exhibit admin and curator users, however, can view and edit an unpublished exhibit. A common scenario, therefore, is for an exhibit administrator to leave the Published checkbox unchecked until the exhibit has been configured and built out to a state where it is ready to viewed by the public.
This tab enables you to specify an exhibit JSON file (produced via a Spotlight exhibit's Export data action) to use as source data for current exhibit. This action will import all data that was previously exported from an exhibit, including administration and curation settings, browse categories, and curated page content.
You could use this action, for example, to initially populate a fresh exhibit that is based on an existing exhibit, and then customize and add new content to the fresh exhibit. If you have used Export data to save backups or snapshots of an exhibit, you could also use this action to restore that exhibit to a previous state.
The "Export data" tab enables you to save your current exhibit data, including the administration and curation settings, browse category definitions, and curated page content, to a JSON file. This human-readable file could be used as a backup or snapshot of the exhibit data, or as the starting point of a new exhibit (e.g., used as the source file in the Import data action in the new exhibit).
The Delete this exhibit action in this tab removes the entire exhibit. Before deleting an exhibit, be sure to export the exhibit data if there is any chance you might need the exhibit data in the future.
The Appearance settings enable you to define the general look of your exhibit.
An image-based site masthead can strengthen the visual identity of your exhibit and help distinguish it from other exhibits. To add an image that will be used as a background image in the exhibit site masthead:
- Select an option in the "Image source" section to either upload an image or select an image from the exhibit. The image will be displayed in the "Cropped image" section (depending on the size of the image, it might take a few moments for it to be displayed).
- A rectangular cropping box is displayed over the image. You can move and adjust the size of the cropping box to select a slice of the image to use as the masthead's background image. The proportions of the cropping box are fixed so as you adjust one side of the box, the size of the other side will also change.
- Check Show background image in masthead.
- Click Save to save the cropped image and display it as the background image of the site masthead.
You can replace the site masthead image at any time by repeating the steps above. You can choose not to show a background image in the site masthead by unchecking Show background image in masthead.
The site thumbnail image is a small image used as a preview of your exhibit on Twitter Cards associated with your exhibit website, such as when a Tweet that includes your exhibit URL is either expanded in the timeline or viewed on the Tweet’s individual permalink page.
The site thumbnail might also be used for other purposes, depending on how Spotlight is implemented at your institution.
To create a site thumbnail:
- Select an option in the "Image source" section to either upload an image or select an image from the exhibit. The image will be displayed in the "Cropped image" section (depending on the size of the image, it might take a few moments for it to be displayed).
- A rectangular cropping box is displayed over the image. You can move and adjust the size of the cropping box to select a slice of the image to use as the masthead's background image. The proportions of the cropping box are fixed so as you adjust one side of the box, the size of the other side will also change.
- Click Save to save the cropped thumbnail image.
You can replace the site thumbnail image at any time by repeating the steps above.
The main menu of your exhibit always displays a Home link. There are three other potential menu items that, by default, will be displayed in the main menu:
- Curated Features - displayed when at least one feature page is published
- Browse - displayed when at least one browse category is published
- About - displayed when at least one about page is published
You can choose to not display any of these menu items, even when that item would otherwise be displayed, by unchecking the checkbox next to its label.
You can change the text used for the menu item label by clicking its label and entering a new value. For example, you could relabel "Curated Features" to "Themes" by editing its label. (Note that for the "Curated Features" menu item, the menu item label is used only when at least two feature pages have been published; if only a single feature page has been published, the title of that page is used for the menu item label.)
The Home link is always the first item in the main menu. However, you can change the order of the other menu items by dragging and dropping them in your desired order.
Click Save changes to save changes you make to the menu item labels, display order, or visibility status.
Search result pages are displayed in response to a search performed by the user or when the user selects a browse category. By default, all result page types (different page layouts of the result items) are available to the user. However, you can hide one or more page types by deselecting the checkbox associated with a page type. You might, for example, want to hide all result page types except "Gallery" to emphasize the visual aspect of your exhibit.
By default, 10 items are displayed on each page of the search results. To show more items per page by default (the user can always select a different option from the results page), choose one of the other Default results per page options.
Spotlight exhibits can be built by a team of curators. The "Users" page enables you to add additional users that can manage and/or help curate the exhibit.
- Select Add a new user.
- Enter the username of the person you want to add. This is most likely the person's email address but depends on how Spotlight is implemented at your institution.
- Select a role for the new user. If you assign the role of "Admin" to the user, that user will be able to perform any administrative or curatorial action on the site, including creating other users. If you assign the role of "Curator" to the new user, that user will be able to modify the settings on all of the Curation pages and be able to add and edit exhibit content, but won't have access to any of the Administration settings.
- Click Save changes. The new user will now be authorized to sign in to your exhibit.
A user with the role of "Admin" can edit an existing user to update that user's role or to remove that user from the exhibit team. To edit an existing user, click the pencil icon under "Actions."
The Search settings determine how several search-related controls are presented to end-users.
The Display search box option enables you to control whether your exhibit uses the default behavior of displaying a search box in the exhibit site menu bar.
You might choose to turn off the Display search box option if your exhibit has very few items (i.e., search is of limited utility to your users) or if you want to offer a simpler or more directed exhibit experience to your users.
If you choose to turn off the Display search box option you can still include browse categories (named saved searches) in your exhibit, but if you want to save a search that is constructed using search terms, you will need to turn the Display search box option on temporarily so that you can access the search box to perform searches that you can then save to create new browse categories.
If your exhibit site displays a search box, you can give end-users the additional option of restricting a free-text search request to a specific metadata field. By default, all metadata fields are included when a user submits a search request. If you check one or more metadata fields in the Field-based search section, those fields will be add to a dropdown menu in the search box. When a user selects one of these fields when submitting a search request, only records with matches in the selected field will be included in the search results.
By default, a sidebar containing search facets is displayed on the homepage and search result pages of your exhibit website. The Facets tab enables you to control which facets to display in the sidebar, the order in which they are shown, and the labels that are used for each. Uncheck a facet to hide it from the sidebar, click a facet field name to edit its display label, and drag and drop facets to change their order in the sidebar.
To hide the facet sidebar from the homepage, edit the homepage, select the Options tab, and uncheck the Show sidebar option. Click Save changes to save the update and leave edit mode.
The Results tab enables you to control several aspects of the search results page. Use the Result page types checkboxes to control which types of search result pages are available to end-users when viewing search results. Use the Default per page radio buttons to select how many items are shown by default on result pages.
The Sort fields section of the Results tab shows a list of metadata fields that are available to end-users for sorting search result items. You can uncheck fields to hide them from the sort dropdown menu, click a field title to change its display label, and drag and drop fields to change their order in the menu.