Your Top Five Concerns with Using Rock as a CMS

1. Rock will never have all the features of my current CMS.
   Yep, you're right. We'll never be able to have every feature that your current CMS has. Although, they probably don't have every feature we have either. Rock makes creating powerful websites easy. We’ve stolen borrowed the best ideas from the top CMS out there. We've leveraged our years of experience building sites to create tools we’ve always wanted.
2. We'll never be able to find someone who knows Rock; everyone knows xxxxx.
   We're working hard to establish an ecosystem full of vendors and freelancers who can help you. Not only that, but documentation like this manual makes it simple to quickly bring any web designer vendor up to speed. You should probably hesitate to use any vendor who resists using the tool the customer wants and instead uses their favorite tool. Remember, you're the one who needs to live with the site.
3. Rock is built on Microsoft .Net. Come on, no serious CMS uses that.
   While there are several popular .Net CMS systems (Umbraco, DotNetNuke, Orchard) that really isn't the point. When looking for a CMS, you need powerful features with blazingly fast performance that can scale. Rock excels at each of these. Think about it this way: Should the builder be judged by the tools he brings to the worksite or the building that stands when he's finished? That's not to say we're not proud of our tools. We LOVE .Net and we think you will too once you try it on.
4. There are a limited number of .Net webhosts to run Rock on and the ones that do exist are more expensive.
   True, there are fewer than our PHP/MySql cousins, but there are numerous vendors to pick from. As far as price, .Net hosting on average costs about 20% more than Linux hosting. On the lower end this translates into $2-$3 dollars a month. The return on investment with using Rock as your CMS will far outweigh this small difference.
5. But I’m a PHP developer; I don’t know .Net.
   That's just a part of the job. Constant change is the career you’ve chosen. Technologies like LESS, jQuery and Bootstrap didn't exist just a few years ago. To not change is to become extinct. Don't see yourself as a .Net Developer, instead look at yourself as just a developer who today uses .Net. If you're a developer, you'll have no trouble with .Net. It's an elegant and well-designed language.

But What Are the Benefits?

Hopefully you're starting to see that some of the barriers aren't as large as they may appear. But there's no reason to change for change's sake; the benefits must outweigh the cost. Reading through this manual will show you numerous ways to exploit the power of Rock's CMS features. But let’s touch on one simple example. The biggest "killer app" of Rock is personalization. Just picture adding the markup below into your baptism page using Rock's on-page HTML editor (You’re going to love the editor!):

{% if Person %} 
    {% if Person.BaptismDate != '' %}
        {{ Person.NickName }}, remember the joy of your baptism? Share that joy
        with a friend who hasn't yet taken the plunge at one of our upcoming
        baptism events!
    {% else %}
        {{ Person.NickName }}, now is the time! Don't put off baptism any longer,
        take the plunge at one of our upcoming events!
    {% endif %}
{% else %}
    Take the plunge at one of our upcoming baptism events!
{% endif %}

Rock uses an upcoming templating engine called Lava. Paired with Rock data, Lava is very powerful. The markup above does this:

• If the person is logged in and has been baptized it shows the message: "Alisha, remember the joy of your baptism? Share that joy with a friend who hasn't yet taken the plunge at one of our upcoming baptism events!"
• If the person hasn't been baptized yet they'll see: "Alisha, now is the time! Don't put off baptism any longer, take the plunge at one of our upcoming events!"
• Otherwise, if the person isn't logged in, the greeting reads: "Take the plunge at one of our upcoming baptism events!"

Armed with just a little knowledge of Lava, we've created a very personal experience on our site; one that is much more likely to draw people in and promote action. Are you starting to see the power of Rock? And we're just getting started.

Sites

The top of the CMS hierarchy is the site. Each website you create should be created as a unique site. Think of sites as a collection of related pages that share a consistent look and feel. Sites aren't limited to external websites though. You can use them to contain your check-in pages or a set of pages for a metrics dashboard.

Sites are created and managed under Admin Tools > Websites. Be sure to use the chapter Creating a New Site before setting out on your own.

Site Themes

Themes are a set of resources that add styling to the pages of a site. The theme is defined at the site level. This makes it very easy to change the look of an entire site with a single configuration change. You can read more about themes in the Themes chapter.

Pages

The concept of pages is pretty obvious; they represent a single web page. Unlike many CMS however, the page doesn't exist as a file on the website. Instead, a page is dynamically assembled by Rock with each request. This allows each page to be personalized by the person requesting it and allows you to secure portions of the page based on the person's security rights.

Pages are arranged in a parent-child hierarchy. This hierarchy allows us to build dynamic menus.

Layouts

Each page is configured to have a specific layout. This determines the content areas (or zones) that the page has. Available layouts are defined by the theme that the site is configured to use. While you can create as many new layouts as you'd like, we strongly recommend that you use the standard names for reasons that will be made obvious in future chapters.

Zones

Zones are content areas that are defined by the layout. They represent things like the header, navigation menu, footer and content areas.

Blocks

Blocks make up the actual content of the page. They come in all shapes and sizes. Each has a specific purpose. The most common block is the HTML Content block. This block allows you to display and edit HTML content to a specific zone. Other blocks are used to generate navigation menus, list groups, show maps, etc. Think of blocks as your Legos® that you can use to build a world of new inventions.

Blocks can be placed on either a page, a layout or a site. When tied to a layout they're displayed on every page that uses the layout. When tied to a site they're displayed on every page within the site. This is very helpful when adding content like navigation in the header or footer text that should be the same across all pages.

The Anatomy of a Page

Now that we've covered all of the components of the Rock CMS system let's look at a visual representation of a page. Remember that each page has a layout, and the layout defines what zones are available to place blocks into.

1 Header Zone

The header zone is used for the organization's logo and tagline.

2 Navigation Zone

The navigation zone holds the site's main menu.

3 Login Zone

The login zone allows people with accounts to access protected portions of the site.

4 Feature Zone

The feature zone holds the main content of a homepage which in many cases will be an ad rotator.

5 Sub Feature Zone

The sub feature zone contains secondary ads or content on the homepage.

6 Footer Zone

The footer zone wraps links and content in the footer.

As you work on your site, you’ll want to add new pages. There are two ways to do this: through your external organization site, or through your internal Rock site. Both methods end in the same result (new pages with blocks and content), you just take different paths to get there. Each approach has its pros and cons. Creating pages from your external site allows you to view the pages as you’re creating them. Creating pages from your internal site allows you to create and configure pages faster as well as to easily see how the new pages fit into the overall site structure.

Let’s start by looking at how to add a page from your external site.

Adding a Page (External Site)

To add a page from your external organization site, follow these steps:

1. Navigate to the parent page that you want the new page to be under.
2. Click the (Child Page) button from the Admin Toolbar.
3. From the Child Page dialog, click the button to add a new page to the list.
4. The Add screen will allow you to provide a name for your page and choose a layout. To configure the page fully you'll need to click on it from the child page list and then click its (Page Properties) button on its Admin Toolbar.

Adding a Block to a Page (External Site)

A small part of your content management duties will be to add and configure blocks on a page. To add a block to an existing page, follow these simple steps.

1. Navigate to the page you’d like to add the block to.
2. Select the (Page Zone Editor) button in the page’s Admin Toolbar.
3. This will highlight all of the zones on the page for you.
4. Select the fly-out toolbar for the zone you wish to add the block to and click its (Zone Blocks) button. This will bring up the zone's block list.
5. From here you have a decision to make. Do you want the block to live on just this page, on every page that uses this layout, or across your entire site? Decide by picking the appropriate tab at the top of the dialog: Page, Layout or Site. Keep in mind, choosing any option other than Page carries some risk. The Layout and Site options are best used for blocks you're certain belong on multiple pages, such as headers and footers.
6. Next, click the (Add Block) button to add the block to the layout. Like adding a page you'll just provide a name for your block and the type of block you wish to add. You'll add more configuration later.
7. Next, determine in what order you want your block to appear within the zone. You can move it up or down by dragging and dropping the order on the list.
8. Now that you've added your block to the list, click the Done link and reload your page. Your new block will now be on the page.
9. In most cases, you'll now need to configure your block. To do so click the (Block Configuration) button in the Admin Toolbar. This will highlight each block on the page.
10. To edit the settings, click the (Block Properties) button from the block's fly-out menu. This will bring up the block properties dialog with all of the settings for the selected block.

Now that your page is created and your block structure is set up, it’s time to configure your page properties and add content. To learn how to do this, see the Managing Content and Pages section below.

Adding a Page (Internal Site)

Adding a page from your internal site allows you to both create a page and configure its properties in the same place.

Begin by going to Admin Tools > CMS Configuration > Pages. You’ll see a tree navigation of the pages of your site, as well as a icon. Click the icon and select either "Add Top-Level" or "Add Child To Selected". Rock will then display the Add Page screen.

The Add Page screen has three tabs: Basic Settings, Display Settings, and Advanced Settings. This is where you set up the new page’s properties.

1 Parent Page

You can easily change the parent page for your selected page. This will alter where that page is displayed in the navigation.

2 Internal Name

This is the name of the page that is used in the admin menus and page pickers. Often, in these situations, you want the page to have a more descriptive name than you might want to be displayed in a menu on the site. For instance, you might want the homepage of a site to have the internal name of "Youth Sports Homepage" but when you're on the site the title should be simply "Home" on the menu.

3 Page Title

This is the name that will be used for the page title element on the page. It will also be used in the navigation menus and breadcrumbs.

4 Browser Title

For Search Engine Optimization it's often important to have a different name in the browser's title. This setting allows you to edit this.

5 Site

Each page belongs to a site. You can change the site for a page with this setting. Keep in mind that the page gets its theme from the site, so changing this setting could change how the page is displayed.

6 Layout

This selects the layout that the page should use. Further discussion of layouts can be found in the chapter Looking Deeper at Layouts.

7 Show Icon

An icon can be used in the page title and breadcrumbs if it is enabled with this setting.

8 Icon CSS Class

This setting allows you to enter the CSS class for the font icon you wish to use. While Font Awesome is installed, there's no reason you can't add your own alternate font icon collection and enter your custom class here. When using Font Awesome, you should use the syntax fa fa-[icon name].

9 Description

The description gives a short summary of the page and its intent. You can use this as "internal documentation" or, using Lava, you can use it in your menus and page listings.

1 Page Display Settings

These settings control the view state of various components of the page (title, breadcrumbs, description, etc.) How these actually render on the page is somewhat dependent on the theme you are using.

2 Menu Display When

How and when a page is displayed in a menu has several different options.

• When Allowed: With this default option a page will only be displayed in the menu when the person has view permissions to the page.
• Always: You may want some pages that require a login to be displayed in the menu even when the person isn't logged in. When the person clicks the link, they will be asked to log in before proceeding to the page. This is helpful for things like group toolboxes where you want the person to see the option and then log in before they can view the contents.
• Never: Some support pages aren't meant to ever be navigated to directly. Setting them to Never ensures that nobody accidentally views them in a menu.

3 Breadcrumb Settings

These settings determine whether a page should be displayed in the breadcrumbs and, if so, whether an icon should be included. Some designers set the name to not display but will show an icon for homepages.

1 Force SSL

This ensures that the page will always load using SSL. This is important for pages like giving or online registration where credit card information will be used on the page. This does require that your webserver is configured to support SSL.

2 Enable ViewState

ViewState is a .Net technology that allows a page to remember its state across postbacks. If this doesn’t make complete sense to you, you probably shouldn't uncheck the box. In most cases bad things will happen if you do.

3 Cache Settings

Here you'll select the Cacheability Type (see the icon in Rock for descriptions of each option) as well as the Max Age and Max Shared Age for how long the page should be cached.

4 Body CSS Class

You can enter a specific CSS class for a specific page in this field. For example, if you want to change the look and feel of a particular registration landing page, you can create a unique CSS class for that page and designate the class here.

5 Page Routes

You can enter page routes for the page here. Several routes can be configured by delimiting them with commas. For more information see the Routes chapter below.

6 Page Intent

Classify the purpose of this page. For more see the Interaction Intents documentation.

7 Countries Restricted from Accessing

Block users attempting to access your site from the selected countries. For more info see IP Address Geocoding.

8 Rate Limiting Enable

If you check this box, the two fields below (Max Requests Per Period, Rate Limit Period) can be used to control how many times a specific IP address is allowed to access the page within the specified period of time. This helps prevent malicious attackers from overloading the system with excessive requests, potentially causing Rock to become inaccessible.

9 Header Content

As a web designer we know you'll have custom scripts, meta tags, styling and more that you'll want to add to the page's header. Whatever text you add to this setting will be placed into the page's header.

Click Save when you’re done. Now it’s time to add content to your page. To learn how to do this, see the Managing Content and Pages chapter below.

Editing a Page (Internal Site)

You can also edit a page’s block configuration and properties from the internal site. From the Pages screen (Admin Tools > CMS Configuration > Pages), click the page you want to edit from the tree navigation.

From here, you can edit an existing block by clicking the button. You can also add a new block by selecting the zone where you want the block to go from the dropdown menu on the right, then clicking Add Block to Zone to display the Add Block window.

Note here the option to add this block to the Page, Layout or Site. Just like adding a block to your external site, you need to decide if you want this block to only appear on the current page, on any page using this layout or across your entire internal site. The Layout and Site options are best used when adding a block you know for sure belongs on every page, such as a header or footer. Otherwise, it's best to use the Page option.

To edit an existing block’s properties, click the button. Rock will display the Block Properties screen. The options displayed will depend on the kind of block you're editing.

Page Load Time

When we started to plan for Rock, we listed out our high-level goals for the project. One of these was "Speed as a Feature." For us that was more than just words, we wanted it to be real and measurable. One of the first features we added was the page load time in the admin bar. From that moment on speed was put in front of us on every page we loaded. We kept it there, not only as our contract with you, but also so you could measure your custom modifications.

