Adjust settings that influence how the page is displayed or used within the UBCMS. In most cases, the changes are immediate.
Last reviewed: October 4, 2023
Please be careful when adjusting these settings. Some changes may have unexpected results, including affecting pages on other sites.
Properties has seven tabs: Basic, Advanced, Scheduling, Image, Background, Stewardship and Social.
These settings can be accessed while editing a page in the Edit Console (click the Equalizer icon then select Open Properties), or from the Sites Console (select the page then click Properties in the Command Menu).
This tab controls the main settings for the page. The Title should reflect what you entered when you created the page. You can then make additional adjustments as noted below, although no further changes are required.
Power tip: Collate related pages under a common parent page and add a set of suitable tags to that parent. Then when you create a new page under that parent, you can copy the parent tags to the new page so you do not have to remember which tags.
Please pay attention to what gets copied over from the parent page in case the tags are unsuitable for this child page and to prevent it accidentally appearing in the wrong feeds.
This button enables all of six 'hide in' settings, e.g. 'Hide in Lists'. You can then deselect and of them as desired.
When viewed in the browser tab, search results, or bookmarks, UBCMS page titles will always end with ' - University at Buffalo'.
This area allows modification of additional settings and is mostly intended for developers.
Please be careful with these options. Some, such as Vanity URL, can impact other websites if not set carefully.
Without extra provisions such as server-level redirects, the Alias setting will cause every page under it to have two URLs. This can be bad for SEO and can greatly complicate Google analytics.
Jumbo Top Nav settings only work when Jumbo Top Navigation is turned on in the site header's Top Navigation component, and only if this page has child pages.
No one is permitted to set a Vanity URL outside their own site. For authorization, contact us.
Analytics codes should be placed in your site's home page Properties, where they will then apply to your entire site. As an alternative, they can instead be placed in your site's header or footer (in an HTML Snippet), but this is less recommended and more likely to cause confusion later.
Changes to your own site's pages and shared content update the server cache when they are published, but this does not apply to content that is pulled in from external sources; e.g. news stories in university-wide shared coontent. Changes to pages listed here will trigger the publishers to flush this page from the server cache so the latest version is immediately visible on the published site. Otherwise it may not appear until the next day. Flushing one page of a site generally flushes all pages of the site.
A Flush Trigger is used to ensure the Emergency Alert Banner component displays simultaneously on all applicable sites.
This option is only available to those with Publisher permissions. For others, it will be grayed out.
Using these settings, Publishers can control when content displays in a list, and schedule page activation and deactivation (compare to Publish/Unpublish Later).
Feature Time
On/Off Time
If either of the On/Off times is in the past, you must activate the page to push the modifications over to the live site.
Images changes are saved immediately, regardless of whether you choose 'OK' or 'Cancel' for the dialog box.
Alt Text is generally required under state and federal accessibility laws. Read more about Alternative Text.
The tool approximates how your original image will be cropped for desktop, mobile and teaser (thumbnail) views, allowing adjustments to better represent your desired focus in these contexts.
The interface responds to the main Image Size setting. Set the Image Size, then drag the Adaptive Crop cross-hairs to the center of your desired focus, and adjust the three sliders as desired to highlight the three zones.
The interface approximates the final displays. After you make your adjustments, we suggest you preview the results (e.g. using the mobile device emulator). And if you realize the List thumbnail is not working out as desired, consider also loading an image into page Properties that is cropped exactly as desired, where it will be used preferentially for teasers.
Adjust these optional settings to guide future authors in maintaining this page. These details will be visible in Page Reports.
When UBCMS pages are shared to social media, the resulting post pulls the page's title, descriptive text plus an image. These will be pulled from the current page but can be set specially in the Properties Social tab. The image is defined by the 'Social image from' setting.
If the 'Social image from' setting is not defined for the current page, the social image is determined using the Selection Rules below. (Regular pages and Shared Content are treated slightly differently.)
* Alt text is required by New York State policy for most images and is always required if the image has a link or if the zoom feature is enabled, otherwise a caption can serve instead. See webaim.org for tips on writing alt text. A period and space are added to the end of any text that does not already end with punctuation (not visible in the dialog box) to increase clarity when a screen reader reads the page. Adding just blanks or a carriage return will be blocked.
To meet accessibility requirements, every page must have an H1 heading (e.g. using the Title component).
Sometimes it is preferable for aesthetic reasons not to show the main heading, especially on a home page. In such cases, a Properties setting 'Use Site Title as H1' adds the page's title into the page's source code, where it is not visibly displayed but is available for assistive technology such as screen readers.
Authors are responsible for any custom adjustments they make to their UBCMS pages. This includes code added using External Embed or HTML Snippet components, or introduced through page Properties.
Best practice: only a developer should modify the standard UBCMS code or styling, and any adjustments should be made thoughtfully, with regard for accessibility and long term maintenance.
Alternative text ('alt text') is a short, written description that describes the appearance, content and/or function of an image on a webpage. Adding alt text is a best practice for all your UBCMS images and is required for accessibility so users will understand what they are not seeing.
Purely decorative images (that do not convey content or have a function on the page) can instead be set as "This image does not require Alt text" in some components, which also nullifies alt text that was previously entered.
Alt text is required in these contexts:
* When the image is a link, starts an animation or video, or is a navigational element, alt text should indicate its function, not the image's content (i.e., "watch video ABC" and not "screenshot from video ABC"). Screen readers will treat this image as a standard link.
Alt text can be added to images in Assets. This is required for images that are then used in the Photo Gallery component, while it can also be used as an alternate source for Alt text in some components (e.g. the Photo setting 'Get Alt text from Assets').
Best practice:
Text Over Photo provides an accessible alternative to using images that have embedded text.
> Learn more about the Text Over Photo component.