Interactive carousel of teasers to a series of pages from your site.
Last reviewed: November 27, 2023
This component initially has one List tab. An additional tab appears after the Build list using option is chosen.
Add a title and text to describe your Full Width Carousel, plus a series of links to pages on your site. The linked pages should be in Shared Content, and built using the Highlight Template. Each slide will then showcase that page’s title (which links to the page’s URL), description or introductory text and main image.
This component works best for 6+ items. If you run fewer, it will have open space at the end and not look good.
YouTube videos are playable, provided you use the Shared Content pages built using the Highlight Template.
PNG images will blend with the background color. This is a natural feature of these transparent images.
For best performance, please use this component with Shared Content pages created using the Highlight Template.
This component is intended to link to shared content hosted on another page. The linked content CANNOT be hosted on your home page. If you use the default hosting setting, the home page will simply refresh, and the linked content will not be displayed.
> Read more about use on a home page
Click the wrench icon to 'configure' these settings.
You have options of providing title only, description only, or title with description.
Title: Type a descriptive title that will be shown on the published version.
Text: Type a description that will be shown on the published module. A Rich Text Editor allows some formatting.
Background color: Choose between gray (default) and white.
Here you will choose the type of list, as well as additional advanced settings.
Build list using: This drop-down menu asks how you want to build your list. You have the option to build it using:
Host Page: (where applicable) Set the preferred page to display your list items. If blank, the current page will be used.
New window: Select so each clicked page is displayed in a new browser window. When selected, an additional icon will follow the linked text on your published page, to alert visitors they are about to be taken to a new browser tab, and possibly leave the current website.
Note: For accessibility reasons, be careful about sending your visitor to a new tab. This behavior may be unexpected and disorienting. (> Learn more about link accessibility.)
Order by: Here are some of the ways in which you can order your list. Not all appear in the dropdown. Others may be available on request -- contact the DCT Help Team for details.
Reverse order: Check the box to select whether you would like to inverse the order selected in the Order by field.
Using server caching, 'random' content is shuffled to appear fresh for each visitor, but the entire original content collection is not redrawn each time it is presented. Instead, the server randomly pulls a sample of the original content after each cache refresh, and then shuffles that sample for your visitors. If you need to show the entire collection, take advantage of the 'show all' feature when it is available, and if your business needs require a truly random reassortment, please contact the DCT Help Team.
Tip: If you want all items to appear in the list, do not leave the Limit field blank. Instead, enter a value that you anticipate will meet your needs; for example, 200, 500, etc. (The News Center has used 9999 as a 'very large number' because their archives date to 1990.)
To avoid confusion, every unique link on a page must have unique link text. It is not hard to compose comprehensive text for manually coded links, but links that are generated automatically by lists and carousels must also be different, which takes more planning.
Also consider Call to Action, Button, and Tabs components, as well as the pagination and "see all" links in the Event and News List components which may have the same labels and appear more than once on a page. (Some of these have additional label settings that can help prevent this redundancy.)
Best practice: when creating shared content pages that will be used in lists, use distinct titles, or set the Navigation Title in the page Properties so none of your pages have the same title if they are displayed together. Also take advantage of additional label settings in other components when you will have several on a page.
Alternative text ('Alt text') is a best practice for all your UBCMS images and is often required for accessibility so screen readers can tell visually disabled users what they are not seeing.
Images displayed as teasers in lists require Alt text. Normally this is supplied in the original listed pages, often in shared content, and in some cases, in the metadata of the referenced images in Assets.
Best practice, Alt text should be added whenever an image is uploaded into Assets.
Link text should describe where the link will take the user in a manner that is appropriate to the context on your page and also the target page. This is also true for images that act as links.
Best practice: Avoid meaningless standalone phrases like "click here", "see all" and "learn more".
Links in many components can be set to open in a new browser window (or tab). The user can thus explore the new page, while preserving the source page (and your website) in the original tab. However, this can be confusing if the user does not realize a new tab has opened. They may become lost, confused how they arrived on that new page and unable to return to your site.
Best practice: let the user control their experience and stay in the same tab, with two notable exceptions:
The user should control carousels, slideshows and video, so they are not confused by unexpected behavior and to provide enough time for them to process each segment.
Best practice:
These recommendations are supported by default in UBCMS carousel, slideshow and video components. Please comply with this best practice if you embed external video or animations.
If you wish to deliver news stories and other mixed shared content content consistently and effectively through a home page slide deck, we recommend the following best practice steps.
Tips for building a list 'Build by Search' query - These should apply to all UBCMS components that provide a 'build by search' option (e.g. List Builder, News List, Event List, Full Width Carousel and the Horizontal and Vertical Slide Decks).
Please note, special characters (e.g. "&", "|", "-") are not permitted in a search query and are automatically removed.
You can also use the search option to list tagged pages. And the above logical operators allow fairly advanced logic for tagged pages that is not possible using other tools.