Block Configuration

Clicking the block configuration button () in the admin toolbar will bring up a fly-out menu over each block on the page. Rolling over these menus will allow you to:

• Edit Content: This opens the content for the block to be edited and managed.
• Block Settings: This brings up a dialog that allows you to manage the block settings for the block.
• Block Security: This item allows you to edit the security of the block. This not only allows you to control who can view a block, but also who can edit and administrate blocks.
• Move Block: Selecting this item allows you to move the block to a different zone on a page. You can also move the block from the pages zone to the layouts zone. This will make the block available to each page that uses the layout.
• Delete Block: For everything there is a season; a time to add and a time to delete. When it’s time to delete, use this option.

Page Properties

The page properties () dialog allows you to edit all of a page's settings. This uses the same screens, with the same options, as we saw on the internal site in the prior chapter.

Child Pages

The child pages () dialog allows you to see a list of child pages of the current page. From this list you can reorder the pages, delete a page, copy an existing page or add a new page. You can also use this list to navigate to a page that might not be available in the menu.

When copying an existing page, not only is the page copied, but also the page blocks, child pages, and child page blocks. What a time saver! Even though Rock will re-wire up any references between the new blocks and new pages, it is wise to double check your block settings to verify everything is what you expect.

Page Zone

Clicking the Page Zones button () will enable the zone fly-out menu for each zone defined on the page. From this menu you can bring up the zone dialog below.

From the zone dialog you can add or delete blocks in a zone. The tabs at the top of the page determine if the blocks will be added to the current page, the layout or the site. Adding the block to the layout will enable it to be shown on all pages that use that layout. Adding the block to the site will place the block on every page in the site.

Page Security

The Page Security () dialog allows you to set security for the page. This allows you to determine who can view and administrate the current page. Note that page security is hierarchical. If no specific security rights are defined by a page, it will use the security settings of its parent and its parent's parent. If no page above it defines any specific rights it will use the rights defined for the site. This allows for a robust and flexible security implementation with minimal configuration.

Short Links

Short links () are exactly what they sound like: simple, user‑friendly links that replace long, messy URLs. But don’t let their size fool you. These links handle a lot behind the scenes, from tracking engagement with analytics and capturing helpful marketing data. You can even schedule these links to redirect automatically when you need to update or change their destination.

To start, click the button in the Admin Toolbar to display the Shortened Link window.

1 Site

This is where you choose which site you want to use for the short link. Only sites that have the Enabled for Shortening option checked will appear in the options. The Enabled for Shortening option is located in the site's Site Detail screen. See Creating A New Site for more information.

2 URL

This is the URL to which the short link will redirect individuals. The default is the URL of the current page, but you can change it to any valid URL.

3 Category

Pick the category that best fits your Short Link to organize it by use. For details on creating categories, see below.

4 Token

The token is a unique, random value at least seven characters long that is used to identify the page in a short link. Rock generates a default token for you, but you can also provide your own. Remember, the token must be unique and at least seven characters long.

5 Short Link Preview

This is the generated Short Link, based on the Site, URL and Token fields. It updates automatically as those values change. Use the button to copy it.

6 Pinned

Select this for your most important Short Links, those you will use often. Links you pin will be displayed at the top of your Short Links list.

7 Advanced Settings

Advanced configuration such as setting an Urchin Tracking Module (UTM) for your link. More on this below.

8 Save

The short link will not work until you click Save. Clicking Save will also automatically copy the short link to your clipboard.

To add a new category, make sure it uses the EntityType of PageShortLink. Only categories with this type are eligible for use with Short Links. You can set this in the Admin Tools > Settings > Category Manager.

For example, you might create a Children's Ministry category to keep all related Short Links organized. You can also configure security so only Children's Ministry staff can access or manage those links.

Managing Short Links

As you create short links, they can be viewed and managed in the Short Links page found at Admin Tools > CMS Configuration > Short Links.

As your list of Short Links grows, you can keep things manageable with built-in filtering and sorting. Press for global options, or hover over a column and select to narrow the results.

Click any Short Link in the list to view or edit its details and see where it has been used. To copy a link, click the button. To filter by creator, select the icon.

Create Short Link Workflow Action

You can also create short links as part of a workflow. For more information see Create Short Link, located in the Utility section of the Workflow Action Documentation.

Advanced Short Links

When it comes to short links, there's more than meets the eye. With Advanced Settings, you can tack on UTM codes to track where your traffic’s coming from—perfect for tracking marketing campaigns and collecting valuable data.

When editing or adding a new Short Link from the Short Links List block, you will notice that the detail screen looks a little different, and has some new features.

1 UTM Source

Who sent the traffic. (e.g., Facebook, Newsletter)

2 UTM Medium

How the link was shared. (e.g., email, SMS, social)

3 UTM Campaign

Under what campaign was the link shared. (e.g., SpringGroups, Launch2025)

4 UTM Term

What keyword triggered the link (mainly for ads).

5 UTM Content

Which version of the link was clicked (great for A/B testing).

Once you have started collecting data with UTM parameters, you can track performance similar to other analytics platforms like Google Analytics.

Streamlining UTM Parameters

The UTM Source, UTM Medium and UTM Campaign fields use a list that preserves the values you use. This process ensures consistency and easy retrieval of UTM values you have used before. Under the hood, these values are being saved as Defined Values.

Using UTM Parameters Manually

You don’t have to use the UTM fields in the interface. You can manually add them to the end of a URL when sharing a link. The Advanced Settings are simply provided for convenience.

Short Link Scheduled Redirects

By utilizing Scheduled Redirects, links can dynamically re-route clicks during a specified time period.

Here is an example of the power Scheduled Redirects brings:

You might place this URL in a QR code or an NFC token located in your auditorium. The link could change depending on the event. On weekends, it might direct to a giving page, while during weekday events, it could point to your event schedule.

If you toggle Enable Scheduled Redirects on when editing a Short Link, then click the , you can create a new Scheduled Redirect.

1 Schedule Type

• Custom Schedule

When using a Custom Schedule you can determine a one-time or recurring schedule for when this link will redirect those who click.

• Named Schedule

When using a Named Schedule you can select a pre-configured schedule. Create a new one under Admin Tools > Settings > General > Schedules.

2 URL

This is the URL to which the short link will redirect individuals.

3 Purpose Key

Optional parameter used to describe what the specified URL represents. (e.g.: event_registration)

4 Advanced Settings

UTM settings can be individually configured for each redirect link. See Advanced Short Links for more information.

Make sure to click OK when you are done.

Using UTM Campaigns With Scheduled Redirects

Imagine your 'Church Information' link is scheduled to redirect to a Small Groups page during weekdays. Setting up a new campaign for that link will allow you to collect more targeted data on who is searching for your church throughout the week versus searching on the weekends.

Rock Information

Clicking the Rock Information button () will display the System Information window where you can view the version info and diagnostics.

Version Info

1 Rock Version

This shows the version of Rock that you are currently running.

2 Server Culture Setting

These are the language and culture settings that the webserver is configured to use. This setting helps Rock determine how some of the international settings should be configured.

3 Clear Cache

As you'll see, Rock's cache is an incredible thing. It drastically speeds up the performance of the site. It’s also very smart and will clear old or modified content. At times though, you may need to clear the cache to remove information that is no longer valid. If you make a change and don't see it reflected on a page, consider trying to clear the cache with this option.

4 Restart Rock

Rarely you might get into a situation where you need to "reboot" Rock. This button acts as Rock's reboot switch.

Diagnostics

The diagnostics tab lists the complete configuration of your Rock environment. It’s useful when working with others to debug an issue.

Basic Usage

To edit an HTML block, click the icon in the Admin Toolbar at the bottom of the page where the block has been placed. Next, move your cursor over the (Block Fly-out) toolbar and select the (Edit) button. This will bring up the edit modal (shown below). This modal allows you to edit the contents of the HTML.

Near the top-right of the block, you can also set a date range for which the content is valid. This is great for adding date-sensitive messages. Just keep in mind that the dates are based on midnight. So, if you want to see content from January 1 to January 7, you would set the first date to January 1, and the second date to January 8. In other words, the content will be displayed until, but not on, the second date.

HTML Content Block Settings

While the default HTML block settings are great for typical usage, you have a ton of extra options that you can use to do some really cool things. Like any block, to get to the settings click the icon in the Admin Toolbar at the bottom of the page and then select the button from the block fly-out menu. This will bring up the block settings dialog. Let’s look at each setting in detail.

Merge Fields

It's time to change the paradigm of how you write content. With Rock, content doesn't have to be impersonal any longer. Using merge fields, you can customize the content for the logged-in person. Not only can you add their name, but you can look at all of the person attributes and make the content relevant to their relationship with your organization. Let's revisit the example from the introduction.

Adding the following on a baptism page allows for personal and actionable content:

{% if Person %} 
    {% if Person.BaptismDate != '' %}
        {{ Person.NickName }}, remember the joy of your baptism? Share that joy
        with a friend who hasn't yet taken the plunge at one of our upcoming
        baptism events!
    {% else %}
        {{ Person.NickName }}, now is the time! Don't put off baptism any longer,
        take the plunge at one of our upcoming events!
    {% endif %}
{% else %}
    Take the plunge at one of our upcoming baptism events!
{% endif %}

Note the use of Lava syntax to add logic to the page. Here's how the markup above would look:

• If the person is logged in and has been baptized it shows the message: "Alisha, remember the joy of your baptism? Share that joy with a friend who hasn't yet taken the plunge at one of our upcoming baptism events!"
• If the person hasn't been baptized yet they will see: "Alisha, now is the time! Don't put off baptism any longer, take the plunge at one of our upcoming events!"
• Otherwise, if the person is not logged in, they are greeted with: "Take the plunge at one of our upcoming baptism events!"

Besides information on the current person, you also have access to all organization attributes and items in the context of the page. For more information on Lava syntax see the Lava Basics.

Pages vs Layouts

While it's already been noted before, remember that blocks can be assigned to either a page or a layout. When a block is assigned to a layout, it will be displayed on all pages that use that layout. This is especially useful with the HTML editor block as you'll often want bits of content to be consistently applied to several pages.

You can also apply the HTML editor block to the site level, though this is done only rarely. Adding the block at the site level will cause the block to appear on every page in the site. This could be useful for header or footer content you want applied to all pages site-wide.

Content Component Templates

With content components you’ll use a set of templates to manage content. Each template provides a set of fields and a matching Lava template, which gives designers control over the output. Rock comes with a few example templates out of the box.

In the example below, the content component is set up with the Side By Side template. There are actually two items here, one with text on the left and another with text on the right. You’ll see below how this kind of arrangement can be set up and changed.

To achieve this consistent look the editors didn't need to learn HTML, they just entered text into a few fields! Let’s take a peek at how this is set up behind the scenes.

Configuring Content Components

First, you'll need to set up the page and block settings. Check out the Page Zone and Page Properties sections for more details on doing that. When adjusting the Page Zone settings, be sure “Content Component” is selected as the page block Type.

Then, click the icon for the block to open the content component configuration page.

1 Component Name

Provide a name for the content component. This is only visible internally.

2 Allow Multiple Content Items

If you enable this, content creators can add several content items to a single section. The remaining block settings described here apply to all of the content items, so this option is great for ensuring consistency on the page.

3 Item Cache Duration

Rock can cache the items returned from the database to help improve performance. Here you can provide the item cache duration, in seconds.

4 Output Cache Duration

Rock can cache the page output as well. This improves speed but is best used for non-personalized information. After all, you don't want to display a wrong name because the page is displaying cached output!

5 Content Component Template

Pick the content component template you want to use from the dropdown list of available options. There are three available out of the box, but you can add as many as you want. The templates that ship with Rock are:

• Hero
• Side By Side
• Card

6 Title Size

The font size of the title can be adjusted by selecting one of the available options. This follows standard heading (H) increments, so H1 will be larger than H2.

7 Content Alignment

Pick where your content should appear within the block. The impact this has will vary depending on the layout being used, so feel free to try different layout/alignment combinations to find what works best for your content.

8 Foreground Color

Select the color of the font for your content. This applies to both the title and the actual content.

9 Background Color

Select the color of the background for your content. The font/foreground color chosen will appear on top of the background color, depending on the layout and whether or not you’re using a photo.

10 Filters

You can selectively filter what content to show based on one or more of the content channel item fields or attributes.

11 Advanced

As with most blocks, you can add custom HTML that renders before or after the block.

After the content component block has been set up, the configuration bar will have the icon available to add content.

1 Title

The title will appear on the website above the content you provide. The font size of the title can be changed using the block settings discussed above.

2 Content Items

This pane will only appear if Allow Multiple Content Items is enabled in the block settings. Here you can add, remove or change the display order of the block’s content items.

3 Content

This is where the actual content is added and edited. This is designed with common word processing features that editors are generally familiar with, so they can be creative without getting technical.

4 Image

An image can optionally be added. Try using images with different layout and alignment options (in the block settings) to see what works best.

5 Save / Save Item

If Allow Multiple Content Items is enabled, then you’ll have a Save Item button below the image upload area. If Allow Multiple Content Items is not enabled, then you’ll see a Save button in the bottom right corner of the window, next to a Cancel button.

Add/Modify Content Component

Now let’s say we want to change our content component from the Side By Side view to the Card view. Those who have full admin rights can do that on the fly by going back to the content component configuration page and changing the Content Component Template.

After the template has been changed the content will automatically be updated and will immediately look similar to this:

Simply changing the layout has resulted in a page with identical content but a very different look. Changing this setting, along with the other available block settings, ensures your website can look just how you want it without requiring editors to wade through complex coding.

Creating Content Component Templates

Three content component templates are available to you right out of the box, but you can create as many as you need.

To create a content component template, navigate to Admin Tools > CMS Configuration > Content Component Templates and click the button on the grid.

Content component templates function just like content channel item lists, so all the power of Lava is available to you. To see all of the available attributes and properties just add {{ 'Lava' | Debug }} to the Display Lava field.

To make things easier we recommend copying an existing content component template (i.e., everything in the Display Lava field) to use as a starting point for building your own template. Your Lava will have access to both the content channel items related to the component as well as the configuration settings (like the heading size).

Content Component Item Attributes

Content Components allow you to add attributes flexibly. You can make attributes available to an individual content component, to content components that use a specific template or to all content components.

