Updates (upgrades?) to Directory Profiles

Hey all! I’m coming to you from the sunny back corner of the Web Team office in Public Affairs & Marketing with a quick post to catch you up on recent changes in the profile templates in the Hope College directory. When the profile template was originally designed, it included an optional Google Map to indicate your campus office location, and four fields to link to major social media networks (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram). After using the template for a while, creating nearly 400 faculty and staff profiles, we thought it was a good idea to make the options a bit more flexible, a bit less manual and a bit more fun. So here’s the skinny …

Automatic Office Maps

Your profile always had the option to include a map showing your campus office. But the address had to be added manually. Since your profile is already connected to Banner, there’s no sense doing extra work! Now all profiles will automatically drop a pin on the Google Map, indicating the office address in your Banner record.

Do you spend more time at another location? No worries. We can enter a different location! Don’t want a map at all? No worries. We’ll check that little box and poof no map.

Buttons for External Links

A lot of folks have additional links they like to include in their profile, aside from social media. Some are personal websites, some are CVs, and some we haven’t thought of yet are probably coming to mind as you read this. No longer will you need to awkwardly work these links into the otherwise brilliantly crafted narrative of your profile. We give you, custom buttons.

Flexible Social Media Links

If hearing about these new features hasn’t made the old profile options seem outdated, hold on to your hats. We reached into our interweb wrangling imaginations and pulled out some magic, and sprinkled it all over your social media links.

You can now add any social media link you like. Let me repeat that. You can now add any social media link you like. The page will automagically style the link using the social network’s logo and brand colors!!

The networks currently included in the template are:

Is this superb, or what?! Are you disappointed to not see one of your favorite sites on the list? No worries. If it’s included in the FontAwesome collection, we’ll add it, for FREE! You read that right — we will add all requested, available icons at no additional cost to you! If it’s not available as a FontAwesome icon, go ahead and add it anyway — it will show as a stylish link icon.

That’s all folks! Commence dancing around your office with excitement.
It’s cool. We do it too.

As always, holler with any questions.
Much thanks,
Craig Tommola

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