Sidebar Issues
What to do when your sidebar (or item on the homepage, or feature story) has problems.
My Sidebar Won't Publish
The situation:
You edit sidebars on a page in the workspace. It looks good in the
preview, but when you publish, the sidebars don't appear, or haven't
been changed.
Possible issues/solutions:
- Issue: You've only edited the sidebar element, and haven't changed the page itself in any way (by editing the page and/or adding or deleting sidebars). You can see if this is the case by looking at the "Previously Deployed Labels" log at the bottom of the workspace homepage - if it says "0" under "elements deployed," then the system hasn't republished the page. Solution: If the element you edited was SidebarText (i.e. a stand-alone sidebar you added with Add Item > New Text), then you don't actually need to republish - just go to the live page and hit Ctrl-Refresh, and the edited sidebar should appear. If the element you edited was an actual page somewhere else, e.g. a News Update, you'll need to re-publish the workspace that page is in, and then hit Ctrl-refresh on the page with the sidebar.
- Issue: You've added, deleted, or reordered sidebars, but the system is confused and hasn't recognized that the page has changed. This happens on occasion, though usually the system will recognize changing the sidebars as changing the page. Again, you can check whether the system thinks the page has changed by looking at the deployment log and seeing if any elements were published. Solution: Go to the Edit tab of the page, and hit Save without changing anything. Re-saving the page is a fool-proof way to tell the system that it's been modified, even if you don't change anything. Re-publish the workspace and any changes on that page, including sidebars, should now appear.
- Issue: Your sidebar references unpublished content in a workspace. If you add a sidebar using Add Item > Existing content, and choose an item that has not yet been published, no sidebar linking to that item will appear. To see if this is the issue, check to make sure that the item the sidebar links to is live - one quick and dirty way to do this is to use the search box in the top right: if an item is live, a search for that item's title will show two results, the workspace version and the public version. If only the workspace version shows up, then that item probably hasn't been published. Solution: If the item is in another workspace and hasn't been published, publish the other workspace, and the sidebar should go live immediately. Hit Ctrl-refresh on the page with the sidebar on the live site to see the new sidebar.
- Issue: Your sidebar references content that's not in a public folder. Usually this isn't an issue - if, when adding a new sidebar through Add Item > Existing Content, you choose an item in either the public website folder, a workspace, or within Resources, the system will understand and link to the appropriate item. However, if you pick content in a Private Sandbox or Archived Items folder, the system knows that this is not public content and will not show a sidebar that links to it on the public site. To see if this is the issue, put your cursor over the linked title in the sidebar (in the admin site). You should be able to see the URL that this sidebar links to - if the URL contains a folder called "private" or "archive", this is probably the issue. Solution: If the item is in a Private or Archive folder, delete the sidebar and use Add Item > Existing Content to choose the correct version of the item, which should be in a workspace or in the public website folder. You might want to delete the item in the Private sandbox, or change the title to include "(private)" or something similar, to avoid confusion in the future.
My Sidebar Link is Missing/Messed Up
The situation:
You add a new sidebar to a page, but when you preview, the link on
the title of the sidebar is either missing or wrong (e.g. it asks you
to log in).
Possible issues/solutions:
- You added your new sidebar with Add Item > New Text, but didn't select the Feature viewlet on the sidebar. Only the Feature viewlet provides the automatic link - other viewlets (Orange Text, Pumpkin Text, etc) just show the title with no link. This could also be the issue if you selected an existing Sidebar Text item using Add Item > Existing Content. Solution: Open the Edit Item menu and select Feature in the list of viewlets. (NB: at the time of writing, you may have issues here - if so, see "I Can't Change Viewlets" below.)
- You added your sidebar with Add Item > New Text and selected the Feature viewlet, but forgot to add a Target URL in the Edit Sidebar screen. This will cause the system to try to link directly to the Sidebar Text item itself, which on the public site or in the preview will prompt the user for a login. Solution: Select Edit Item > Edit to edit the Sidebar. Add a Target URL and you should be fine. Conversely, if what you want is the brown color with no link, select Edit Item and choose Brown Text in the list of viewlets (see changing viewlets, below).
- You added your sidebar with Add Item > Existing Content (choosing existing content like a News Update or Press Release), but selected some viewlet other than Feature. When you preview, no link shows up. As noted above, only the Feature viewlet makes the automatic link. Solution: Open the Edit Item menu and select Feature in the list of viewlets (see changing viewlets, below).
I Can't Change the Viewlet for My Sidebar
The situation:
You try to change the viewlet on a sidebar, but you get a system
error ("IndexError: 0").
The issue:
This is a known bug, and hopefully it will be fixed soon. In the
meantime, the issue is that you can only change the viewlet
once, and after that you will get this error.
The solution:
- Delete the sidebar by selecting Edit Item > Delete. Please note that this only removes the sidebar from the page; it does not delete the content, even if you created it using Add Item > New Text.
- Select Add Item > Existing Content. Locate the item you deleted by searching for the title. Select it and hit Okay.
- Once the sidebar is back in place, use the Edit Item menu to select the viewlet you want.
My Photo Looks Wrong When I Hit "Enlarge Image"
The situation:
You add a Photo sidebar, but when you preview and hit the Enlarge
Image link, the Photo is too big or too small.
The issue:
The file you see in the Enlarge Image window is the exact file you
(or another user) uploaded. If it's the wrong size, that's because no
one sized it correctly before uploading.
Possible solutions:
- If you want to have the popup window with a correctly-sized image, you or someone else will need to resize the file to the appropriate dimensions [XXX: link to image sizing info]. Once this has been done, you can choose Edit Item > Edit to upload a new image. Tip: if you change the aspect ratio (i.e. width-to-height ratio) of the image as well as the size, it'll look odd in the sidebar. To fix this, change the Short Name when you upload the resized image - long story, but basically it fools the caching system into thinking this is a different file.
- If you just want to suppress the popup window entirely (e.g.
because the file you have is too small to look good), open the Edit
Item menu and select the Photo viewlet.