Gadgets

A gadget is a little program built into the CMS that provides additional functionality or streamlined access to functionality within Modern Campus CMS.

Each individual user can choose which gadgets to show or hide on their Dashboard or Gadgets sidebar.

Get an overview in this video:

The gadgets sidebar

The Gadgets sidebar can be shown by clicking on the Show Gadgets button  - which looks like a plug - at the top right of the screen.

With the gadgets sidebar open, you can determine which gadgets to show or hide by clicking on the gear icon next to the word 'Gadgets'. Simply check the gadgets you'd like to see. Some gadgets have been preselected.

When you are in Pages view but have not yet selected a specific page, you will only see basic gadgets like 'My checked out content' or 'URL Shortener.' The former is simply a list of pages that are checked out to you, the latter is a handy URL shortener that you can use when inserting links onto a page.

Once you select a page to work on, you'll see the gadgets sidebar expand to include other items, including 'Page Analytics,' 'Link Check' and 'Page Info.'

Page Analytics allows you to see Google Analytics data for that page. You can set a predefined date range (past 7 days, past 30 days, etc.) or a custom date range.

Link Check can help you find broken links on the page. WATCH VIDEO

Page Info provides basic page information, like when the page was last saved or published, or if there are any dependent files like images on the page. WATCH VIDEO

URL Shortener: Quickly get a shortened URL to use in links. WATCH VIDEO

Dependency Tag: Use this gadget to look up information about the files associated with dependency tags, or look up a specific tag. WATCH VIDEO

Once you click the Edit button on a page and open the page editor, you will notice that the gadget sidebar expands again to include gadgets that are specific to page editing.

These gadgets include but are not limited to the following:

Snippets: Allows you to quickly select a snippet to insert onto the page. WATCH VIDEO

YouTube: Allows you to search for a YouTube video from either the Stony Brook University YouTube channel (username sbcomm) or the entire YouTube library.

Images: Allows you to select an images folder and then drag and drop images onto the page from the gadget sidebar. WATCH VIDEO

There are other gadgets available to display, such as Quick Publish and Page Parameters, that you can turn on by clicking the gear icon at the top of the gadgets sidebar.

 

LEARN MORE:  How to configure gadgets on your dashboard or sidebar.