Your asset library stores images and documents for your sites, such as a logo, banner photo, or PDF of your bylaws. Use this article to upload a new file asset, copy a shareable link, and replace the file behind an existing asset later.
Prerequisites
- You need permission to open the Asset Explorer and design assets.
Upload a New File
- Go to Portals & Microsites › Assets.
- From the File menu, the tree's right-click menu, or the explorer's welcome panel, choose New Asset in "<folder>" (or Create an Asset).
- Choose Other File.
- Upload your file.
- Choose a File Location: — you can only choose an existing folder, so create a new folder first if you need one.
- Optionally add a Description.
- Select Create Asset.
Result
The file opens as a new asset in an Asset Explorer tab. Uploaded files publish as soon as you create them, unlike other asset types, so the file is reachable on your sites as soon as the dialog closes.
Warning
Creating a file asset publishes it immediately, with no confirmation and no warning that it becomes public. Anyone with the file's address can open it, even if they are not signed in to your portal. Do not upload a file this way if it needs to stay private.
The asset uses the uploaded file's name because there is no separate name field for an uploaded file. Rhythm also stores the published copy under that name, which matters when you replace the file later.
If an image on a public-facing page or storefront only fails for visitors who are not signed in, but displays when you are signed in or impersonating a member, the file itself is most likely not public. Open the asset and confirm its visibility before you assume the page setup is the problem.
If you are asking Rhythm to redesign or rebrand a portal, upload the materials the design team needs here too. Add a representative selection of photos, along with any CSS-style assets and button images, under Assets so the team can access them directly.
An image placed on a specific microsite page usually needs to exist first as a file asset in that microsite's own asset library. If a page will not publish after you add an image, check whether the image was uploaded there before you troubleshoot the image's dimensions or file type.
Warning
The Console does not show a maximum file size while you upload, so an upload can fail against a limit you cannot see. A landing-page flyer or welcome-page image in particular has been held to a 500px maximum. If an image upload fails there without a stated reason, try a smaller image before you assume something else is wrong.
A page with a very large image gallery can run into trouble that is not a storage limit. A gallery with hundreds of images risks the page itself timing out, even without a confirmed quota on how many images you can store. For a large or fast-growing photo collection, consider keeping the full set in a third-party gallery service and embedding that gallery on a portal page instead of hosting every image directly as an individual asset.
Get a Shareable Link
After you save a file asset, you can copy a public link to it:
- Open the file asset in the Asset Explorer.
- Select Get Shareable Link.
Result
A public link to the file is copied to your clipboard, and a toast confirms it.
The link always points to the file as it was last saved. If you choose a replacement file but have not saved it yet, Get Shareable Link still copies a link to the old file.
Tip
When you add an image to a portal page, you can embed the image directly in the page or add it by reference. Embedding increases the page's size by the image's full contents. Uploading the image here as a file asset and pasting its shareable link into the page's Image widget, or into custom code, keeps the page much smaller. If the image is already hosted publicly somewhere else, you can paste that public URL the same way without uploading it here. Use the same approach for a PDF or similar document you want to link from a page: get its shareable link and add it with a text or link block, or point an existing Dropbox-style link at it.
Images used inside Portals & Microsites pages and page templates should be added by shareable link, not by another kind of reference. A template that referenced an image another way has caused the pages or features built from it to not appear as expected. To update an image already placed on a microsite page, open that page in the designer, add or update an Image component, and paste the asset's shareable link instead of trying to upload a new file directly from the page's image element.
Tip
Get Shareable Link has sometimes disappeared from an asset after additional assets were uploaded, then reappeared later, but this has not been consistently reproducible. If the control is missing when you expect it, refresh or revisit the asset before you assume the asset itself is broken.
Replace the File
Replacing a file lets every page, template, or component that references the asset use the new file automatically, without requiring you to edit each place that uses it.
- Open the file asset in the Asset Explorer.
- Use (remove/replace) on the current file, then choose your replacement file.
- Select Save & Publish.
Result
The new file is saved and published in one step, so it is live as soon as the action succeeds.
Warning
Save & Publish replaces the live file with no confirmation. The published copy keeps the asset's original name, not the replacement file's name, so replacing logo.png with a different image still publishes a file named logo.png. If you select Save & Publish without changing the file, Rhythm republishes the same file again as a new version.
A microsite or portal image you expect to edit through page content is sometimes a file asset instead. For example, a header logo can be pulled in through a direct asset link rather than a separate header-branding setting, so look for the underlying asset before you change a page setting. If you update a logo asset here but the displayed image does not change, check whether the site's stylesheet is setting that image instead. A microsite's CSS can override what the header shows regardless of which file the asset points to, so the fix is in the stylesheet, not the asset. Keeping a logo as one shared asset, updated here, also prevents the sizing inconsistencies that come from adding the same image by hand on several individual pages. Your organization's shared logo and other branding assets live under Portals & Microsites › Assets. Replacing the asset there updates every portal page, microsite, and account-switcher icon that references it in one step. If a logo appears broken across several of those surfaces at once, re-saving and publishing that logo asset, even with no actual file change, has fixed the display without any further action.
A footer's social media icon is a file asset you can replace the same way, but updating the icon alone may not be enough. If the destination has also changed, such as when you update a Twitter icon to the equivalent X branding, you still need to update where that icon links.
Not every microsite image needs a redesign request. When an image is an ordinary file asset, you can usually replace it directly the same way as any other asset. This only applies when the image actually is a file asset; a graphic built into a template or component cannot be swapped this way.
Warning
A "max allowed size" or "item size has exceeded the maximum allowed size" error while adding an image to a page is not always about the image file itself. In some cases, the cause has been the page's overall payload or the specific editing path used to add or replace the image, rather than the file truly being too large. If replacing an image this way fails, try uploading the replacement as a new asset and referencing it by shareable link instead of replacing it from the page's existing image element. That alternate path has resolved cases where the original replacement attempt did not.
If Something Goes Wrong
If you see a message that files uploaded before a certain date need to be re-uploaded to be shareable, download the file and upload it again as a replacement. That brings it under the current upload rules, which make every upload public and shareable. If your browser will not let the page write to your clipboard, check your browser's clipboard permissions for the Console and try again.
If an upload or shareable-link problem is intermittent and hard to pin down, open your browser's developer tools to the Console tab before you reproduce it. Capture the attempt in a screen recording, including any errors that appear there, so Support has something concrete to review if the problem cannot be reproduced on demand.