Documentation

Configuring Your Site To Display Alerts 

Alerts are displayed in "Alert Display Area" blocks. Anywhere that you want to see alerts, you need to add one of these blocks. 

If you want to have a site-wide area to display your alerts, it is recommended that you add a GlobalArea to your page templates, and then add an Alert Display Area to that global area. 

Alternatively, you can add the Site Display Area block to the defaults for your page templates so that the block is automatically added to every new page with that template. See the concrete5 documentation on defaults for more information - https://documentation.concrete5.org/editors/dashboard/pages-and-themes/page-templates/defaults 

Alert Display Area custom templates 

The Alert Display Area block comes with two custom templates, one for Bootstrap and one for Zurb Foundation. If your theme uses either of these libraries, you should consider using these custom templates as they will match the styles of the rest of your site. See the concrete5 documentation on custom templates for more information -  https://documentation.concrete5.org/editors/in-page-editing/block-areas/custom-templates. 

Creating Alerts 

Once you've setup the Alert Display Area blocks on your site, you can then begin adding alerts that will be shown in those areas. 

To add an alert, click the dashboard button and then scroll down and click the "Site Alerts" option. Alternatively, you can search "Alerts" in the concrete5 toolbar search. 

On the "View All Site Alerts" you will see a listing of all of your alerts along with some of the details about each. You can click the headings of each column to sort the alerts. 

To add a new alert, click the "Add New Alert" button. The next screen will give you the following settings: 

Alert Settings 

Name - A descriptive name to identify the alert. This is only used on the alert listing page and is never shown to the user.

Message - The message to display to the user in the alert. Full HTML is allowed, but adding things like images may not look great with the default templates. 

Type - Determines the styles of the alerts. Default settings - Success = green, Info = blue, Warning = yellow, Danger = red 

Start Date and Time - The date/time that the alert should become visible. Leaving this blank will make the alert visible immediately. 

End Date and Time - The date/time that the alert should be taken down. Leaving this blank will cause an alert to never be taken down (shown indefinitely). 

Allow users to dismiss this alert - If checked, an "x" will appear in the alert and users can click it to dismiss the alert. The dismissed alerts are stored in the user's cookies, so they will never see that alert again unless they clear their cookies. 

Select Pages to Display On - The pages that should show the alert. Note that these pages must also contain one or more Alert Display Area blocks for the alerts to be shown. 

Show on all children of selected pages - Checking this box will cause the selected page settings to cascade down to its children. This is handy if you have a lot of child pages and don't want to have to check the box next to every single one. Simply select the parent, then check the "Show on all children of selected pages" checkbox and the alert wll be displayed on all the children. Again, note that every page must have an Alert Display Area block on it for the alerts to be visible.