Footers are the very bottom of any webpage that displays information (usually a logo or contact information). In BYU's case, we display the university name, location, and copyright notice in all of our footers (view the bottom of this page for an example). Footers can also have more information in them as well that may be needed across all pages of the site. The footer on this page has contact information as part of it, as well as the BYU logo info. This guide will discuss editing the footer module, creating a footer navigation menu, and setting the footer across the site or on a specific page.
Footers in Brightspot will appear after the last content item on a webpage, instead of appearing at the bottom of the window regardless of where on the page the user is looking. As such, if there is little or no content on a page, the footer may not appear at the bottom, but rather in the middle of the screen (see this page for an example). This can also be affected by the dimensions of the browser window that the site is opened on. The only ways to remedy this is to add additional content to the site, or to use custom CSS (please see the Customization and CSS feature guide for information on how to add custom styling to a page).
Modifying a Footer
All new webpages will have a basic footer copied over when they are created. Instead of creating a new footer, please modify the one that is already there. To find it, click the search bar at the top of the Brightspot dashboard, and in the search window that comes up, set the global filter to only show Page Footer (instead of Any Content Type). Before modifying the footer, please keep in mind that the BYU logo needs to be at the bottom of all web pages along with the copyright. Specifics on university guidelines for footers can be found on the BYU Brand Guide.
Footer Logos
In both sections where it asks for the Desktop Logo and Mobile Logo you must use the standard BYU logo. If the Brigham Young University Wordmark does not appear, please follow these steps:
- Click on the search icon next to either the Desktop or Mobile Logo.
- Under MISC Filters in the bottom left, your website will be check marked. Find your website in the list and click it to uncheck it. It should then say "All Sites" like the photo to the right.
- Once the new images load, use the one titled "Brigham Young University Wordmark".
Copyright/Disclaimer
This section must be filled in with "Provo, UT 84602, USA | © $YYYY All rights reserved." (without apostrophes). The "$YYYY" is a special code that will automatically update the site with the current year (see the screenshot below). Please do this for both Desktop and Mobile.
Adding Personalized Content
After adding the BYU standard logo and copyright notice in the footer, content can be added to appear right above it. This is the same way that content is added to a page. Different content types can be as needed added by clicking the "+" icon. If the footer content is not aligning correctly or is giving any other problems, please follow the video tutorial on this page.
Footer Navigation Menu
Footers are often used as navigation menus that show contact information, link to other pages in the site, or connect to social media pages. To set up a footer navigation:
- On the dashboard, click the "+" icon and select Page navigation.
- Give the footer a title in the Name field.
- Under Items, click add to add a Simple Navigation Item.
- Change the Title section from Navigation Link to Navigation Text. In the text field that appears, type in the title that will appear at the top of the column (i.e., Social Media).
- Switch to the Sub-Navigation tab.
- Under Sub-Navigation, click Add. This will allow a new link to be placed into the column.
- Either a normal link or a social media link can be added:
- Social Navigation Item: choose the social media service to connect to (i.e., Facebook), then set the the title and add the link to the page the user will be redirected to (make sure to include https:// at the beginning). Choosing this option will cause the link to appear as the social media page's icon instead of actual text.
- Navigation Link: Set the text field to the title that should appear for the user (i.e., Resources), then set the link to Internal if the site being linked to is owned by the same website, or to External to link to a page not owned by the website. When adding an External link, make sure to include https:// at the beginning.
- To add more columns, repeat steps 3-7. There should be no more than 4 columns inside the footer.
The BYU Brand Guide offers further guidelines on how this footer should be formatted under Area Footer.
Once finished, publish the footer.
Setting the Footer
The footer that was automatically created with the website should already be set as the default footer across all pages. If it is not, or if a new one was created to replace it, follow these steps
- In the top right of Brightspot, click on the "hamburger" menu to access the Admin settings.
- Click on Sites and Settings.
- Go to the Page Defaults tab in the new screen that comes up.
- Towards the bottom there will be a tab called Footer, open it up.
- In footer, make sure that the first drop-down menu is set to Select. Afterwards, click on the search icon and find and select the footer that should be set as default.
- Click Save at the bottom of the screen to save the footer as the default!
Setting a Footer for a Single Site
A unique footer can also be added to specific site by overriding the one set in page defaults. To abide by BYU Branding guidelines, the Logo and copyright/disclaimer information at the very bottom of the screen should not be altered. To create a new footer, please copy the existing one. To do so, click the three dots in the top-right corner, then click "Copy This Page Footer." The content section of the new footer can then be modified. To add the unique footer to specific site,
- Go to the editor page of the article, section, or page that needs the unique footer
- Switch to the Overrides tab
- Find the Footer dropdown and open it
- Under Footer, change the dropdown from Inherit to Select (note, do not change the Privacy Policy)
- Click on the search field to attach the new footer
- Click publish in the top-right corner to save changes