Adding Attributes to Content Component Templates

Typically, you'll be adding content component item attributes to a content component template. This allows you to use the attributes in a content component Lava template, guaranteeing that it will be available every time a block is added to the page.

To get started we'll add an attribute category to the setup. Navigate to Admin Tools > General Settings > Attribute Categories and add a new category.

In the Name field, provide a name that is identical to the content component template name to which the attribute will apply. For example, enter "Hero" for attributes you'd like to add to the Hero content component template. In this case, the attributes would not be available to the "Card" or "Side By Side" templates. You only need to add one category for each content component template you have.

Next, select "Content Channel Item" as the Entity Type.

Now, add attributes to your newly-created category by going to Admin Tools > CMS Configuration > Content Channel Types and editing the Content Component entry to access its Item Attributes.

As pictured above, an item attribute for Image is already present. Click the icon to add a new Item Attribute.

When adding the new Item Attribute, use the Categories field to select the Content Component Template on which you'd like the attribute to appear. The rest of the setup is the same as any other attribute.

Components of Dynamic Content

Rock's dynamic content tools are made up of three components.

1 Content Channel Types

Channel types define the structure for the dynamic content tools. They define what attributes are available on both the channels and content items. Rock ships with several content channel types ready to use out of the box.

2 Content Channels

Content channels are implementations of the channel types. For instance, because there is a channel type of Blogs, you can make blog channels for the organization's website, a specific person and/or a specific area of your organization.

3 Content Items

These are the specific data elements that make up a content channel. For a blog channel these would be the specific blog posts; for the website ads channel these would represent the specific promotions.

Now, let's jump right into adding and managing content items.

Managing Content Items

While it's possible to add new content items on the channel configuration page (Admin Tools > CMS Configuration > Content Channels), most of your staff won't have access to these screens. For staff, it's easier for them to add their content under Tools > Content. On this screen they will see a list of each content channel they have View access to. Clicking one of the items will display the content items for that channel.

1 Content Channels

List of the content channels that the current user has View rights to. A count of the number of Pending items is displayed in the upper right corner of the channel.

2 Display Toggle

Toggle switch to display all content channels, or only those with pending items.

3 Content Items

A listing of all content items in the channel with the ability to filter by status, date range or title.

Adding Content Items

To add a new content item, click the button in the grid footer. This will bring up the add/edit screen pictured below.

1 Title

The title for the content item.

2 Status

If approvals are enabled for the channel and the user has Approval rights, they will be able to set the approval status.

3 Priority

The channel defines if the content items have a priority. If it's enabled, you can set the priority here.

4 Dates

Dates associated with the content item are defined here. The content channel type determines what date options are available (Single Date, Date Range or No Dates) for the item.

5 Content

Every content item, no matter what type, has a content field. The channel can determine if this field should use the HTML editor or the code editor.

6 Summary Text

A short description of the item.

OK, now that we have an idea of how dynamic content works, let's take a closer look at content channels and content channel items.

Channel Types

The first concept we'll discuss is channel types. As you work on your site, look for repeating data patterns. Items like web promotions are well-structured, having data items like title, image, summary text, intended audience and content. While you could edit all of this content with the HTML editor, hopefully you can already see how that would be very tedious and prone to error. Here's where content channel types come into play.

Content channel types help define reusable data structures (think of a container for specific types of data). Rock ships with a couple of these channels already defined. Let's look at a few to see their role and purpose:

• Website Ads: This channel type is used to help manage your website promotions. It allows your staff to enter promotion information that your website administrator can approve, with the option to edit, and then publish to the site.
• Bulletins: This content type is used to help manage the bulletin creation process.
• Content Component: Gives web designers a great tool to control the look and layout of content on a page while allowing content creators the ability to create this structured content on-the-fly directly on the website.
• Blogs: The blog content type is useful to build blogs for your organization.
• Universal Channel Type: Rock ships with three Universal Chanel Types. Each is a unique and powerful tool to help you from having to create 'One-off' channel types. We discuss these channel types in more detail below.

Anatomy of a Content Channel Type

As we mentioned before, the role of the content channel type is to define the container and settings for a particular type of content. Let's walk through the administration screen found under Admin Tools > CMS Configuration > Content Channel Types.

1 Name

The name of the content channel type.

2 Date Range Type

The individual content items that are added to the content channels can be valid for a specific date (for example a blog post would have a specific publish date) or a date range (a web promotion ad would be valid for a range of dates). For some content items it might not make sense to have a date at all, so you can also select No Dates.

3 Disable Priority

Some content items might have the concept of priority, while others may not. For instance, a web ad might be low priority (which would limit when and how it's shown), while a blog post would not need to use the concept of priority. This setting allows you to turn the need for priority on or off.

4 Disable Content Field

This option allows you to disable or hide the content field, which can be really helpful if you want to simplify the screen view as you build your channel, or if you want to create a kind of blank template using only attributes.

5 Disable Status

This option allows you to bypass the status and treat all content as "approved".

6 Channel Attributes:

This section allows you to define attributes that relate to the channel. For a blog channel this might be something like blog description, author, or image. Channel attributes aren't as common as item attributes; so, don't worry if you have a hard time coming up with any.

7 Item Attributes

Item attributes apply to each content item that is added to the channel. Most content items get a date (depending on the Date Range Type discussed above) and a content field. Any other bit of information you want to track for the content item will need an attribute to store it. For example, the website ads channel has the following item attributes:

• Summary Text
• Image
• Detail Image
• Campuses
• Primary Audience
• Secondary Audiences

Content Channels

If content channel types define the structure, content channels represent the implementation. Here's an example: you might have a channel type of Blog and channels Pastor Foster's Blog and Rock Solid Church's Blog that implement this type. You might be wondering why channel types are even needed. The answer is that they help enable reuse. In our blog example above, if you didn't have channel types you would have to define the structure every time you wanted to create a new blog - yuck!

Create a new channel under Admin Tools > CMS Configuration > Content Channels.

1 Name

The name of the channel should be descriptive but not too long.

2 Description

A description of the channel. This description is available to be displayed on the page.

3 Type

The content channel type that this channel is implementing.

4 Icon CSS Class

A CSS icon class to be used on the various internal entry and administration screens.

5 Categories

Add categories so you can group and organize your content channels according to how they're used. Navigate to Admin Tools > CMS Configuration > Content Channel Categories to add the categories you need for your content. Like other entities, a channel can be in more than one category if it's needed in different areas.

6 Editor Type

This is where you'll select the editor that will be used when adding new content.

7 Items Require Approval

Depending on your use case, you might want content items to require approval before they are displayed. This setting allows you to define this on a per channel basis.

8 Enable Personalization

This enables the personalization features for this channel's items. For more details see the Personalization chapter below.

9 Items Manually Ordered

Many times, content channel items will be ordered by date. Sometimes though, you'll want to manually order them. This setting enables manual ordering.

10 Child Items Manually Ordered

This setting determines if child content channel items should be manually ordered.

11 Default Content Control

Select the default editor type used when creating content items.

12 Child Content Channels

If content channel items are allowed to have child items, this setting determines which content channel those items are allowed to be from.

13 Item Attributes

Content channels inherit all of the item attributes defined by the channel type. There may be times when a specific content channel needs to add a new attribute specific to its implementation. You can add these new attributes here.

14 Content Library

Define settings for the Content Library.

15 Enable RSS

This setting enables the channel's RSS features. This allows the content items to be published to an RSS feed that can be consumed by an individual's RSS aggregator or another software system that supports RSS integrations.

16 Enable Tagging

Select this option if you'd like to allow the items in this content channel to be tagged.

17 Tag Category

If you select Enable Tagging, the Tag Category dropdown menu is displayed, allowing you to select which category of tags you want to use to identify the items in this content channel.

18 Content Channel Publishing Point

If you want to provide a direct link to the content channel, you can enter the URL into this Lava-enabled field.

You’re not limited to HTML just because a Content Channel started that way. By enabling Is Structured Content, you can start using the structured content editor right away for every new item you add. This means team members who aren’t comfortable with HTML can jump in to help write blog posts, update external website ads or collaborate on ministry updates. It’s a great way to share the workload and invite more voices into your communication without losing the work you've already done.

Note that Content Items that were originally created with HTML will stay that way, but all new items will use Structured Content.

Content Channel Tags

Just as you can tag people in Rock, you can also use tags to help identify and categorize content channels. One small difference, though, is only organizational tags can be used with content channels (as opposed to personal tags), and those tags must belong to a category specified when the content channel is configured.

Let's take a closer look at how to set this up.

1. The first thing you need to do to start using tags with content channels is set up tag categories. Categories are created in the Category Manager, found at Admin Tools > General Settings > Tag Categories. Create as many categories as you want. Once a category is created you will need to add a Role to the security under the Tag section for each. Otherwise added tags in that category will not be saved.



Using Categories

Each category will have a list of tags. Say you have a "Sermon" category and a "Podcast Sermon" category you would create two tags for each category. Tags are all about how you want to organize your Content Channels. The power is in your hands to create the categories the way it makes sense for your organization.



2. The next step is enabling tagging in your content channels. Select the content channel you want to tag from the list found at Admin Tools > CMS Configuration > Content Channels and click Edit to modify its configuration. Check the Enable Tagging box, then select the category you'd like to be available for the content channel.


3. The final step is creating the tags you'll use with your content channel items. You can create as many as you need. Tags are created in the Tags screen, located at Admin Tools > General Settings > Tags. For each tag you create, use the Entity Type of "Content Channel Item" and select "Organizational" for the Owner. Leave the Qualifier Column and Qualifier fields blank. Alternatively, you can add tags directly from the content channel. You will be able to view and edit those tags in the general settings after they've been created if need be.

Now that your categories and tags are set up, you can add tags to content channel items. Simply type the tags you want to use in the "add tag" area of the Content Detail screen and click Save when you're done.

Content Channel Items

Once you have your channels set up, it’s time to bring it all together and add some content. This is done by adding Content Channel Items to your Content Channel. If your channel is a blog, then the channel item would be a single blog post. You can add items in one of two ways:

1. You can enter content right on the Admin Tools > CMS Configuration > Content Channels screen under the channel details by adding a row. This is more of an administrative screen.
2. Specific content entry pages can be found under Tools > Content. These are the pages that your staff can use to enter content, and your communications team will use to approve and manage entries. These screens are covered in the Communicating with Rock manual in detail.

The example pictured below is a sample content channel item entry for a Podcast series. The fields you see on this page may vary according to your configuration as described in the prior sections.

1 Title

This is the title of the content item.

2 Start and Expire

Items will only appear in the content channel on or after the Start date. You can optionally set an Expire date to automatically remove the item in the future.

3 URL Slug

You can add one or more slugs to customize the URL of the item. URL slugs are unique to each content channel. This means you can use the same slug on items in different content channels without causing conflicts. However, you can't use the same slug on multiple items within the same channel.

4 Item Global Key

The Item Global Key is automatically generated when you save, using the title of the content channel item. The value can be re-generated if the item title is changed.

5 Content

In this case we selected the HTML Editor option when setting up the channel, giving us this editor. From here you can manually switch to the Code Editor by clicking the icon. If Is Structured Content was selected in the channel setup, this area will look different, but you'll have many of the same tools.

6 Summary

This field is an attribute that was added to the content channel setup. Each item added to the channel will have a summary field like this one.

7 Image

Like the Summary, this is also an attribute. From notes to pictures, there's a lot you can do with content channel item attributes.

8 Child Items

You can add child items here, as allowed by the channel's setup.

Security Rights on Content

So now that we have covered content channel items, you might be wondering are there permissions that I can set up for these content channels? If you said yes, perfect you’re in the right place. If not, maybe check it out – just in case!

Rock provides special security rights, also known as verbs – that work to grant users permissions to specific pages. Right out of the box, Rock offers the traditional three settings – view, edit and administrate.

In addition to the basic three security rights, content channel items also have interact. Now on face value you might be thinking isn’t that the same thing as view or edit? Interact is similar – but totally different – in the best way possible.

Think of it this way…Say your organization creates high quality content that you want to offer to your website visitors. You want every individual who views your site to see that the content exists, so you give them view rights. However, only those who have interact rights will be able to watch or read the full details.

The Universal Channel Type

As you start brain-storming ideas for using content channels you'll find yourself needing to create one-off channel types that will be used by a single content channel. For instance, when we set out to create the Lava documentation we first needed to create a new channel type called 'Lava Channel Type'. We could then add a new content channel 'Lava Documentation' that implemented that type. Creating the type for use with a single content channel was wasted effort, especially since content channels can add their own item attributes.

Hence the generic Universal Channel Types were born. These channel types are generic types that you can use to build your one-off content channels from. They have no attributes defined, so your channel will define all of the item attributes you need. No wasted effort. The only difference between each type is what date fields are available, or if no dates will be used.

Showing a Channel on a Page

Now that you understand how to create content channels and items, the next step is adding them to your external website. The main block you will use to format channel content is the Content Channel View block. Adding this block to a page zone will allow you configure the settings listed below.

1 Channel

The content channel you would like to display on the screen.

2 Status

The content item status to filter on when creating a list of content items.

3 Format

This is the Lava template selected to iterate through when displaying content items on the screen. See the Rock Lava documentation for tips and tricks on using Lava in Rock. If you're not using a template that ships with Rock (e.g., AdList.lava) you'll likely need to start with {% for item in Items %} to iterate through the content items.

4 Items Per Page

The number of items to make available for the Lava template.

5 Item Cache Duration

Rock can cache the items returned from the database to help improve performance.

6 Output Cache Duration

Rock can cache the page output as well. This improves speed but is best used for non-personalized information. You don't want to display a wrong name because the page is displaying cached output!

7 Cache Tags

Cache tags are used to link cached content so that it can be expired as a group. We have a whole chapter on creating and using cache tags below.

8 Set Page Title

This will set the page's title based on the channel content. By default, it will display the channel name. If the query string contains an item id (in the format of Item=1) then that item's title will be used for the page title.

9 Merge Content

When this setting is enabled, the block will look for Lava fields in your content and attributes. Then, it will compile and render the Lava. This allows you to put Lava logic in your actual content. Think of the power of having blog posts that can actually be dynamic to the user reading them!

