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lemoynelibrary / lemoyne

Files used in setting up new web design in LibGuides v2 and elsewhere
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libguides: subject category listing #12

Closed tomkeays closed 7 years ago

tomkeays commented 7 years ago

We have an A-Z listing: http://resources.library.lemoyne.edu/guides/subjects but it is currently difficult to get to a page that shows all the guides for a given subject category. E.G., http://resources.library.lemoyne.edu/subjects/health-medicine lists 11 guides that have been assigned the Health & Medicine subject heading, but there currently isn't an easy way to get to this section of LibGuides from the navigation options I've provided so far.

Context: in the old LibGuides, when you went to the subject page -- http://lemoyne.v1.libguides.com/home -- it was organized by subjects and clicking the subject revealed the guides assigned that subject. Users (and librarians) may still want that interface.

Maybe a widget? What should this be called?

tomkeays commented 7 years ago

LibGuides v1 had this "Expandable/Collapsible Subject Menu" widget (we used it ourselves) - http://help.springshare.com/subjectmenu

Springshare docs say that the default homepage in LibGuides v2 was intended to follow the model of the "Expandable/Collapsible Subject Menu". Furthermore, it is possible in "Admin" > "Look and Feel" > "Page Layout" > "Homepage" > "Customization" > "Default View" to select "Subject List" as the default view (instead of the default "All Guides" in a long alphabetical listing).

However, I discovered a bug where, if you are using a custom template, the default view selection fails to work (it is always "All Guides"). You have to use the "System Default - Homepage" template for your customization to take effect.

Not a bug, it turns out. For custom templates, there is a setting below the text box for explicitly setting the default view.

The current situation is, if I want to make the default homepage more prominent than it is now (currently, you access it through the "Site Map" link in the footer) in order to use it as a Subject List, I need to be able to use a custom template so I can style it to be more in line with the left-hand sidebar navigation approach used everywhere else on the site. But the bug prevents me from doing that.

I swapped the layout so that the main content was on the right and navigation on the left. After selecting "By Subject" as the default view, I reordered the pills in the template to match. I also suppressed display of {{button_by_group}} and {{button_by_type}}.

                <ul class="nav nav-pills">
                  {{button_by_subject}}
                  {{button_all_guides}}
                  {{button_by_owner}}
                </ul>
tomkeays commented 7 years ago

Solution involved:

  1. creating new homepage template that put sidebar pills on the left and integrating them with the Subject Guides and Course Guides pages. On custom homepage templates, I had to explicitly set the default display to subject through a setting on the admin page for the template.
  2. adding some additional styles to JS/CSS look and feel for this new template.
  3. Adding All Library Guides link to Research Guides category in banner nav (and additionally pushing the banner nav changes out to the other library sites).

See: http://resources.library.lemoyne.edu/