Widget Tag

++SPOTLIGHT++

What It Does

The ++SPOTLIGHT++ widget displays the image and link to the spotlight article for the homepage and main section pages. The spotlight article is the featured article for the site or section, the content that you want to highlight most on the page.

Big Medium selects the spotlight article by using the most recent article (by article publication date) from the site or section that also meets the following requirements:

• The article is assigned to a section that allows articles to be linked from the homepage (see the help page for "section status" for more info).
• The article is allowed to appear on the homepage and as the homepage spotlight, or on the main section page (see the help page for article display preferences for more info).
• The article has a spotlight image loaded in the article editor (this is only required if you select the "Require spotlight image to display spotlight article" in the site's widget settings).

The ++SPOTLIGHT++ widget combines the markup of the ++SPOTLIGHTIMAGE++ and ++SPOTLIGHTTEXT++ widgets. If you prefer to use only an image link, use ++SPOTLIGHTIMAGE++. If you prefer to use only a text link, use ++SPOTLIGHTTEXT++.

The Markup Results

The ++SPOTLIGHT++ widget is a block element contained in a set of <div> tags.

If you have selected the spotlight image to be left-aligned or right-aligned in the site's widget settings, you may encounter an alignment problem for html that follows the ++SPOTLIGHT++ widget.

The alignment problem occurs when the text of the spotlight link is not long enough to "clear" the spotlight image on the left or right. As a result, any html following the widget will try to flow around the thumbnail image, creating an effect you may not want. To address this, it is recommended that you follow the ++SPOTLIGHT++ widget with a <div> block like so:

++SPOTLIGHT++
<div style="clear:both">&nbsp;</div>

Templates Using This Widget

You can use the ++SPOTLIGHT++ widget only in these templates:

• Homepage
• Main section page

(Use the ++INDEX++ widget to display all links for subsection index pages, which do not have spotlight articles.)

Customizing This Widget

Users with webmaster or administrator accounts may customize this widget in the site's widget editor. To get there, click the "Widget Settings" link in the left-column menu of the Big Medium control panel. The following settings affect the ++SPOTLIGHT++ widget:

• Require spotlight image to display spotlight article. This setting is located in the "Link Formats" section of the site's widget settings. If you select this option, an article will be displayed as a spotlight only if it has a spotlight image loaded from its article edit page.
• Alignment of spotlight image. This setting is located in the "Link Formats" section of the site's widget settings and determines whether the spotlight image appears above the link text, to the left, or to the right.
• Spotlight image. These settings in the "Image Size" panel of the site's widget settings allow you to specify the height, width and maximum file size of all spotlight images on your site.
• Date format in spotlight links. This setting in the "Date Format" panel determines the way the date is displayed in spotlight links.
• Display edit icon/link alongside links to articles. This setting in the "One-Click Editing" panel of the widget settings adds the one-click editing link to all widgets that display links to articles, including ++SPOTLIGHT++. The format of the link (icon, brief text, or both icon and brief text) can also be set in the "One-Click Editing" panel.

You can prevent a main section from generating spotlight articles on its main section page by selecting the "Don't generate a spotlight article for this section" option in the section's Section Editor settings. You can also prevent an individual article from appearing in the spotlight article slot by going to the display preferences on the article's edit page and selecting the "Don't build link to article in homepage spotlight" or "Don't build link to article in main section spotlight" settings.

For information about preventing news articles from appearing in the ++SPOTLIGHT++ widget, see the ++HOMEPAGENEWS++ and ++TOPNEWS++ entries.

Changing the Order and Style of Spotlight Links

Users with webmaster or administrator settings may customize the appearance of spotlight links in the "Link Format" section of the site's widget settings.

Spotlight links are built from the elements indicated in the selection of pulldown menus listed under "Spotlight articles." The first pulldown menu shows the first element of a spotlight link, the second pulldown menu shows the second element, and so on. You may choose any of these elements and put them in any order by changing the selections in the pulldown menus.

There are three types of selections available in these pulldown menus:

• Content. The types of content available to include in a spotlight link are: headline/link, article description, publish date, byline and section.
• Separators. Separators are elements included to create space or other dividers between the content elements in a spotlight link. They include: spaces, colons, periods and line breaks.
• Blanks. The first line of each pulldown menu is blank. Selecting a blank pulldown does not include anything in the link.

As described in the section above, the date format used in spotlight links is selected in the "Date Formats" section of the widget settings.

Styles

The article link in the ++SPOTLIGHT++ widget is displayed in the "Spotlight Headline Links" style; the article description is presented in the "Default Body Text" style; the date is presented in the "Promo Dates" style; the byline is presented in the "Promo Bylines" style; and the section is presented in the "Section Links" style.

Need more help?

For further assistance and documentation, visit the website of Global Moxie, the developer behind Big Medium.