10 Detail Page

This setting allows you to define the detail page to add as a Lava merge field. This allows your Lava template to link to the detail page.

11 Enable Tag List

You can add organizational tags to your content channel items as described above. Enabling this setting lets you control the display of content channel items by their tags in the Lava template (the Format field described above). Click the help tip icon for this setting for details on the Lava. Enabling this setting also lets you use a query string parameter of ?Tag=tagname to filter the content channel items. These tags are used in addition to, and not in place of, any filters (see below) you have configured.

12 Enable Archive Summary

This feature gives you an option to let people access old or expired content, without having to keep that content prominently displayed on your site. Using the additional 'ArchiveSummary' collection available in Lava, the items' Start Dates can be used to order and group this content by month and year.

13 Filters

The content filter is very similar to the data view screens. This section allows you to filter by any attribute or property of the content item.

14 Context Filter Attribute

This setting serves as a precision tool for your Content Channel View block. It allows you to designate a content channel item attribute that can have its value referenced against the page's context, ensuring that only relevant items are displayed. Simply select the attribute name from the list, ensure the content channel item has a value for that attribute, and observe as your content seamlessly aligns with the context of the page. Before using this feature, ensure you've defined the entity type in the block's properties to establish the context.

15 Enable Query/Route Parameter Filtering

When this setting is enabled, the block will try to determine the content item to display based on a query string or route parameter value (other than the default ‘Item’ parameter). For instance, if you set this property and then include ?Title=Car Show in the URL, the block will look for an item that has a Title of ‘Car Show’. You can also add an item attribute for your channel ("slug", for instance) and include that attribute in the route to this page (series/{slug}, in this case). Additionally, you can add 'Month' and 'Year' parameters to filter content items by their Start date.

16 Order Items By

Allows you to set the display order of the content items.

17 Personalization Options

You'll use these settings to decide how personalization segments and request filters are applied to the page. For details and a description of the options see the Personalization chapter below.

18 Meta Description Attribute

This setting allows you to pick an attribute to use for the meta description tag in the page header. This description is used when people share the page on social media.

19 Meta Image Attribute

Allows you to set the page’s meta image tag in the header to the selected image attribute defined on the content channel.

But Wait... There’s More

The settings above provide a ton of capabilities when adding dynamic data to a page. This block can also respond to specific query string parameters to alter its behavior. Let’s look at each of them:

• Item: If you pass in an item’s numeric id, the block will only load that specific item into the Lava merge fields. The query string parameter you add to the end of the URL would look something like ?Id=27.


• Page: If you have more items than fit on a single page, you can navigate between pages using the Page query parameter. Simply pass in the page number you wish to display, like ?Page=2. If you pass in a page number beyond the last page, the last page will be shown. If the page number is less than 1, the first page will be displayed.


• Attributes: Content channel items can have attributes, and you can reference those attributes in the query string parameters. You'll use the attribute's Key and Value to do this. For instance, let's say you have an attribute indicating the general topic of content channel items. If you just want to see items related to "Finances" then your query string might look like ?Topic=Finances (or ?Topic=2 if the attribute is a single/multi-select field coded with numeric values).
  
  Rock also supports passing in multiple values for Defined Value attributes that have 'Allow Multiple' enabled. In that case, the value you want in the query string parameter will be the GUID of the Defined Value you're looking for. Multiple values (i.e., multiple GUIDs) can be separated by a comma in the query string. This will return any items that have at least one of the provided values.

Showing a Single Item on a Page

Your Content Channel View block is great for showing all of the posts in a channel, but what about a block to show a single content item? You can use the Content Channel View block and use an ID or Title parameter, but we really want more SEO-friendly URLs. Enter the Content Channel Item View block, which brings you this and more.

This block gives you the option to "lock" it to a specific channel so that you can have a sermon series called "Moneywise" and a blog post titled "Moneywise" without having to worry about your pages getting confused about which item to show. To limit its search to a single channel, simply specify the Content Channel in the top input.

The Lava Template is the template which will be used to determine what shows up on the page. Initially, this will simply show the title of the item and the content below, but you can get really detailed in specifying how this page will be laid out. Using the Item object, you can access the properties and attributes of your content item for display on the page and even provide links to other pages.

In the Visitor Settings section, you can choose whether an interaction is logged every time someone views an item on a page with this block. You can also specify a Workflow Type that should be launched whenever this block is used to show an item. The workflow will be passed a Person entity which you can use to store the person who viewed the page (if they're logged in). If your workflow has a Content Channel Item attribute with a key of ContentChannelItem, that attribute will be automatically filled in as well. You can use that attribute to discover which item they viewed, and optionally perform different actions based on that information.

The Social Media Settings section will let you link any item attributes you added to the channel to special meta tags on the page. For instance, if your blog post has an image they've provided in an attribute, you might want that image to be shown on the preview that appears in Facebook when someone shares your post there. But you might want to ask your post author to provide a different image for Facebook than the image for Twitter, so you can use these fields to specify which attribute will be used for each social network.

Finally, in Advanced Settings, you can specify what this block calls a slug, if you use that parameter in the URL. For example, if you wanted to provide a URL with ?sermon=MoneyWise at the end instead of ?slug=MoneyWise, you could type "sermon" into this box, and it would look for an item with a slug matching the "sermon" parameter in the URL. (Of course, using parameters like this would break the SEO friendliness that this block was designed for, so it would be an unusual case that you would want to put anything in this field). Usually, you'll just want to access the page using an address like "/sermon/MoneyWise" which would match a Page Route of sermon/{slug}.

You can also specify whether the output and the item content itself is cached to speed up page loads. You can also allow the item being viewed to set the page title so that your users aren't seeing a generic title like "Our Sermons" when they load a page that is showing a sermon called "Our Cloud of Witnesses".

Tips and Tricks

Below are some tips and tricks to help you maximize your usage of dynamic data:

• When you enable the ability to use Lava in content items, be sure that your Lava is set up to display data when the current user or other merge items are not available. When the content is made available via RSS, many of the merge fields will not be available.
• The RSS feed for a channel can be linked to from the address: http://yourserver/GetChannelFeed.ashx?ChannelId=N where N is the channel id.

Publishing Content Through Feeds

Once you enter your content, you may want to make it available through feed systems like RSS. Rock provides an endpoint that allows you to push your content in this way. The URL for this end point is:
http://yourserver.com/GetChannelFeed.ashx?ChannelId=X

The only required parameter is the ChannelId of the channel you want to publish. This channel must be configured to Enable RSS for the feed to return content.

The structure of the feed is defined by a Lava template. The RSS template is used by default, but you can create and configure additional templates to suit your needs. These templates are managed under Admin Tools > General Settings > Defined Types > Lava Templates. Once you create a new template, you can enable it by placing the TemplateId= parameter in the query string. The TemplateId will be the Defined Value's Id. Note that the defined value can also set the MIME type that should be used with the template.

Other query string parameters you can pass into the handler include:

• Count: Limits the number of content items to return. The default value is 10.
• TemplateId: The defined value id of the Lava template you wish to use.
• EnableDebug: If present on the query string (with any value), the feed will output all available merge fields for you to view.

Child Content Channel Items

Content channel items can have child items. These child items can be from other channels. For instance, the podcasting feature in Rock uses this capability. The 'Podcast Series' content channel items are configured to have child items from the 'Podcast Messages' content channel. This concept is powerful as it allows the series items to have their own attributes and settings, yet they can work together to create robust applications.

When adding a child content channel item, you have the ability to select an existing item, or to create a new item. This is helpful as it minimizes the amount of clicking required to add child items.

Keep in mind that a single channel item can have more than one parent. Child items can also have their own children. The sky's the limit on what you can create.

Content Channel Item Self Update

You already know from the sections above that content channel items will appear in the content channel on or after the Start date and before the Expire date. But what if you have an item that needs to be shown or removed more dynamically, perhaps based on an event that only happens every few months? You could manually update the Start and Expire dates every time the event approaches and passes, but that can be a pain. That’s where the Self Update feature comes to the rescue.

Content channel items can be shown on your website in several different ways. It’s all driven by the Lava template you provide. Because Lava can look at the content channel item’s attributes, you can use those attributes to control how items display on your site. The best part is that the Content Channel Item Self Update job automates changing those attribute values for you, automatically changing what’s shown on your site.

Getting it Set Up

There are a few steps to this process, but the automation that comes with it makes it worth the effort. You’ll need to get some attributes set up for your content channel items, and then you’ll need to tell the Content Channel Item Self Update job how to find those attributes. There are a couple more steps along the way, and we’ll walk you through it all below.

Adding Content Channel Item Attributes

You’ll start by adding at least two new attributes to your content channel items. One of the attributes must be of type Lava. We’ll talk about the second attribute in a bit, but let’s focus on the Lava attribute for now. Pictured below is an example of how you might set this up from Admin Tools > System Settings > Entity Attributes using an Entity Type of Content Channel Item.

You might notice there isn’t a Default Value provided in the example pictured above. You can certainly add your Lava here so that it automatically gets applied to your content channel items. Just keep in mind that changing the Default Value Lava here will not automatically change the Lava that’s already been applied to existing items.

Next, let’s add our second attribute. In this example we’re going to keep it simple and use an attribute of type Boolean. This will give us a basic ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ to work with. We’ll use this attribute to indicate whether the content channel item should be displayed on the website.

Setting the Attribute Values

With both attributes in place, we’re ready to see how they look on the content channel item itself. You’ll need to access the item to fill in values for these attributes initially, unless they have been populated by a Default Value configured on the attributes.

Pictured above you can see the Lava we’re using for this item, and the Show Item attribute we also added.

The Lava in this example will return either 'True' or 'False' depending on whether an event’s date is in the future. This Lava will be evaluated by the Content Channel Item Self Update job when it runs. The result is used by the job to update the Show Item attribute, which can accept a value of 'True' or 'False'. Remember, the Lava must produce an output that makes sense to the attribute being updated by the job. If our Lava produced a date, then this wouldn’t work because a date doesn’t make sense to our Boolean Show Item attribute.

Setting up the Job

With the attributes and their values in place, the hard part is over. All we need to do now is tie it all together by setting up the job.

1 Job Type

Be sure to select Content Channel Item Self Update as the Job Type. This will provide you with the additional fields you need to continue your setup.

2 Content Channel

The job will go through all items in the selected channel, to check for your Lava template and the related attribute. You will need multiple jobs configured if you’re using this process across multiple content channels.

3 Template Key

This is where you’ll add the attribute Key for the content channel item attribute that contains your Lava.

4 Target Key

The Target Key will be the Key for the attribute that you want updated by the Lava template. In this example, we want the ShowItem attribute updated by the LogicTemplate Lava.

With the job and attributes in place, our webpage can now reference the Show Item attribute’s value to have Rock automatically display or hide this content channel item.

Content Collection View

The Content Collection View block is where content collections come to life. As pictured below, this block provides robust search and filtering capabilities across all the items in your content collection at blazingly fast speeds. Out of the box this block is not applied to any pages.

1 Search

Rock provides full text indexing to allow a person to search for words or phrases across all of the content contained in the collection. This happens so quickly, the list of items below the search bar are updated in real time as you're typing.

2 Attribute Filters

The Speaker search filter is actually a content channel item attribute. Later on, we'll cover how to use item attributes as filters.

3 Year Filter

The year filter comes for free, but you can disable it in the block settings.

4 Content Channel Items

This is the list of items that match the search criteria and any filters that have been applied. These items could be from multiple different content channels included in the collection.

5 Relevance

By default, the items are listed based on relevance to the search, but you can change how they're sorted here. Block settings let you control which sort options are available.

We already mentioned a couple of the settings for this block. Now let's take a detailed look at the other available options. You can change or completely disable different parts of the block, allowing you to customize how it works according to what makes the most sense for your content collection. For instance, if the full-text search wouldn't be as useful because your content is all audio/video then you can simply turn it off.

1 Content Collection

Here you'll choose which content collection to use. Try to use descriptive names for your content collections so they're easy to identify when you're setting up this block.

2 Search Options

As pictured in the prior screenshot above, a person can use the filters panel and the full-text search, as well as adjust the sort order. Any of these items can be disabled.

3 Number of Results

This controls how many results will be shown at a time. If the search returns more than this number of results, there will be a Show More button to show additional results.

4 Search on Load

If this is enabled, then a person will see items listed without performing a search. The number of items the person sees is set by the Number of Results setting.

5 Group Results by Source

Content collections pull in content from different sources, such as content channels and calendars. Enable this option to group search results according to their source. This means you'll get results for each source. For instance, if your content collection contains two content channels and if your Number of Results is set to five then you would see two sections with five items each, for a total of 10 items in the results.

6 Enabled Sort Orders

The person viewing the block will be able to sort the results by the options you select here. This setting only applies if Show Sort is enabled.

7 Trending Term

This setting only applies to the name of the sort order for "trending" items. You might choose to call it "Popularity" or "Most Watched". We'll talk more about trending features below.

8 Results Template

This is an advanced setting that lets you change how the results are displayed overall. For instance, this controls the Show More button.

9 Item Template

This is another advanced setting, but this lets you control how individual items show up within the search results. You'll need to update this area to tell the block what page to go to when an individual item is clicked, to view that item. Out of the box the change will need to be made on line 2, replacing the # symbol with the URL to the new page.

10 Pre-Search Template

Before the person performs a search, and if you have Search on Load disabled, the template here will be shown to the person where search results would normally appear. Like the above two settings, this is an advanced setting that you won't be changing often, if ever.

11 Filters

Here you can choose which filters to show on the page. You can also click and drag each filter so that it appears above or below other filters. Lastly, you can click the icon to add a custom header that will appear above the filter.

12 Personalization

Content channel items can have personalization segments and request filters applied to them. If a match is found with the current person and/or their visit, those content channel items will be "boosted" (moved up) in the search results, by the amount chosen in the Boost field. See the Personalization chapter for additional details on setting up personalization.

Setting up Content Collections

Now that you've seen what you can do with content collections, let's take a look at how to set one up. The process is simple because you don't have to change anything about your content channels or calendars, or how they're structured. You'll want to think strategically about your collections, to ensure you've got the right content in the right places. For instance, you might have a content collection for resources, or a collection of all of your messages, devotionals, and blogs. You can have as many content collections as you need, and you can use the same content in more than one collection.

