Lists

Lists display content in different ways to give a unique look to the site while allowing clear and concise information to be displayed to a user.

Types of Lists

There are four main types of list that are most commonly used in Brightspot: Basic, Advanced, Dynamic, and Social Feed.

Basic

A basic list is simply a list of content that will not change and points the user to a specific content item (i.e., an article or a page).

As shown from the picture, simply select the content to be added to the list by clicking on the search button. Multiple content types can be selected while in the selection menu.

A basic list is good when for simply showing the info from the items on a page.

Advanced

An advanced list adds more capabilities to a standard basic list. It creates each item that is chosen into it's own promo module. Inside the module, it will pre-populate the information from the item that can be modified if needed.

This customization will allows change to titles, descriptions and logos associated with the items. An advanced list is good to use to list items that are there but need to change the basic info that displays on the website.

Dynamic

A dynamic list type is useful because it can automatically populate the list without having to select what is wanted in the list. The list can either be filled by content types (articles, pages, events, etc.) or by content items with a certain tag attached to them.

As an example, if there were a dynamic list with the tag, "Stories," it would list all articles or content types with the stories tag. If, in the future another article was added to the site with the "Stories" tag attached to it, it would continue filling up that part of the list without having to change anything. When the user clicks on a story, they are redirected to the story's webpage in the same tab (there is no setting to open them in a new tab or window). This makes it easy to "create and forget" about the list. The other list types require manually adding the new article to the list.

When using multiple dynamic lists on a webpage, if an item appears in both groups (i.e., the item has two different tags and there are different dynamic lists for each tag on the same page), then the item will only appear in the first dynamic list to avoid repetition. This can cause some of the dynamic lists to not have all of the desired list items. There is not a way to disable this feature, but as a workaround, the dynamic list can be swapped into a basic or an advanced list, but then the lists will need to be updated as necessary.

The Dynamic List module allows promos to be added as pinned items, which would display before the dynamic results. By using tags or content types the desired dynamic items can be pulled in after. To set that up,

1. Create a list module and set it to Dynamic List.
2. Choose the dynamic list items that will be pulled in (i.e., items with a specific tag).
3. Scroll down to Pinned Items. Click the "+" symbol and choose Promo from the dropdown.
4. Choose the desired basic list item. The promo can then be dragged and dropped into another position in the list
5. Click Save and Close to save the changes.

External Content Items in a Dynamic List

External Content items are another kind of object (like images or articles); however, they take the user to an external website (i.e., a news article on a non-BYU site). They can be included in things like dynamic lists and can be configured with a title, description, and image. This can be achieved either by changing the dynamic list type to "External Content Item" and pulling from external content items already linked to the website or by adding an "External Content Module" directly to the list.

When the item is clicked, the user will be redirected to that website. External Content Items can also be configured to take the user to an internal website if desired. An external content module can also be added to a rich text editor.

To prevent specific items from getting pulled into a list, please see the Search feature guide.

Social Feed

Social feeds allow recent posts from a social media source to be shown on a webpage. For details on how to set up a social feed list, please see this Feature Guide.

List Styles

Brightspot offers a variety of different list styles. To choose a style,

1. Click on the list module (or in a rich text module, click on the pencil icon to the right of the list)
2. Click on List Styles to open the styling dropdown
3. Under Template, choose one of the available styles

Each list template will also come with different settings. Make sure to review the options underneath Template to make changes depending on the list type (such as how many columns appear, or making the list horizontal instead of vertical). Not all options will be available with all list styles. Some of the available list styles include:

• Accordion List: Allows the list to be opened and closed when the user clicks on the
• Carousel List: A list that acts like slides that a user can click through (note: it is not currently possible to have the site automatically rotate through the images)
• Content Promos: A list of content items (i.e., images, pages, or articles) that shows an image, a title, and a brief description
• Thumbnail List: A list of content items showing a title, a description, and a small thumbnail-sized image to the size
• Image Only List: a list that only shows images and does not include any other details

To see some examples of these and other list styles, click here.