The page designer is where you build page content by dragging blocks onto a canvas. It uses the same visual designer as page templates, with tools focused on finished pages. When you open the designer, it loads the page’s existing design, or its starting template if you have not designed the page yet.
What It Controls
The page designer controls the page’s working copy, which staff can view and keep editing. Visitors see a separate published copy, so your edits do not affect the live page until you publish them. Text, images, layout blocks, and widgets from other applications stay in the working copy until you save.
Where to Find It
Open Portals & Microsites › Pages, select the page you want to edit, and choose its Edit icon. The page opens in the designer at Portals & Microsites › Pages › Edit. When you create a new page from a starting template, Rhythm opens it here automatically.
Prerequisites
- You need permission to edit pages. If the designer does not open, ask your administrator.
- Select the page’s own site in the Console before you open the designer. The designer builds its widget lists, including menus, pages, images, and stylesheets, from the site currently selected in the Console. If you open a page from a bookmark or from another site’s menu, widget settings may show choices from the wrong site. Switch to the page’s site first.
Building the Page
The canvas includes a block panel and a page area. Drag a block onto the page to add it:
- Basic blocks: text, images, links, video, a countdown, and a free-form custom code block. If a provider’s video does not play when you enter its source directly in the video block, paste the provider’s full embed code into the custom code block instead.
- Layout blocks: columns, containers, cards, spacers, and buttons that help you arrange content responsively.
- Other applications' widgets: building blocks provided by other Rhythm applications, such as an event registration form or a directory listing. These appear in their own categories in the block panel, alongside the basic and layout blocks.
- Your organization's custom components, if any have been created, appear as placeholder boxes that you can drag and configure like any other block.
A Placeholder block belongs in page templates, where it marks the area for a page’s own content. If you drop one directly on a page, it does not do anything by itself.
Some widgets ask you to choose one of the site’s pages or menus in their settings. The designer loads that list when it opens, so a page or menu you created moments ago in another browser tab will not appear until you reopen the designer.
Tip
Widgets show the underlying transaction or record, but they do not always explain it. If visitors are confused by how figures are presented, such as how invoice items are broken down on a payment page, drag a plain text block next to the widget and add your own explanation.
Tip
If a built-in widget, such as the standard pricing page, shows more options than you want members to see and there is no setting to hide specific ones, consider turning that page off and building your own page with the pricing content you want to control. If visibility needs to be restricted further than a portal page can manage, handling it in Console may work better than the standard page.
Inserting Images
- Make your changes on the canvas. About a second after you stop editing, the designer marks the page as having pending changes.
- Select Save Changes in the toolbar.