We'll start by navigating to Admin Tools > CMS Configuration > Content Collections. As pictured below, we'll be looking at an example content collection called "Resource Library".

1 Name / Description

Provide a meaningful name and a strong description. When you're setting up the Content Collection View block, only the name of the content collection will be visible.

2 Key

The key needs to be unique across all content collections. Typically, you'll want to provide a key that easily identifies the content collection without being too long.

3 Enable Trending

People using the Content Collection View block can choose to sort the search results according to what is trending. For instance, content channel items with the most views will be at the top of results. See the Trending section below for details on how this is calculated. Rock uses Interactions to track views, so the Content Channel Item View block(s) you're using need to have Log Item Interaction enabled under Visitor Settings.

4 Enable Personalization

You can choose to look at Segments, Request Filters or both, to find content channel items that match the person or their visit. You can bring matching items to the top of the results list by adjusting the block settings for the Content Collection View block.

5 Trending Window

This is simply the number of days to look back for trending data. This helps keep your trending data fresh and relevant.

6 Trending Item Count

In this example, only the top 10 trending items will be marked as trending. There needs to be a cutoff, otherwise every item would be considered trending if they were viewed at least once.

7 Trending Gravity

This applies to items that are new or more recent. Because these items haven't been around long enough to score lots of views, you can choose to give them more weight. The result of this would be that a new item could be considered trending even if it has fewer views than other older items.

8 Rebuild Index

Click this button to re-index the items in your collection. This ensures all the items in your collection are accounted for and can be searched. The Index Content Collections system job will do this for you automatically overnight, but you may want to manually rebuild the index to capture changes made during the day.

The items above define the framework of your content collection overall. Next, we need to add actual content to the content collection. Pictured below you can see we've added two content channels and a calendar to the content collection. Keep in mind that we didn't need to change anything with the content channel or the calendar. Your existing configuration will work as-is.

1 Rebuild Index

Click this button to re-index the items in your collection. This is the same button as described in the prior screenshot above. Remember that the Index Content Collections system job will automatically rebuild the index every night.

2 Content Sources

Here we're looking at content sources. In the next screenshot below, we'll show you what it looks like when we toggle over to the Search Filters view.

3 Add Item

From here you can choose to add a new calendar or content channel to the content collection.

4 Sources

This is a listing of all the content sources included in your collection. In the remaining points below, we'll go into the options you have for each source.

5 Item Count

This is simply a count of how many items (content channel items, event items) each source has. Here we can see there are 19 content channel items under the Messages content channel.

6 Move Source

The order of the content sources influences the order in which items will appear in the Content Collection View block. For instance, if we had Search on Load enabled in the Content Collection View block for this example content collection, then event items from the Public calendar would appear at the top of the list when a person first visits the page.

7 Edit Content Source

For calendars and content channels you can click this to indicate which item attributes should be added to the index. In other words, you can select which attributes to use as filters on the Content Collection View block. For calendars, you can additionally choose how many future occurrences to show.

8 Delete Source

This one's pretty obvious.

When you're adding a source you have a few options available to you. Primarily, you can select which attributes you want to use as filters on the Content Collection View block.

1 Attributes to Include

Simply check the box next to any attributes you want to have available as filters on the Content Collection View block.

2 Custom Values

This is an advanced setting that lets you do things like create custom filters.

We're not done with this page yet. If you toggle over to the Search Filters view, you'll be able to see what we can use as filters when searching for content from the Content Collection View block.

1 Search Filters

Here are your overall search filters, which apply more to the content collection as a whole. Generally, the Full Text Search and Year options will always be available.

2 Attribute Filters

This is where the filters that come from item attributes are listed. This is controlled by the selections made under the Content Sources tab (see prior screenshot above).

3 Edit Filter

Click here to enable or disable each search filter. For some search filters, such as the Year filter in this example, you have additional options. First, you can change the name of the filter. Then you can decide how the selectable options for that filter will appear on the Content Collection View block (either pills or dropdown). Lastly, you can choose a filter mode (either single-select or multi-select).

Trending

In the prior sections we mentioned some of the "trending" features related to content collections. Below we're going to take a deeper dive into how trending works and how it's calculated.

The Trending Window you set on the content collection plays a big role in how trending data is calculated. To determine which items are trending, Rock looks at how many views (interactions) an item in the content collection has had over the time period specified as your Trending Window. For instance, if your Trending Window is 30 days then Rock will count how many interactions an item in the content collection has had in the last 30 days. Rock then takes that number and divides it by the age of the item (in days), up to a maximum of your Trending Window. For instance, if an item is six months old and your Trending Window is 30 days, the count of interactions over the past 30 days will be divided by 30. This calculation produces a number that is used to rank the items in the content collection.

The Trending Gravity setting is used to apply more weight to items that are newer. The idea of gravity is that an item which is only two days old that has been viewed 10 times is more popular than one that has been viewed 30 times in the last 30 days. Gravity is applied to the number that is calculated as described above, changing that item's score.

Troubleshooting Content Collections

You might run into a unique scenario where the Content Collection View block isn't working exactly as you expected. In those cases, you'll need to review your configuration. Below we have some tips on where to start.

1. Enable Personalization: If your personalized content isn't appearing as it should based on the content collection setup, make sure you have personalization enabled at the site level. If you've already checked that, then run through the troubleshooting personalization list in the Personalization chapter.
2. Run the Index Job: Rock ships with an Index Content Collections system job that runs overnight and automatically re-indexes the items in your content collection. Running this job manually may resolve your issue, especially if changes to the content or content collection have been made during the day.
3. Block Settings: Be sure to double-check the settings of the Content Collection View block. There are several settings that control how this block works, as detailed above.
4. Activated Filters: Remember that filters activated in the content collection configuration must also be active in the Content Collection View block. Be sure to check both places if you're missing a filter
5. Universal Search: Content collections utilize Universal Search. That means you'll need an Active index component under Admin Tools > System Settings > Universal Search Index Components. For more information check out the Universal Search manual.

Image File Type

Serving your image files with the right dimensions is the simplest way to improve your website performance. It means less load on your site and faster images for your users. And with Rock, it couldn't be easier!

We think you’ll find the information below helpful and straightforward on how to use these tools for your best benefit. Oh, and if you are anything like us you might even find yourself having a little too much fun with your content. So, we will spare you and only go over the primary and most useful commands, knowing that this is a powerful tool where the sky is the limit.

Before anything – you have to set up an image attribute on your content channel or whatever it is you are standardizing such as page attributes.

Alright let's look at an example. Let's say you have a content channel with an item attribute named "Public Photo." Normally in your Lava you would add that image to your mark up like this:
GetImage.ashx?Guid={{ detailImageGuid }}

Here we see the original photo without any resizing.

Let's make this image smaller. GetImage.ashx?Guid={{ detailImageGuid }}&w=468&h=232

Those are super basic. Let’s add some extra commands. Say we always want the images to be a certain aspect ratio and if the image uploaded doesn’t meet that size, then a black border will fill in the rest of the area and the image will align to the top center. Our command would then look something like this:
GetImage.ashx?Guid={{ detailImageGuid }}&w=768&h=432&mode=pad&bgcolor=black&anchor=topcenter&quality=100

That’s just a glimpse of how you can use these tools to standardize your content.

Commands

Width and Height

• &w= sets the width of the image in pixels.
• &h= sets the height of the image in pixels.

If only the width and height is set, then the aspect ratio of the image is maintained and defaults to the width size.

Modes
&mode=

• max
  Resizes the image to fit within the width and height boundaries without cropping or distorting the image. The resulting image will match one of the constraining dimensions, while the other size is altered to maintain the same aspect ratio of the input image.


• pad
  Resizes the image to fit within the width and height dimensions without cropping or distorting the image and fills the remaining space with a solid color. Use the bgcolor command to set the color to fill the space.


• stretch
  Stretches the images to the W and H parameters regardless of the actual size of the image.

Background Color
&bgcolor=
Named colors and hex values are supported.

Alignment
&anchor=
The alignment parameter allows you to specify the starting location within the size parameters. Valid values are:
topleft
topcenter
topright
middleleft
middlecenter
middleright
bottomleft
bottomcenter
bottomright

Crop
&crop=
Resizes the image to fill the width and height dimensions and crops any excess image data. The resulting image will match the width and height constraints without distorting the image. Cropping is used by coordinates, x1, y1, x2, y2.

Disable Optimizations
&disableoptimizations=true
Allows disabling resizing by adding disableoptimizations=true to the query string. This allows a CDN or image optimization service to do the resizing. Without this, the query string parameters for resizing will often conflict causing both Rock and the CDN to resize and optimize the file.

Compression and Performance

Compression helps remove unnecessary data from your images, while providing the control you need for high quality at small sizes.

Storage Provider

The asset provider is configured under Admin tools > System Settings > Asset Storage Providers. This page is where you will configure providers. Depending on the storage type you choose, additional fields will be required as pictured below. This is why it's important to set up your provider first, because you'll need that information to complete the configuration in Rock.

Google Cloud JSON Key

If you're using Google, you'll need to provide a Service Account JSON Key in Rock. To get your key, log in to your Google console and access your Service Accounts. Under the Actions column for your account click the three dots and choose Create key.

You'll need to export your key as a JSON file, so it can be added to Rock. Select JSON as pictured below and click "Create" to download the file.

Open the downloaded JSON file and copy all of its contents. The full content of the entire file needs to be copied, not just the elements labeled as keys. A quick Ctrl + A and Ctrl + C is all you need.

With the contents of the JSON file copied to your clipboard, you can finish your setup in Rock. Paste the file contents into the Service Account JSON Key field as pictured below.

Asset Management

You can view and manage the files in the Asset Manager under Admin tools > CMS Configuration > Asset Manager. This block allows you to view and manage documents in the providers you have configured. Think of this as your file manager for your cloud storage and Rock server.

1Add and delete folders

From here you can add or delete folders in the asset manager.

2Folder tree

The folder tree shows parent folders with child folders within them.

3Upload a file

You can upload a file from your local machine to the asset manager here.

4Selecting files

Selecting one or more files to use.

5Download

While a file is selected - you can download it to your local machine.

6Rename

While a file is selected - Rename it.

7Delete

While a file is selected - Delete it.

8Refresh

Refresh the folder if files were uploaded from the source and aren't showing on the list yet.

Adding Content

You might be wondering, when should I use the asset manager and when should I use a file attribute? The difference is subtle. File attributes are best used to attach files to content channel items or people where you don't care about the details of where the file is stored (this is all handled for you in the file type setup). Using the asset manager gives you much more control of where and how the file will be stored. It allows you to select files that are already stored in your cloud provider. This is handy in cases where someone has already uploaded an asset that you want to use. This is common in many media arts workflows.

With that said, there are two ways you can use assets. One is using an asset attribute, and the other is through the HTML editor. We'll touch briefly on both options below.

Asset Attribute

When you configure an attribute of type Asset, you'll be given the option to Select Asset. Selecting this will display a modal where you can select or upload the asset.

HTML Editor

Rock's "WYSIWYG" editor tool also allows you to work with assets. On the toolbar you will see a icon which opens the asset manager to search for your files.

* Asset Manager File Folder

These settings are available on both the internal and external editor tools.

What Are Landing Pages and Why Should I Use Them?

Landing pages are designed to drive people to a single focus, usually for a specific event or resource. For instance, you might set up a landing page with information about your Christmas services, to register for a conference, or to join a small group.

It's different from your external website's homepage because your homepage has a lot of information about your church in general, with links to more specific areas the visitor might be interested in. A Landing Page is designed to be self-contained, with very few links off of the page, and usually gives all of the information someone might need about the topic on a single page.

This is important because it helps you make sure that you're providing your visitors with exactly the information they're looking for, without making them search through your entire site for it. It's a better experience for them, and helps your message reach the people who are looking for it - talk about a win-win!

If your goal is to get your visitors to take a specific action, such as joining a group or filling out a form (referred to as a "Call To Action"), you'll be able to add those items to these pages as well so that they can take action as soon as they have the information they need.

A Sample Landing Page

Enough talk! Let's take a look at the sample Landing Page that comes with Rock, and you can start to see what you can do with these types of pages.

1 Logo

The logo you provide in the site configuration will be shown at the top left of any of your landing pages

2 Headline and Hero Image

Each page will have a Headline zone where you can add an HTML block, for instance, and get your succinct "above the fold" message up front and center. The Hero Image is a page attribute, so you can specify the background for this area on each page.

3 Workflow

The sample page has a Workflow Entry block, showing you how you can provide a Call To Action to fill out a form. Check out the Blasting Off with Workflows guide for more information on building these forms.

4 Page Content

There are several zones in the main body of the page where you can add multiple blocks, such as HTML blocks, content channel blocks, etc.

5 Secondary Hero

Near the bottom of many of the Landing Page layouts is a secondary hero section. You can specify which image is used for each page on the page settings and provide an HTML block or other type of block to display content and secondary calls to action over the image.

Getting Started with Landing Pages

Hopefully your imagination is already running with all of the ways you will be able to use these simple and beautiful pages! The best part is all of the complex styling to get the text in the correct positions over the images is already done for you. All of the content on this sample page can be added using the HTML block WYSIWYG editor - no knowledge of HTML needed.

So, let's get started! Your Rock installation already has a Landing Page site with the LandingPage theme installed. Your landing pages will usually be a page on this site, rather than being an entire Rock site of their own. You can find this page from your internal site by clicking on Admin Tools > CMS Configuration > Pages and choosing "Landing Pages Home Page" in the menu on the left.

Now click the copy button shown below, and de-select "Include Child Pages".

Once the page is created, click Edit and you can fill in a little bit of information about the new landing page.

1 Page Names

Provide at least an Internal Name for the new page: this is the name you'll see for the page from the admin side of Rock. Frequently this will be the same name as you provide for the Page Title (which can be displayed on the page body itself) and the Browser Title (which is what the browser tab will be called when the page is loaded), but they can be different if you wish.

