Manage static pages¶

Static pages and security configuration¶

As of version 2.2, AtoM now has advanced configuration settings that will allow a system administrator to enable htmlpurifier on static pages. htmlpurifier is:

…a standards-compliant HTML filter library written in PHP. HTML Purifier will not only remove all malicious code (better known as XSS) with a thoroughly audited, secure yet permissive whitelist, it will also make sure your documents are standards compliant, something only achievable with a comprehensive knowledge of W3C’s specifications.

By default, htmlpurifier is not turned on in AtoM, to allow a broad use of HTML and inline CSS on static pages. System administrators interested in enabling all possible security settings and mitigating the risk of XSS-based attack vectors can enable the library by altering the config/app.yml file. For more information, see:

• config/app.yml
• Security

When the configuration is set to true, htmlpurifier will limit the available html elements to the following:

Tags allowed

'div', 'span', 'p',
'h1', 'h2', 'h3', 'h4', 'h5', 'h6',
'strong', 'em',
'abbr[title]', 'acronym', 'address',
'blockquote', 'cite', 'code',
'pre', 'br',
'a[href]', 'img[src]',
'ul', 'ol', 'li',
'dl', 'dt', 'dd',
'table', 'tr', 'td', 'th',
'tbody', 'thead', 'tfoot',
'col', 'colgroup', 'caption',
'b', 'i', 'tt',
'sub', 'sup', 'big', 'small', 'hr'

Attributes allowed

'class', 'title', 'src', 'href'

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Edit an existing static page¶

In AtoM, static pages, that is both the Home page and the About page can be edited by authenticated (i.e. logged-in) administrators to reflect your own institution’s or network’s requirements.

This section contains instructions on how to edit static pages in AtoM. There are two ways to edit static pages - doing so via the Quick links menu in the main menu and selecting either “Home” or “About” from the drop-down menu is the easiest, but to accommodate different workflows, these static pages can also be edited by clicking the the Admin and selecting “Static pages” from the drop-down menu. This second option will route you to a “List” page, where all static pages in the application will be listed. Navigate to the static page you wish to edit by clicking on the blue menu name. Below are instructions to edit to the Home page and the About page.

For more information on navigating in AtoM, see Navigation in AtoM.

Add a new static page¶

In AtoM, new static pages can be added at any time by any authenticated (i.e. logged-in) administrator. Similar to both the Home page and the About page, you may wish to add a new static page in order to include permanent, or “timeless” content to your webpage. Static pages may be customized to offers users instructions or help in navigating the site (i.e. a “Help” page), provide contact information (i.e. a “Contact Us” page), or feature website content, categories, and/or contributors.

To add a new static page in AtoM:

1. Click the the Admin in the header bar and select “Static pages” from the drop-down menu.

2. You will be directed to a “List pages” page, where all static pages, including the Home page and the About page will be listed.

3. Click on the Add new button in the button block to be directed to the edit page for your new static page.

4. On loading, the edit page will display blank “Title”, Slug and “Content” fields. Add data as required.

   Tip

   The slug indicates the word, or sequence of words that will be visible to users in the URL link when they are navigating on a specific static page (e.g.: the slug in the URL www.artefactual.com/help is /help). The slug should be indicative of the content of that specific static page.

   When creating a new static page, the slug field can either be customized or left blank. If you choose to customize the slug, make the slug all lowercase, keep it short, and avoid accented characters (e.g.: é, ñ, û) and punctuation (e.g.: !,``;``, ...). If you leave the field blank, AtoM will automatically generate a slug based on the “Title” you have indicated for your page (e.g.: If your “Title” is About Us, the slug for that static page will automatically be generated as …/about-us). Note that AtoM will automatically replace all accented characters with letters from the English alphabet and punctuation will either be removed or replaced by a dash “-” or percent-encoding (e.g.: If your “Title” is Instructions & More, the slug for that static page will automatically be generated as …/instructions%26more or …/instructions-more, unless otherwise indicated). The slug will also appear in the once blank “Slug” field and can be viewed when switching from the view page to the edit page of that static page.

   Warning

   A slug cannot be duplicated once it has been generated in AtoM. If you duplicate a slug, AtoM will automatically generate a “-2 (or the next subsequent number) at the end of the slug to distinguish it from the other one in the same name (e.g.: Two slugs titled information will result in the second of the two becoming information-2). If you remove an AtoM automatically generated slug from the slug field of a static page you’ve created, AtoM will not re-generate the original slug, regardless of whether or not the “Title” of your page has changed; rather, it will generate a new slug in the form of a series of letters and numbers. This should be avoided, as it creates confusion because it does not accurately indicate the content of that static page. To avoid this, simply enter a custom slug.

