Collection Spotlights
In this section, learn how to:
- Create a collection spotlight from lists or search results
- Customize collection spotlight appearance
- Combine spotlights in a tabbed display
Collection spotlights are a great way to feature items from your collection displayed in a carousel of cover images. After creating a collection spotlight, you'll be able to copy the code needed to embed the spotlight on your website. Or, if you've created custom pages with Aspen's web builder, you can embed collection spotlights with a few clicks!
To customize the appearance of a collection spotlight, navigate to Collection Spotlights within the Web Builder module of Aspen Administration. Click the Edit button for the spotlight you wish to customize.
The settings are as follows:
Library: Select the library associated with this collection spotlight.
Name: The title of your collection spotlight..
Description: An optional text field for entering in a description for your spotlight. This text is not visible to the public and is for your internal use only.
The number of titles that should be shown: By default, this is set to 25. You can adjust this number if you would like to feature more or less titles in your spotlight.
Should the title for the currently selected item be shown?: Determines whether the currently selected title will display below the cover images.
Should the author (catalog items) /format (archive items) for the currently selected item be shown?: Determines whether the title's author or format will display below the cover images.
Should ratings be shown under each cover?: Determines whether rating stars will appear for each title. Click here to learn more about user ratings.
The style to use when displaying featured titles: Changes the visual display of your collection spotlight. Experiment with different styles to see what they do!
Should the display automatically rotate between titles?: Determines whether the collection spotlight automatically rotates between titles.
The auto rotate setting only applies to the Horizontal, Vertical, Single Title, and Single Title with a Next Button styles, NOT the Horitzontal Carousel or Text Only styles.
The cover size to use when showing the display: Toggles the cover size.
Custom CSS File: This setting allows you to link to an external CSS file for customizing the collection spotlight appearance. This is mostly a legacy option at this point, as collection spotlights can instead be customized with CSS added to your Theme settings. If custom CSS is applied in the Aspen Theme settings, your collection spotlights will retain that customization regardless of where they are embedded.
Display lists as: Determines whether combined collection spotlights display together in a tabbed view or as a dropdown list.
Show the display's title bar: By default, collection spotlights will display a title bar. Uncheck this option to remove the title bar from appearing above the cover carousel.
Show the View More link on the title bar of the display: Determines whether or not a "View More" link appears on the title bar, if enabled. When clicked, the "View More" link will take users to a page to see all titles associated with the collection spotliight. This will display either as a list or as search results, depending on how the spotlight was created.
Display mode for view more link: When users click on the View More Link, this can have them be taking to the search results that show the spotlight titles as a list view or a covers view.
See screenshot for covers view:
See screenshot for list view:
The setting only applies to Collection Spotlights based off of searches not Collection Spotlights based off of lists.
There is some cacheing happening if you are changing these options from List View to Covers View in the Collection Spotlight settings so if you are an Admin and setting up a Collection Spotlgiht, view the Collection Spotlight Preview URL in another browser or when you are not logged in to make sure it is configured correctly.
Lists: Displays all lists or search results associated with this collection spotlight. Note: Do not use this section to add new lists. See the "Creating Tabbed Collection Spotlights" section of this page for more information.