2 Layout

On a site using the LandingPage theme, you have more layout options than most of your other themes. Select the layout you want for this particular landing page here (refer to the below section for more information on your choices).

3 Header Image

This is where you can upload an image that this page will use as the background for the hero image at the top of the page. All of the fancy formatting is done for you- you just need to provide the image itself.

4 Secondary Image

Some layouts have a secondary hero image near the bottom of the page (such as we saw in the sample Landing Page above). If the layout you selected above has this zone, you can upload an image here for it to use as the background.

Once you've updated all of the information for the new page, click Save. When the page reloads, you'll see a link (e.g., /page/123) to your new Landing Page. Click that link and you'll be taken to your new landing page, with the logo and graphics already in place, and content copied from the initial demo page, ready for you to edit as you wish.

Wasn't that easy? Now you can use the "Zones" button on the Admin Toolbar and start adding blocks and content to your page

More Information on Landing Page Layout Options

As we mentioned above, Landing Pages have a few more layouts than other site templates. Here are some thumbnails of the layouts available to you along with the available zones, so you can decide which layout to use for your new page.

Notice that some pages are designed not to scroll (those called "Simple") and will adjust to the height of the browser they're loaded on whenever possible. Most of the "Full" layouts have hero image sections based on the height of the browser (which is labeled "Viewport Height" on these thumbnails). You don't have to have content in all of the zones shown; they're simply available to you to make sure you can easily add any blocks to the page where you want them to lay out. Any of the layouts with two image placeholders will use both the Header Image and the Secondary Image you specify in the Page Attributes.

Let Dynamic Content Do the Work

The dynamic content tools discussed above can save you a lot of time by giving you an easy workflow for adding content to pages. Think of these tools as structured bits of content that can be scheduled to display on your site. On each page think about how dynamic content could be used to keep the content fresh.

Remove the Bottleneck through Delegation

It sounds scary but allowing your ministry leaders to edit their content on the website can be safe. The secret is in the configuration. Below are some tips to make this a success.

• Give the ministry leaders access to small pieces of content, not the whole page.
• Use the HTML editor's pre/post text to ensure that the wrapping markup cannot be changed. Say for instance you give the ministry access to edit a Bootstrap alert box on the page. Be sure that the markup for the alert is in the pre/post text so the user cannot remove or edit it.
• Enable the HTML editor's approval system. This will allow you to review the changes before they are published to the site.
• Use security wisely. Don't give a single user access to edit a specific content block. Instead, consider creating reusable security roles (e.g., Website Editors – Childrens). This will allow you to add similar user permissions in the future.

Advanced Routes

So far, we've looked at how to create simple routes. Pages that contain dynamic content might have one or more required query parameters to be able to display. Consider a page that displays calendar events. Its default route might be http://www.rocksolidchurchdemo.com/page/234?EventId=12. Creating a route with the value of Event/{EventId} would add the ability to load the page with the address of http://www.rocksolidchurchdemo.com/Event/12. This new address is not only visually more appealing but is also SEO friendly.

You can add as many query parameters to your route as you like. For instance, the route of Event/{EventId}/{TabId} would enable the address of http://www.rocksolidchurchdemo.com/page/234?EventId=12&TabId=3 to be represented as http://www.rocksolidchurchdemo.com/Event/12/3.

If you would like to manage all routes defined in Rock, you can see them listed under Admin Tools > CMS Configuration > Routes. From here you can edit or delete any route in the system.

Routing Order

Rock uses the following order to choose what page is displayed for a provided URL. In cases where there is no matching route on a given site the oldest matching route from any site is used.

1. Page ID (/page/12)
2. Matching page route and matching site
3. Matching Shortlink and matching site
4. Oldest matching page route from other site
5. Oldest matching shortlink from other site
6. Page not found (404)

Creating a new site in Rock is simple. But it helps to do things in the proper order. Following the steps below will lead to a well-configured site every time.

1. First, navigate to the site list page Admin Tools > Websites
2. Click the (add) button at the bottom of the grid of sites.
3. Fill in the site configuration outlined below:



1 Name

Provide a name for your site. This name will not appear on the site itself, just the admin screens used to support it.

2 Description

Provide a description for your site.

3 Theme

Select a theme for your site. If your theme is not yet ready, we recommend that you pick the Stark theme basic template.

4 Default Page

Important: We highly recommend leaving the default page blank. If you do not provide a default page, Rock will create it for you at the root page level with all the right settings. Creating this page before the site can cause misconfiguration.

5 Login Page

Each site defines its own login page. This page will be used when an unknown user clicks to a page that requires additional security. You do not have to select one at the time of creation. You may wish to configure this later.

6 Domain(s)

In order for Rock to serve up your site, it needs to know what domains (e.g., www.rocksolidchurchdemo.com) it represents. You can provide multiple domains in this field delimited with a comma.

7 Error Page

Let's face it, errors happen. Instead of displaying the default Rock error page you can design and show a custom page for your site.

8 Google Analytics Code

You might want to integrate your site with Google Analytics. Rock makes this simple by allowing you to provide your site's Google Analytics code. We'll do the rest.

Active - Inactive

You can mark web sites inactive. This is handy if you have older websites that you still want to keep around but are not actively being used. Marking them inactive removes them from the site list. There is a filter to allow them to be displayed if needed. An inactive website will still function, it just won't be displayed on the list of sites.



1 Change Password Page

This setting will determine the page to link to for changing the password.

2 Communication Page

The Grid uses this setting to determine what page to redirect the user to when clicking the New Communication button at the bottom of a grid of people.

3 Group Registration Page

The group registration page setting is not yet implemented in Rock.

4 404 Page

You have the option to provide a custom page not found (aka 404) page for your site. This too can be set at a later date.

5 Require Encryption

This setting will require that all pages on this site load with SSL encryption. If a page is attempted to be loaded with http, Rock will redirect it to https.

6 Enable Shortening

Should this site be available when creating shortlinks?

7 Enable Visitor Tracking

If an anonymous (i.e., not logged in) person visits your site, should Rock track how they are interacting with your site? If you're using Rock's Personalization features, you'll want this enabled.

8 Enable Personalization

Rock's Personalization features help get the right content in front of the right people. For Personalization to work on your site, this option must be enabled. See the Personalization chapter below for details.

9 Site Icon

If you want your site to have a site icon (aka, 'favicon'), upload it here. The recommended image size is 192x192. Rock will automatically create all of the sizes required by different browsers and devices based on the image you supply. Once uploaded, you can turn the icon on and off for individual pages by checking the Site Icon box in each page's properties, accessed in the Admin Toolbar. Similarly, there's an option to upload a site logo, which some themes use to apply some change to a site. See the theme's documentation for sizing information.

10 Page Attributes

This is where you can add attributes to the pages of your site. Page Attributes apply to all of the pages of the site, but each page has its own value for each attribute. To learn more, see the Page Attributes section below.



1 Enable Mobile Redirect

This checkbox enables mobile redirects. This allows you to route your mobile users to a different page or site if they visit any page on this site.

2 Log Page Views

This setting determines if each page view of this site should be tracked. This allows you to gain valuable metrics about a page AND more importantly about your guests' activities and interests.

3 Page View Retention Period

If page tracking is enabled, you can set how long the page views are stored. You'll find that for popular sites this data will grow quickly. You may want to limit how much of it you keep.

4 Allowed Frame Domain(s)

If you need to allow an external site/domain to be able to embed your site (such as in an iframe) just enter each domain as a space delimited list. Rock will then take care of sending the correct page headers that block all sites not in the list. The value you enter here will be used for the <source> as described in Content-Security-Policy frame-ancestors directive.

NOTE: Your Rock URL must also appear in this list otherwise you will lock yourself out of Rock's modal popups (such as the HTML editor, block settings, etc.) Therefore, if you wanted to allow www.yoursite.com to be embedded on www.xyz.com, you would specify the following in your list:
http://www.yoursite.com https://www.yoursite.com http://www.xyz.com https://www.xyz.com

5 Page Header Content

The content provided in this field will be added to each page's head section. This is one area where you can do a lot of interesting customization of your site by using page attributes. For more information, see the Page Attributes section below.

6 Allow Indexing

This setting will enable or disable the pages of the site from being indexed by web indexes such as Google and Bing. If you disable indexing, Rock will add <meta name="robots" content="noindex, nofollow"> tag in the page header to keep web indexes from crawling your site.

7 Crawling Starting Location

Provide the URL for the page from which the Rock indexer should start. See the Universal Search guide for additional details.

8 Enable Exclusive Routes

If enabled, other sites will not be able to use this site's routes, and routes from other sites will not work on this site. This means the domain in the URL used with the route must match the site's configured Domain(s). If the route is configured as "Is Global" then this setting is ignored.

9 Disable Predictable Ids

This setting will prevent Rock from accepting simple number Ids when used in several places. For instance, a standard URL like the one below displays an image with the Id 112.

https://www.rocksolidchurchdemo.com/GetImage.ashx?FileId=112

With this feature enabled, Rock will use non-guessable, obscured values in the URL instead of simple number IDs. This will prevent someone from simply changing 112 to 113 in order to load a different unsecured image. However, you may have templates that require a number Id in the URL, so this should only be enabled if you're sure you understand the implications and know the site works properly without simple number IDs.

4. Once you've provided the above information and clicked Save, your site is ready for the next step, which is to start creating pages. The best way to get to your new default page is to use the Page Map under Admin Tools > CMS Configuration > Pages. From here you can click on your default page.

Page Attributes

The Page Attributes section of the Add Site screen is an advanced setting that gives you a ton of control over your layout of your site. The attributes you create here will apply across all of the pages of your site, but each page will have its own attribute value. For example, you create an image attribute for a page, then dynamically access that attribute in your header, as shown in the following sample code:

                <script runat="server">
                    protected void Page_Load( object sender, EventArgs e )
                    {
                    var page = ( RockPage ) this.Page;

                    var bannerImage = page.GetAttributeValue( "BannerImage" );
                    headerMainText.InnerHtml = bannerImage;
                    }
                </script>

                <header id="headerMain" runat="server">
                </header>

One Thing You Must Do

If you can only do one thing, we highly recommend adding a description to each page you believe will be shared on social media. This is quick and easy to do by accessing the Page Settings from the Admin Toolbar at the bottom of each page.

Without a page description, the social shares will try to figure out a description for your page by stripping the first chunk of text from your page that looks to be the main content. But why make the social networks guess when you can give them the exact description you'd like?

Getting Deeper

Setting the Page Description is nice, but that's just the start. Each social network allows you to describe how your page should be shared using meta tags in the page's header. Unfortunately, there is little consistency in how this is done. Below we show you how to optimize each page's social network share information using Lava. Simply put these tags in any HTML block on the page and your site will be socially beautiful.

Adding Make Up For Facebook

Let's start with Facebook. The three main attributes you want to set for an attractive Facebook share are the title, description, and an image. Below we show you the Lava for each. Again, these Lava statements can be on any HTML block on your page.

• Title {{ 'Title for Page Here' | AddMetaTagToHead:'property','og:title' }}
• Description {{ 'Description for Page Here' | AddMetaTagToHead:'property','og:description' }}
• Image {{ 'URL to image here' | AddMetaTagToHead:'property','og:image' }}
  Note: You'll need to upload the image to the website and link to it for the URL. Your image should be sized to: 1200px x 630px.

After setting these values, your share should look something like the example below.

Don't simply trust that it'll look right though. Use the Facebook Share Validator to see your formatted share along with tons of debugging information.

Terrific Tweets

Just like Facebook, Twitter has several custom page attributes for you to use to make great looking shares. In fact, Twitter allows you to control even more settings. Let's take a look at the basic settings and we'll move on from there.

• Title {{ 'Title for Page Here' | AddMetaTagToHead:'property','twitter:title' }}
• Description {{ 'Description for Page Here' | AddMetaTagToHead:'property','twitter:description' }}
• Image {{ 'URL to image here' | AddMetaTagToHead:'property','twitter:image' }}
  Note: You'll need to upload the image to the website and link to it for the URL. Your image should be sized to: 440px x 220px (well that's one recommended size at least, read on...)

Very similar to Facebook, no? But wait... there's more... Twitter allows you to define two different formats of shares which they call summary cards. One card has a large image and the other a smaller.

Large Image

{{ 'summary_large_image' | AddMetaTagToHead:'property','twitter:card' }}

Small Image

{{ 'summary' | AddMetaTagToHead:'property','twitter:card' }}

Twitter also has a helpful validator to help visualize what your share will look like. You can also read more about what's possible by reading their documentation.

Calendar Events

Of all the content on your site calendar, events are probably one of the most shared types of content. To assist you in making this easy we've added the social attributes Lava above in the Lava templates for calendar events. We've also added two new event attributes on the public calendar to help you upload specifically formatted images for both Facebook and Twitter. If you've created a custom theme before Rock v6, you'll want to copy and paste this Lava code into yours.

HTML Block

To implement our group-specific message, we would first set the HTML block's Context setting to Group.

The HTML block is now aware that it's working with groups. That's step one. Next, we need to tell it how to find the specific group you're working with.

To do that, you'll go to the Page Properties. Under the Advanced Settings you'll find a section for Context Parameters. This is where you'll tell the page the name of the query string parameter that indicates the group. So, in our example, the group is identified in the URL by a parameter of GroupId. So, that's what we'll use as our Group Parameter Name.

Now we can use the HTML block to do all kinds of things. With Group context you have access to data for group types, attributes, and group members.

For instance, let's say you want to show the campus associated with the group. To show that on the HTML block using Lava, use a special "Context" formatting: {{ Context.Group.Campus }}. That will display the group's campus on the page with the group context (in this case, the Group Toolbox). The example pictured below is for a group from the Main Campus. That will automatically change to show the name of a different campus if the group you're looking at is at a different campus.

Campus Context Setter

Rock's context aware features mean that campuses can share many of the same pages while still providing campus-specific content. Using the Campus Context Setter block allows you to set the campus context in these scenarios. 

Take, for example, the below screenshot. We have a Campus Context Setter block on the left, and an HTML block on the right. We've selected the "Main Campus" on the left, and we're being shown content for that campus on the right.