5. You can quit the creation process at any time by clicking the “Cancel” button in the button block; any changes made will not be saved. Note that simply navigating away from the page by any other means, without first clicking “Save” will also result in no new static page being created.

6. When you are finished creating your new static page, click the “Save” button in the button block.

You will be directed to the view page of the new static page where you can view your changes. The page can be edited again at any time.

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Add links to a new static page¶

Once a new static page has been created, a new link must also be created in order to allow users to navigate to the new static page. You can do this by either creating a link within one of the default static pages or by clicking Admin > Menus and clicking the Add new button in the button block or by linking the new static page to an existing menu.

This example shows a newly created “Contact Us” static page that has been added as a menu under the Quick links parent menu:

Here is the result of the above:

The information which will be needed when linking a new static page:

1. Name: an internal name which is not visible to users.
2. Label: how you wish the name of the page to appear in the menu.
3. Parent: which menu you wish the page to be linked from.
4. Path: in the format staticpage/index?slug=yourSlug. yourSlug is the slug you either created or had AtoM generate automatically for you when the page was created.
5. Description: an optional area to describe the purpose of the page.

For more information on managing menus in AtoM, see: Manage Menus.

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Add a custom sidebar menu with links to your static pages¶

If you have certain static pages that you would like to be prominent and readily available to users throughout the application, you can also create a custom Static pages menu. This involves working with both static pages, and the Manage Menus module.

When nodes are added as children to the staticPagesMenu in Admin > Manage menus, They become visible in the following places:

• On the homepage’s left-hand side, above the Browse and Popular this week links
• On all archival description pages, below the treeview (or below the Quick search menu, when the full-width treeview is in use - see: Treeview type for more information)
• As a sidebar menu on the left side of all static pages.

You can also give the new sidebar menu a custom heading. The following instructions will use the example of adding links to help pages, created using the static pages module.

To add a custom sidebar menu wtih links to your static pages:

1. Prepare the static pages you would like to use in the menu items. If you haven’t created them yet, see above, Add a new static page for guidance on creating new static pages, and below, Styling static pages for hints on how to use HTML and simple inline-CSS to style them.
2. You will need to know the slug you have assigned to each static page you want to add to the new menu - you can either return to the edit page of your static page, or navigate to the view page, and look at the URL to identify the permalink (the unique part of the URL - for example, on the webpage http://www.example.com/about-us, about-us would be the slug. For further information, see Notes on slugs in AtoM).
3. Navigate to Admin > Menus and scroll down until you see the staticPagesMenu node near the bottom. Click on it to enter edit mode.

4. You can now edit the “Label” field value, to give your new menu a custom header. In this example, we’ll call our new menu “Help pages.”

5. Save the page by clicking the “Save” button in the button block at the bottom of the page. Note: you may be prevented from saving the first time - AtoM will prompt you for a Path value, even though none was there before. You can simply enter a / slash character in the field, and then click “Save.”

6. AtoM will return you to the Manage menus page. Now we’ll add our static page(s) to this menu. Click the “Add new” button in the button block located at the bottom of the Manage menus page.
7. AtoM will open a new edit page for a menu item. For further information on working with menus, see: Manage Menus.
8. Fill out the menu edit page with the information about your static page:
   • Name: This is an internal name used by AtoM, that will not be seen by AtoM users. We suggest using camelCase as part of a naming convention. In this example, we’ve called our menu node searchHelp.
   • Label: This is what public users will see in your sidebar menu. Note that the name does not need to be the same one you’ve given your static page - in our example, we’ve named our static page “Searching in AtoM,” but we’ve decided to call the menu link “Search Help.”
   • Parent: For your new menu node to show up in the sidebar menu, you must choose -staticPagesMenu from the drop-down list
   • Path: This is where we’ll use the slug from your static page. We could just add the slug directly, but to make the routing more reliable, add it as follows: staticpage/index?slug=your-slug-here, where your-slug-here is the slug you gave your static page.
   • Description This is not visible to public users - you can add a description to remind yourself and other administrators how and why this node was added to the Menus page, if you like.

9. You can quit the create process at any time, by clicking the “Cancel” button in the button block at the bottom of the page. Note that navigating away from the page without first clicking “Save” will also result in a loss of all your changes.
10. When you are satisfied with the information entered, click the “Save” button located in the button block at the bottom of the page. AtoM will redirect you to the Manage menus page.
11. You can repeat steps 6-10 as needed, to add other static pages to your new menu.
12. You should now see your new sidebar menu on the home page, archival description view pages, and when viewing any other static page. Some examples images are included below.

