Support for organisations.

Support home

The complete guide to widgets

The following is a reference list of all available widgets and their display properties. If you need help creating, editing or adding widgets to your page, see Widgets Quickstart.

In this guide:

News
RSS
Event list
Elections list and Referenda list
Mailing list
Photo gallery
Signups
Organisation list
Polls
Product catalogue
Personal calendar, personal forums, personal inbox
Contact options
Join organisation
Products
Email address link
Web address link
Organisation ID and organisation name
Sales reports

News

News articles can be added to your site through the admin pages or directly from the news itself following the ‘edit news’ link. Adding articles to different organisations news is very easy and comes with some useful options such as being able to set news to appear in the future, having only members able to read it and also to make the news a direct link to another page (e.g. if you are advertising a Union event the article could link directly to the buy tickets page or to a sign-up page). You can also allow comments which is a great way to get feedback from your members.

How the news is displayed is governed by a widget reached through the edit page link. It is recommended that you write several news articles before you use the widget so you can see what your page will look like when you use the preview section of the widget editor. The order of the news can be changed by dragging and dropping the news articles in the editor or by changing the display order in the widget.

You can alter how your news is displayed:

News Widget Properties

Organisation	Choose the organisation whose news you wish to appear from the membership tree.<</td>
Title	The title for the news widget that appears above the list of news. Use html headings tags.
Wrapper div ID and Wrapper div CSS class	This lets you assign an ID or class to the widget so you can style it in the CSS editor.
Layout options	This gives you flexibility to totally change how your news appears. To find which layout you like best try all the different options and preview. Make sure you have lots of news articles added so you can evaluate the different options.
Items to display	This sets how many articles appear on the page. Obviously if you have two columns this number should divide by two and divide by three if you have three columns.
Rotate News	If this is selected the display order of your news will randomise each time it is selected.
Number of items to pin (If rotate news is on)	If you have selected to randomise your news this lets you make a set number of items sticky so they stay as your top articles.
Start Index	If you are having different displays of the same news list on one page this lets you offset the news that appears in your second list. E.g. you could have one list styled to show your main three news articles and a second widget with different styling for news articles 4 onwards. Select the number of articles you wish to hide in this box.
Show ReadAll	This adds a lnk at the bottom of your news to a system generated page allowing people to read all your news articles (including expired articles if the Include archived article button is ticked).
Display link to RSS feed	This adds an RSS feed to your news so your members can use RSS feed readers to keep track of your news and other organisations can pull your news into their websites.
Image width and height	If required you can change the image size of your news articles though we would recommend keeping the default.
Include archived articles	This displays expired news articles in your ReadAll news list.
Sort by	You can display your news in various different ways. It can be randomised as mentioned above or set to appear as below. pubdate_desc - This is displays news in the order you publish it with latest news at the bottom. pubdate_asc - This the default and displays news in the order you have published it with latest news at the top. subject - This displays news alphabetically by title. display_order - This displays your news in the order you set using the drag and drop function in the ‘edit news’ link
No Items Text	This is the text that is displayed if there are no current news items in the list. Delete the default text if you wish this to be left blank.
Include child organisations	If this option is selected, the news will include all public news items from any child organisations.

RSS

RSS lets you syndicate content automatically from other websites and blogs into your pages. For instance if you could add the bbc sports news into your sports pages or add University news to your homepage. Find the RSS feed and then copy and paste that link into the widget. You can combine multiple feeds into one widget by separating them with the | character.

There are several fields you can edit to determine the length of your feed, how much information is displayed, in what order and you can also assign a CSS class or ID.

Any event lists, news feeds or blogs you produce can have an RSS feed attached.

Event List

This allows you to input an event list into your page. This is only relevant if your organisation has regular events run through your Unions events system.

Elections List and Referenda List

If you are running online elections or referenda for your organisation then this widget lets you put those into your webpage.

Mailing List

If you have created any contact lists through the Groups section of your admin pages, this widget will display them in your site and allow your members to sign-up or un-sign.

Photo Gallery

When your members upload photos they can choose to assign them to your organisation. This will display all those photo galleries. Photos can be commented on and tagged with either free text, your friends or linked to events if they have been run through the Union events system.

Signups

If you are adding signups through your organisations admin pages this widget displays them on your site.

Organisation List

This widget is not relevant to individual organisations but may be used by the website administrator if they want to add more functionality to the site.

Polls

You can display one or many polls on your pages using this widget, allowing your members to vote and view results of how others are voting.

Product Catalogue

This lets you insert a product catalogue into the page. The catalogue needs to be made first through Shop Admin.

Personal Calendar, Personal Forums and Personal Inbox

These widgets show your members calendar, links to forums they may be watching and their inbox that shows all messages sent through the membership system (including messages from your organisation sent through the message centre). If you regularly use signups, forum or send messages it is recommended you include these somewhere in your pages.

Contact options

This adds a box that lets your members select their contact options for your organisation. They can select what email address they want messages from you to go to and whether they allow post or phone communication. By default this is on your homepage.

Join Organisation

This lets you add a box to your page giving people the option to join your society or letting them know when there membership expires if they are already a member. By default this will be on your homepage. If you move this from your homepage it must be well signposted or people will not be able to join your society online.

Products

If your organisation is selling any products or merchandise through the membership system this widget lets you show those products in your webpages.

Email address link

This shows the email address for people to contact your society. By default this is on your homepage. You can edit this in your admin pages under organisation properties.

Web address link

This shows the email address for people to contact your society. By default this is on your homepage. You can edit this in your admin pages under organisation properties.

Organisation ID and Organisation name

This lets you put your organisation name and system ID into your pages and is more of use for site administrators.

Sales Reports

View sales and purchaser reports for your organisation's memberships and products, You can filter information by date range and have the option to export the information to Excel or PDF format.