Now all we have to do is change the selection from "Main Campus" to "Sun City" and we see unique content specific to the Sun City campus, even though we're still on the same page.

To set this up, you'll need to access the HTML block's settings and set the Context Entity Type to "Campus" just like we set it to "Group" in the prior example. Unlike the prior example, you won't need to set anything on the page's configuration. Rather than pointing to a query string parameter, the Campus Context Setter block determines which campus is being viewed.

With the HTML block configured, separate your HTML content by campus. In the below example we used the Campus Id to distinguish campuses, but you could also use the GUID of the campus. Notice how on the first line we used the Context syntax to get to the Campus Id.

Context on the Person Profile

The Person Profile page ships with blocks that are already set up with Person context. For instance, if you edit the settings for the Person Bio block, you can use the Context syntax in the Custom Content field to access information about the person.

Notice that nothing was done to set the context here. This makes the Person Bio block unique. In fact, you can add an HTML block anywhere (any zone, any tab) on the Person Profile and the Context syntax will automatically work for you. You don't have to do any extra configuration.

Personalization Segments

As we mentioned earlier, personalization segments let you filter content based on something about the person (think Data View) or based on a person's browsing history. We have data about people in Rock, so it's only natural we would personalize content using Rock data. For instance, you might want information on baptisms to display only if the person visiting your site has not been baptized. As an extension of that, you could have content that only shows to people who have been baptized but haven't taken a next step class. Or you may want some content to target men who have visited your men's retreat info page but have not yet registered. Similarly, you could have special content for people who have visited your camp webpage but don't have a camp registration. These are just a sample of the options we'll cover in this section.

You'll want to think strategically about how your segments are configured. The best configuration is to have simple segments that can be reused in different contexts. Some segments will last longer than others depending on the content they're applied to. Remember, you can filter on attributes about a person AND their previous activities on your website.

To view or configure personalization segments, navigate to Admin Tools > Settings > Personalization Segments.

1 Name

Consider a good, descriptive name for the segment. This helps distinguish it from other segments and makes its purpose clear.

2 Key

The Key is how you'll reference this segment when you're using it on your site. Specifically, you'll use the Key with the PersonalizationItems Lava filter, or with the Personalize command. By default, the Key will be the Name of the segment with the spaces removed, but you can change it to any unique value. Be sure there are no spaces in your Key and avoid special characters.

3 Description

Do your future self and your team a favor and make a note of what this personalization segment is for. You will thank yourself later!

4 Categories

Add Categories to group and organize your Personalization Segments according to how they're used. Navigate to Admin Tools > System > Category Manager then select to add a new category. Make sure the Entity Type is Personalization Segment. Like other entities, a segment can be in more than one category if it's needed in different areas.

5 Persistence Schedule

Every personalization segment must have a persistence schedule. Choose one of the following types:

• Interval
  Saves segment results at a regular cadence, such as every 12 hours or every 7 days.
• Schedule
  Gives you control over specific days and times to persist results, like M/W/F at 3 a.m. This is helpful for large segments with many people.

6 Person Filters

Here you'll select the persisted data view that contains the people you want included in the segment. In this example we're using a data view returning adult females who are members or attendees. Keep in mind that a data view can only return people with a record in Rock, so don't use a data view if you want the segment to pick up anonymous visitors.

7 Session Filters

Add conditions here to filter people based on whether they have visited a particular Rock website. You can optionally add a date range. You might use this filter to select people who have visited your external website in the past month.

8 Page View Filters

This is similar to the Session filters, except it looks at page views instead of sessions. You can set conditions for which pages a person has viewed. In the example pictured above this filter selects people who have viewed the "New Here?" page on the external website within the previous month. You can also add Urchin Tracking Module (UTM) filters to narrow the population down further.

9 Interaction Filters

As you might have guessed, this filter looks for interactions the person has logged. You could use this to select people who have filled out a particular form, or who have logged an interaction by visiting a page on your site.

Every filter area where you have conditions listed must match for a person to meet the conditions of the segment. For instance, if you have a Person filter and a Session filter, the person must meet both requirements to be selected by the segment. This is pointed out on the page itself, reminding you that these filters are linked together with an AND condition.

You can, however, use OR logic within each of the filter areas by toggling the Any/All button. Select Any if any one of the filter's conditions can be met or use All if they all need to be met. For instance, you might use the segment to filter for people who have visited your New Here page OR your Connect with Us page. Combine that with a data view that pulls only females, and you have a segment for women looking for information about your church.

Request Filters

Request Filters relate to the technical characteristics of the person's visit to your site. You can use Request Filters to show content only if the person's IP address falls within a certain range, or only if certain query string parameters are present in the URL. With Request Filters, you don't need to know who the person is.

To access request filters, navigate to Admin Tools > CMS Configuration > Request Filters.

1 Name

Don't skimp on the name. A good name helps you distinguish this filter from other filters and makes its purpose clear.

2 Key

By default, the Key will be the Name of the filter with the spaces removed. You can change the key to something else, just avoid spaces and special characters. You'll use the Key with the PersonalizationItems Lava filter, or with the Personalize command.

3 Site

You can restrict the filter to reference a particular site. If this is left blank, then all sites will be considered.

4 Previous Activity

This simply lets you choose if the person is new or returning. Whether the person is new or returning is determined via a cookie.

5 Device Types

You can limit the segment to specific types of devices. For instance, you might want this segment to only apply to people visiting your site from a mobile device.

6 Query String Filter

Request Filters can look at the query string in the URL and filter off of any parameters that are present. All you need to provide is the name of the parameter (e.g., GroupId) and the value the parameter should have (e.g., 101).

7 Cookie

Here you can provide a Key and Value to use cookies as a filter.

8 Browser

You can filter by the person's browser, and the version of that browser. To select any version of a browser set the filter to find versions Greater Than or Equal To 0.

9 IP Addresses

A range of IP addresses can be provided so you can filter based on whether the IP address of the visitor is in that range. This is how we're identifying students coming to the site from the local college.

10 Geolocation

You can filter by location in a variety of ways including country, region and postal codes. This information is based on the IP address which is automatically geocoded by Rock described in the IP Address Geocoding chapter in the Rock Admin Hero Guide.

11 Environment

Select the days and/or the time range of the person's visit. For instance, you could target content only to people who visit the site after Sunday services.

Site Configuration

The last step in getting Rock ready for personalization is to update your site's settings under Admin Tools > Websites. For each site that you want to work with, check the box for Enable Personalization. While you're there, you'll also want to check the box for Enable Visitor Tracking, which we'll talk more about in the next section below.

How Personalization Handles Anonymous Visitors

If someone comes to your site and we don't know who they are (i.e., they're not logged in) we consider them an anonymous visitor. Even though we don't know who this visitor is, we can still personalize content for them using a browser cookie.

When an anonymous visitor comes to your site, they'll get a cookie placed on their browser. This will start tracking certain actions, like page views. Using a cookie allows us to personalize the content they see even though we don't know who they are. Then, Rock will recognize them and know where they've been when they come back later. By default, this cookie lasts 365 days, but you can change that by navigating to Admin Tools > System Settings > System Configuration and updating the Visitor Cookie Persistence Length.

For all of this to work, you'll need to turn on Enable Visitor Tracking for each site where you want tracking to occur. This setting can be found under Admin Tools > Websites.

Ideally visitors won't stay anonymous forever. We want them to log in. When they do, their page views are seamlessly switched over to the known person.

You won't need to know this, but for those who are curious, what's happening behind the scenes is your anonymous visitor is tracked under a Person Alias record. When the person logs in, that Person Alias record is linked to their Person record.

Personalizing Content Channel Items

Often, content is published to your site using Content Channel Items. Rock provides a built-in way to show, hide or prioritize Content Channel Items based on whether the person viewing them meets the criteria of the personalization segments or request filters you've created.

Personalization for Content Channel Items is enabled at the Content Channel level under Admin Tools > CMS Configuration > Content Channels. Edit the Content Channel and check the box for Enable Personalization.

With personalization enabled, you can now start updating your Content Channel Items. Each item can be assigned one or more personalization segments and request filters. How these segments and filters are applied to the Content Channel Item is determined later, which we'll talk about in a minute.

The Content Channel Item configuration is accessed under Tools > Content or by drilling down from the Content Channel.

* Personalization Profile

Note that we've selected two segments. As part of our segment strategy, we have reusable segments like these to identify men and women. When multiple segments are selected like this, the person viewing the item can meet either of them. The same is true for filters.

However, if you have both segments and filters listed, the person must match at least one segment and one filter for the personalization to apply. In this example the person must be either female and a college student, or male and a college student.

With the above pieces in place, you'll head over to your external website where the content is being shown. You'll want to update the settings for the Content Channel View block, as pictured below. This is where you decide how the segments and filters configured above should be applied to the Content Channel Items.

* Personalization Options

Use these settings to decide how segments and filters are applied. The options include:

• Ignore: This is the default setting. Segments and filters won't be considered when displaying content channel items.
• Prioritize: Prioritize puts content channel items that match the segment or filter at the top of the list of items. If multiple items match, they will be ordered according to the Order Items By block setting. The remaining items will be displayed after the set of matching items and will be separately ordered according to the Order Items By block setting.
• Filter: If this option is selected then only content channel items that match the segment or filter will be shown. Items that have no filters or segments will always appear since they have nothing to filter on.

Personalizing Content Using Lava

Using Lava you can personalize content in many places, such as the HTML Content block. But you're not limited to blocks. Personalization can also be used in communications too, so feel free to personalize content within an email.

There are two ways to get personalization using Lava. The first is the Personalize command. This is the most straightforward option, because all you need to do is provide the segment key or request filter key, and the content will be shown if the person/action meets the configured conditions for that segment/filter. Don't forget, this command can be used in emails!

The second option is to use the PersonalizationItems Lava filter. You can use this to apply logic such that content only shows if the person is in a particular segment or request filter.

See the Lava documentation using the links above for examples and details related to these items.

Update Personalization Data Job

The Update Personalization Data job keeps the people returned by your personalization segment up to date and accurate. The job adds or removes people from the list based on whether they currently meet the conditions of the segment.

If you ever need to check the current list of who meets the conditions of a segment, just click the button on the Personalization Segments page located at Admin Tools > CMS Configuration > Personalization Segments. The Update Personalization Data job updates this list.

If you're curious about what's happening behind the scenes, what this job is actually doing is updating the PersonAliasPersonalization table. This table is very basic and acts as a link between the person (PersonAliasId) and the segment. The PersonalizationType field on this table has a value of "0" for all rows, which represents personalization segments. The PersonalizationEntityId field is simply the Id of the segment the person has been matched to.

Troubleshooting Personalization

You might encounter a scenario where personalization appears to be working differently from how you intended. In that case, the tips below should help you resolve any problem you're facing.

1. Check the Person: It's always a good first step to double check that the person actually meets the requirements of your segments and filters. For instance, segments looking for "males" or "females" would overlook people with an "unknown" gender, so you'd want to make sure the person actually has a gender recorded in Rock.
2. Enable Personalization: You can have everything set up perfectly, but it won't work if personalization hasn't been enabled for the site. This simple step is easy to overlook, so it's worth checking.
3. Active Segments and Filters: Be sure to check that the segments and filters you're working with are Active. Don't assume...you'd be surprised how often this ends up being the culprit. Note that you'll need to turn on the Include Inactive block filter setting to see inactive items.
4. Persisted Data Views: The data views used in your segments must be persisted. This ensures great performance, and means the data isn't in real time. So, if your segment isn't working as expected, it could be that the underlying data view needs to be refreshed.
5. Update Personalization Data Job: As noted in the section above, this job keeps the lists of people returned by your personalization segments up to date and accurate. You may need to run this job to get the latest data, especially if you recently updated or refreshed data views used by your segments.
6. Content Channel Items: Keep in mind that content channel items without any segments or filters will always display regardless of the Personalization Option chosen in the Content Channel View block settings. Also, double check the filters you're using to ensure the content channel item isn't being filtered out for other reasons (e.g., due to a Start date in the future). Lastly, ensure you're not viewing a cached version of the content.
7. Browser Session/Cookies: As a last resort, logging out, closing all browser windows, then logging back in can resolve some issues. Clearing your browser's cookies will have the same effect. But this should really only be needed if you're testing by logging in and out as different people.

Adaptive Messages

Being able to personalize content is great but what if you want to vary a particular personalized message slightly, based on nuances within the data or a period of time? Adaptive Messages take content personalization to the next level, allowing you to tailor messages based on differences in an individual’s data, view counts, and date ranges. Building on the foundation of Personalization Segments, Adaptive Messages introduces features you may not have considered possible.

Suppose you want to communicate about the topic of “giving” but adapt the message for different audiences:

Using multiple Lava Personalize commands to handle these segments can get tricky, especially when a person overlaps into more than one segment. For example:

{% personalize segment:IsActiveGiverWithScheduledGive %} … {% endpersonalize %}
{% personalize segment:IsActiveGiverWithNoScheduledGift %}…{% endpersonalize %}
{% personalize segment:NotAnActiveGiver %} … {% endpersonalize %}
{% personalize segment:IsNoneOfTheAbove %} … {% endpersonalize %}

Not only can overlapping segments cause issues, but managing these messages over time can also become cumbersome.

Adaptive Messages to the Rescue

With Adaptive Messages, you can handle these scenarios elegantly and efficiently using a single Lava command:

{% adaptivemessage messagekey:'personalized-giving' adaptationspermessage:'1' %}
  <h2>{{ messageAdaptation | Attribute:'CallToAction' }}</h2>
  <p>{{ messageAdaptation | Attribute:'Details' }}</p>
  <div class="well"> Continue giving or start today: {{ messageAdaptation | Attribute:'CallToActionLink' }}</div>
{% endadaptivemessage %}

This single Lava command delivers multiple benefits:

1. Reusability: A single Lava snippet can be used across your website.
2. Centralized Management: All content is managed within the Adaptive Messages feature.
3. Flexibility: New adaptations can be added without requiring changes to your Lava snippets.
4. Time-Based Messaging: Adaptations can include start and end dates, allowing you to schedule messages in advance.
5. Message Saturation Control: Adaptive Messages can track how often a message is shown and stop displaying it once the optional saturation limit is reached.