Examples of the Static pages menu in use¶

On the homepage:

On an archival description (sidebar treeview):

On an archival description (full-width treeview):

On annother static page:

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Styling static pages¶

Basic styling of static pages can be achieved by including HTML and inline CSS code to the “Content” field. There are plenty of online tutorials and resources out there for instruction on HTML and inline CSS use, but a few basic examples commonly employed by AtoM users have been included here as an example.

See below for instructions on how to create and edit:

• Headers and subtitles
• Hyperlinks
• Images
• Boxes and dividers

Headers and subtitles¶

To increase the size of a heading or subtitle, wrap the relevant text in <h3> </h3> tags, like so:

<h3>For more information, please contact</h3>.

This will produce the following results:

For larger headings, use smaller numbers, such as <h2> or <h1>. Similarly, for smaller headers, use <h4> or <h5>. To bold, italicize or underline headers and subtitles, simply wrap the relevant text in <strong></strong> for bold, <em> </em> for italics, or <u> </u> for underline. Typing <strong>Artefactual Systems Inc.</strong> will produce the following results:

Hyperlinks¶

To create external links on an AtoM static page, wrap the text you would like to act as a link in a hyperlink <a> </a> tag, and include the web address to which you would like the link to point, using the href=" " attribute - the http address would go in the quotations. Remember to close the element after the text you want to link.

For example, to include a link in the “Contact Us” page, the code would appear as such:

Website: <a href="https://www.accesstomemory.org/en/">AtoM : Open Source
Archival Description Software</a>

The above code would appear like this on the static page:

Alternately, instead of HTML, you can also use AtoM’s custom syntax for adding hyperlinks - for more information, see: Add custom hyperlinks to text fields.

Images¶

If you have access to the server on which your AtoM instance is located (i.e., if you are hosting it yourself, or can ask the host provider to include a file for you), you can place images in a directory on the host server, and use a local URL to point to them. Images can then be used via the HTML <img> image element, where the src=" " attribute points to the path of the image, similar to how the hyperlinks are used above. For example, if you wanted an image of email, named “contact-image.jpg” included on your static “Contact Us” page, the code might look like this:

``<img src=".../path/to/contact-image.jpg">``

…where /path/to represents the internal URL path to the location of contact-image.jpg on your host server, or the path to a web-accessible image.

To center the image, you can wrap the <img> image element in a <div> element, with a text-center" class, like this:

<div class="text-center"><img src=".../path/to/contact-image.jpg"></div>

You can also reuse some of the existing image classes from Bootstrap, to further style your images. For example, you can round the corners with the img-rounded class:

<img class="img-rounded" src="../path/to/my-bunny-image.jpg">

Produces:

Make an image circular using the img-circle bootstrap class:

<img class="img-circle" src="../path/to/my-bunny-image.jpg">

Produces:

Or give your images a frame, like on our digital object browse page, using the img-polaroid class:

<img class="img-polaroid" src="../path/to/my-bunny-image.jpg">

Produces:

Tip

Resuing existing Bootstrap CSS classes is a good way to style elements when you have the htmlpurifier setting engaged - see above, Static pages and security configuration for more information.

Boxes and dividers¶

You can add styled boxes around text by wrapping content in the HTML <div> element, and then using inline CSS to modify the appearance of the box. For colors, use the HTML or RGB values for the color you would like to use, rather than generic names such as “red,” “blue,” etc. - most browsers support a limited pallette of colors using names such as this, and the results may be inconsistent across browsers. There are many free HTML color wheels available that allow you to choose a color and copy its HTML# or RGB values; for example: http://www.colorpicker.com/

For a small centered box with a green color, you might use code such as this:

<div style="width:600px; margin-left:right; margin-right:right; padding: 5px;
background-color:#39BF34; border:none;">Here is a list of ways that we can be
contacted with any questions or concerns you may have:</div>

This is how the box will appear:

Note

The above example will not work if you have htmlpurifier engaged in AtoM. For more information, see the section above, Static pages and security configuration for more information. The examples below, reusing existing Bootstrap classes, will work even when htmlpurifier is engaged.

Another example of this is the light yellow box that appears on the AtoM demo’s “Welcome” static page warning users that the data will reset every hour. This yellow box is reusing an existing style class from the Bootstrap CSS framework that AtoM uses - you can make use of existing Bootstrap classes to help with styling, like so:

<div style="alert">Welcome message appears here</div>

And here is the result:

Other Bootstrap alert classes that can be used to style containers include alert-success, alert-info, and alert-danger:

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