The SNO Report: Spring Refresh

Daylight savings time is this weekend, can you believe it?! That means more light (thank goodness!), warmer temps, and fresh air. And with the new season will come the pushing-up of sleeves everywhere as we freshen our homes and lives. So, since you’ve got all that spring energy anyway, why not apply the same vigor to your site? You’ve got tons of fresh design tools at your disposal, and there couldn’t be a better time to try some of them out.

Updates:

First things first: make sure your software is up to date. We’re rolling out new features and updating the FLEX platform all the time. Most updates run behind the scenes, but some you have to run manually. To make sure you’ve got all the latest tools and the coolest features, make sure to run updates anytime they show up on your dashboard. Only users with Administrator level roles can run updates, and don’t worry, you won’t break anything.

Teaser Bars:

Teaser Bars are old news, and they’re going away. With the advent of the new full-width widget areas on the homepage, and with the new carousel widget option, Teaser Bars have become obsolete. The good news is that you can replicate the teaser bar using the carousel widget and the full-width widget areas. The better news is that when you do, you’ll have WAY more design control, and you can flex some style muscles that weren’t available in previous versions of FLEX. So go ahead, be brave. Deactivate those Teaser Bars.

Showcase Carousel:

The Showcase Carousel is cool, and the preset configurations for the area are an easy way to get started with site design. But if your publication is getting more sophisticated, or if you simply can’t find a Showcase Carousel that fits your aesthetic, ditch it. You’ve got options. You can use the home top full-width widget area to replace the Showcase Carousel, and using the grid, carousel, or category widgets, you can build some really cool stuff. And the risk is low–– we’re keeping the Showcase Carousel, so if you dig in and find you’re not feeling the full-width widget area, you can just re-activate the Showcase Carousel. Boom.

Category Landing Pages:

We’ve talked about them a lot, but that’s because they’re super cool. Basically, now you can design each category page just like you design your homepage–– using widgets. Just switch your category page view to “widget-based,” and off you go. It works best with categories that contain 10 or more stories, and they have to be parent categories. After that, the design possibilities are pretty rad. Check it out, and if you don’t like it (but we think you will), you can always go back to the old design.