AR5 Users,
Version 5.0.3.9 is now live, bringing with it some updates to page info management that simplify and improve the pages workflow, including a new, more intuitive approach to page names and headings. Also included is the brand new articles tab on journal pages.
Given the nature of the updates in this release, we recommend that you take a quick look through these notes, helping you to get a sense of what the changes are and what to expect going forward.
We've done some cleaning up in the page info tab, reducing the overall number of fields and rearranging them to improve workflow. In addition, page info & meta can now be edited from the Pages dashboard (accessible by clicking the "pages" link in the AR5 primary nav), dramatically reducing the time required to update info or meta for multiple pages in your tree.
Page naming has also been reworked. Here's a brief overview of the new fields that control page names, headings, and labels, and how to use them to get the results you're after. The existing page info for your website has already been transferred to the new fields as required, and this change has had no effect on the appearance of your front-end website.
When you enter a value in the H1 Heading field, that value will be used as the front-end page title, appearing in an H1 tag. If you don't specify alternate names, the H1 Heading will also be used in front-end navigation contexts (e.g., drop down menus, the subnav, and the crumb trail), as well as throughout the AR5 back end. In many cases, the H1 Heading field alone will be sufficient to satisfy your page naming requirements.
If you wish to use a label for your page in front-end navigation that's different from the H1 Heading, you can enter it in the Alternate Nav Name field.
By default, AR5 will use the Alternate Nav Name to label your page on the back end, and if there isn't one it will use the H1 Heading. If instead you want to specify a name for use within the AR5 back end only, enter it in the Alternate Admin Name field.
When you first create a page, a blank Friendly URL field will be available. If you don't enter one yourself, AR5 will automatically generate one based on the Alternate Nav Name (or, if that's blank, on the H1 Heading) and will fill it in when the new page is saved. Most of the time, the automatically generated friendly URL is all you need and is what makes sense for the page. If you wish to, however, you can manually enter a friendly URL while creating the page or when editing it later.
As part of an improved workflow for journals and articles, every journal page now includes a tab where you can add, access, and manage the articles that are assigned to it. You can edit an existing article's page info (which has been expanded to include article-specific fields such as the byline and tags), as well as publish, preview, or delete the article. You can also create a new article—new articles in the articles tab come pre-assigned to the current journal and pre-dated with today's date, saving you steps and time. We think this new approach is a great improvement, and we think you will too. Try it out and see for yourself!
This release includes some significant changes to how pagesincluding journals and articlesare managed in AR5, changes that we believe will help you to be more productive and more creative. If you have any questions about how these changes affect your website or your workflow, don't hesitate to reach out to us—we're happy to help.
As always, we thank you for choosing Agency of Record.
Sincerely,
The AR Team
AR5 Users,
The latest update to AR5 is now here, bringing with it a number of improvements to our suite of tools for front-end design. Themes have been expanded to include more types of page content, and you can now create and define custom module styles that you can apply, on the fly, to modules on the page. Let's take a closer look.
These short video tutorials provide an introduction to Agency of Record.