For more information, see the Adaptive Messages Lava documentation.

Setup

Let’s look at how to set this up for the example described above. We’ll assume you’ve already created Personalization Segments for the first three groups of people mentioned above. No need to create a segment for the default group. Simply include a fallback message directly in the Adaptive Message configuration.

Let’s navigate to Admin Tools > Adaptive Message and set up a message called Personalized Giving:

Now let’s add those specific adaptations for the first three segments.

Saturation ensures that a viewer isn’t repeatedly shown the same message. You can define the maximum number of views and the timeframe (in days) before a message is considered "saturated."

This feature works with the adaptivemessage Lava command. When trackviews is enabled, an adaptation will stop being displayed to a viewer once it reaches its saturation point, based on the combination of the View Saturation Count and View Saturation Date Range.

In the example above, we will do the same for the Active Giver Without a Scheduled Recurring Gift and the Non-Active Giver

Arrange the order of adaptations to prioritize which message to show if someone belongs to multiple segments.

By using Adaptive Messages, you ensure a personalized, organized, and scalable communication strategy that engages your audience meaningfully while saving time and effort.

Bootstrap

Bootstrap is a front-end framework that brings consistent styling to Rock. We are currently using Bootstrap version 3.4.1. Whether you're tweaking content on a page or writing a custom template, you’ll want to get familiar with the standard HTML/CSS mark-up that Bootstrap provides. Reading through their excellent documentation in its entirety is a great way to get started.

Font Awesome

Rock uses icons in several areas of the application. These fonts all come from the Font Awesome library. Since these icons are all font-based vectors, they can be colorized and resized very easily. To see a listing of all the icons in the collection visit http://fontawesome.com.

jQuery

jQuery is a JavaScript framework that's used by a majority of Internet sites. If you’re only interested in making minor changes it’s likely you'll never need to work with jQuery, but if you plan to make custom themes or blocks, you'll want to get familiar with it. Rock currently uses version 3.5.1. You’re welcome to use a newer version in your theme but be sure that your version is backwards compatible to 3.5.1 to ensure Rock's core jQuery plugins work correctly. You can find out more about jQuery at jquery.com.

Less

If you're familiar with Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), you've probably experienced the frustration of repeating selectors and duplicate color definitions. Less blends a programming language and CSS. It offers concepts like reusable variables and object-oriented mix-ins. If you're worried about learning another new technology, don't be. Less is super simple. Soon you'll be able to brag to your friends about your knowledge of Less! You can read up on what's available in Less at http://lesscss.org/.

Liquid

Liquid is a templating engine written by Shopify. We've extended and customized Liquid in Rock to form our own templating engine called Lava (get it... liquid rock...). You've already been briefly exposed to the power of Lava in the introduction of this manual. Lava is used in several places in Rock, so it's worth your time to learn it well. Below are just a few of the places it's used:

• HTML Editor: Used for dynamically mixing in personal merge fields with your content.
• Menus: Navigation menus and page lists use Lava to assemble the HTML that is used to display them on the page.
• Email Content: Emails and SMS communications use Lava to personalize their content.

Learning Lava will make you feel like a superhero. Definitely take the time to master it. We've provided some great resources for you to learn Lava on our website.

Lava Shortcodes

Shortcodes are a way to make Lava simpler and easier to read. They allow you to replace a simple Lava tag with a complex template written by a Lava specialist. This means you can do some really powerful things without having to know all the details of how things work.

For example, instead of writing out Lava code to display a Google map with custom pins and styles, you can insert a Lava shortcode where you want the map to be displayed, and let Rock do the work for you. Rock will replace the shortcode with the full Lava code, which will then be displayed as a customized map when rendered by the browser. Shortcodes put the power of Lava in your hands without you needing to be a coding expert.

To learn how to create and use Lava shortcodes, check out The Long & Short on Shortcodes.

Methods to Compile

Theme List

You can view a list of installed themes under Admin Tools > CMS Configuration > Themes.

1 Theme Name

Pretty obvious…the name of the theme.

2 Purpose

Indicates how the theme is used in Rock, such as for Check-in or legacy website layouts.

3 Allows Compile

A theme designer can keep a theme from being compiled by Rock. This is rare and is usually only done for internal themes developed for a specific organization.

4 System

This notes that this theme is a system theme that came with Rock. These themes cannot be deleted.

5 Compile

This button allows you to manually compile a theme.

6 Copy

This button allows you to copy the theme to a new theme with a name of your liking. This allows you to change it without worrying about affecting others.

7 Delete

This button allows you to delete the theme.

Theme Styler

Selecting a theme from the list will take you to the Theme Styler. Below is the theme styler for the Check-in Adventure Kids theme.

1 Theme Variables

You'll notice that the theme designer has provided several variables for you to modify. These variables allow several different customizations. Some you'll notice allow you to choose colors. Others modify fonts, images and units of measure.

2 Variable Refresh

After changing a variable you'll notice a small x next to it the next time you enter the theme styler. Selecting this x allows you to return the value back to its original state. Be creative… you can always go back to the default if you don't like your selection.

3 CSS Overrides

You may find that there is no variable for the change you want to make. Never fear, you can enter any overriding CSS in this box. It will be placed at the bottom of the compiled CSS to ensure that it gets the last say on how an element should be styled.

4 Save

Pressing the save button will not only save your changes, but also compile the Less file to CSS. If you're editing the internal Rock theme, you'll notice your changes right away!

What is Tabler

Tabler is a free, open-source SVG icon set. Each icon sits on a 24×24 grid with a 2 px stroke. You can change its size and color with CSS. You can also use it as a webfont with CSS classes.

Pick an icon with the icon CSS picker

Insert the icons without guessing the class. Use the picker.

It lists all available Tabler classes, and you can still add custom icons. Select Custom to use any icon you’d like. The picker isn't available everywhere, though you can type the custom Icon CSS Class (e.g., ti ti-class) anywhere you need an icon.

Free vs. Pro

Font Awesome has always been free and will continue to be so. In version 5 they are also offering a Pro version. The Pro version gives you not only tons of new icons, but different weights (solid, regular and thin) as well. While the free version does have two weights, only the solid weight is icon complete (has all the icons implemented). Because of this, “solid” is the only choice in Rock if you have the free version.

Installing Font Awesome Pro

If you do purchase the Pro version (again, this is completely optional), you'll now need to install it in Rock. To start, you will need to log in to your account at fontawesome.com. You'll need to get both your Key and the Pro Download file. See the below screenshot to make sure you're getting the right items:

1 Key

First, take note of your Font Awesome Pro key in the "Licenses" section. You'll need this in a minute

2 Download link

Next, click the download link for Font Awesome Pro from the "Products & Services" section.

3 Pro for Web

You'll need to click on the "Pro for Web" file on the page that opens, shown here.

Now that you have your key and the .zip file, log in to your Rock site and navigate to Admin Tools > CMS Configuration > Font Awesome Settings. This is where you'll paste in your Font Awesome Pro Key and upload the Font Awesome Pro for Web package that we just downloaded. Then click Install and it will tell you that Font Awesome Pro has been updated. You'll need to do this again from time to time as Font Awesome adds new icons to their Pro package.

Font Weights

As we mentioned above, you need the Pro edition to have access to the various font weights in Rock. Currently, there are three weights: solid, regular and thin. It's our intent to allow you to pick a weight and have the theme auto update to show your selected weight.

Each of the weights is implemented in a separate font file. There's also a separate font file for all the brand icons. To reduce page load times, we allow you to select which fonts you’d like to implement on your theme.

Font Awesome 5 added the ability to specify the weight of the icons in CSS. So, if you wanted a light icon, you’d use “fal fa-cog.” However, this hard-codes the icon to always be light. Instead of using the weight classes, we highly recommend that you continue to use the normal fa prefix (e.g., ti ti-settings). This will allow Rock to dynamically change the weight based on administrator preference.

SVG Fonts

You might be asking, "What about SVG fonts? There are a bunch of new features that only they support!" At this point, we have not supported the Font Awesome SVG fonts natively in Rock. While that might change in the future, the community felt that the increased file sizes of the SVG font files was a concern and that the traditional font files were a better option for now. We hope that Font Awesome will have a solution to these concerns in the future.

Other Features

Font Awesome 5 has a ton of other features that you should read about on their website.

Custom Themes

If you are writing a custom theme you can select to either hard code your theme to use a specific weight of Font Awesome or plug into Rock’s theme customizer to allow Rock Administrators to update it from the UI. Both options are discussed below. Note that if you don't do anything, Rock's core Bootstrap implementation will include the solid weight for you.

@import "../../../Styles/FontAwesome/_rock-fa-mixins.less";
.fa-font-face( 'thin' );

Contents of a Theme

• The .system file tells Rock that this theme is a system theme. This prevents it from being deleted in the Themes list.
• The Assets folder is used for all of the images, icons and other support files needed by your theme. This folder also contains a Lava child folder for all of the Lava files needed for your theme.
• The Layouts folder contains all of the layouts your theme supports. For external sites, your theme should define implementations for all of the standard layouts covered in the Looking Deeper At Layouts chapter.
• The Scripts directory will be used for any custom scripts your theme requires. Be sure to only place unique scripts here that are not contained in the global scripts folder.
• Finally, the Styles folder contains all of the files needed to generate your CSS. Specifics of these files are discussed in depth below.

Stark

No, this is not our Ironman theme, but this theme will become your go-to for custom theme development. Stark gets its name from the fact that it is basic and minimally styled. In fact, it comes with the least amount of styling possible. We created it as a starting point for you to create new works of art. Think of it as your blank canvas.

To start a new theme, you should start by copy/pasting the Stark theme and then renaming it. Then start restyling the theme using the .less files.

How Rock Uses Less

There are two sets of .less files. Those in the core Styles folder and the theme .less files. The purpose of the core styles is to provide the basic structure and look/feel to the various Rock blocks. The theme's .less files add the final polish to the blocks and override any of the CSS attributes you desire. Let's take a quick look at each Less file that makes up a theme.

• .nocompile: This file tells Rock's Less compile tools to ignore this theme. This file should only be used in cases where a custom theme designer wishes to manually compile the theme's Less files (rare).
• _css-overrides: This file contains the Theme Styler's CSS overrides. It should not be manually edited.
• _print.less: This Less style file helps set specific print styles that make Rock pages look better when printed. The contents of this file are imported (appended) into the theme.less file. For the most part, you should not need to modify these styles unless there is a specific print styling you would like to add.
• _variable-overrides: This file contains the Theme Styler's variable overrides. It should not be manually edited.
• _variables.less: This is a very powerful file. It contains a rather large list of style settings that you can change. Simply changing a couple of colors can make your theme match the brand colors of your organization. We highly recommend that you make a copy of the Stark theme and start playing with the variables in this file. You’ll be surprised how easy it is to make some dramatic changes.
• bootstrap.less: This is the core Bootstrap Less file. You should not change this file. If you need to modify a style setting in Bootstrap, you should either identify the variable that Bootstrap uses to control that style in the _variables.less file or write a specific override in your theme.less file.
• theme.less: This is the file that contains all of your theme's custom styling. If you can’t style it with a variable change in the _variables.less file, it should be added here.

Once you make changes to your Less files, you’ll need to compile them to .css files for the browsers to use. There are a number of Less compilers you can use for this.

Themes Are More Than Looks

Keep in mind as you develop your theme that you need to be concerned with more than just how your theme looks in the visitor's browser. You should also be testing to ensure your theme works well with Rock's in-page editing features. Zone and block editor features should work well with your theme to allow web administrators access to edit the pages.

To help you with this Rock will add classes to the <body> tag when the zone and block editors are enabled. These classes are 'zone-highlight' and 'block-highlight' respectively. With these classes you can adjust your layouts when these editors are at work.

Rock will also add the class 'modal-open' to the <body> tag when a modal is open. This allows you to do special styling when this event occurs.

Lava

Every theme should include some implementations of the standard Lava files in the theme’s ./Assets/Lava folder. Each of these files is covered below.

• AdList.lava: This is used to render HTML for the various lists of ads on pages.
• AdDetails.lava: This is used to render HTML for the details of a specific ad.
• AdRotator.lava: This provides the markup for the large ad rotator on the homepage.
• BlogItemList.lava: Renders markup for a list of content channel blog entries.
• BlogItemDetail.lava: Renders markup for a content channel blog entry.
• PageListAsBlocks.lava: This Lava is for rendering a list of pages as blocks like the ones on the various Admin Tools pages.
• PageListAsTabs.lava: This renders markup for showing a list of pages as a Bootstrap tab or pill navigation.
• PageNav.lava: Used for a page's main navigation.
• PageSubNav.lava: Renders markup for a page's sub-navigation.
• RSSFeed.lava: Renders markup for a content channel RSS Feed.
• RSSFeedItem.lava: Renders markup for an item in a content channel RSS Feed.

Testing Your Theme

As you're working on your theme you might be wondering how you can view it without everyone seeing what you’re working on. Well prepare to have your mind blown. Because you're a Rock Genius, you know that when a page loads it gets the active theme by looking at the site's theme setting. Pretty simple. You can, however, override this setting by adding the query parameter theme='themename'. For instance, if your page is available at:

http://www.rocksolidchurchdemo.com/page/1
you can have that page display your new theme by typing in:
http://www.rocksolidchurchdemo.com/page/1?theme=MyStarkTheme

The best part is that only you will see it. Everyone else will see the current theme defined on the site. Pretty James Bond, huh?

As an example to the warning above, if you're using certain CSS filters, you may find that you need to escape them. For instance, if you add the CSS below:

.item { filter: blur(8px) !important; }

You may find that your compiled CSS is blank. To fix this you'll need to escape the filter by appending a ~ and wrapping the filter in quotes like:

.item { filter: ~"blur(8px) !important"; }

Theming for the Styler

As you have already seen, Rock's Theme Styler is a powerful tool for allowing others to edit your theme. It's easy for you to enable others to change your theme by making a few small changes to your _variables.less file. Below is a side-by-side comparison of the _variables.less file for the internal Rock theme and the UI created from it in the Rock Styler.

Let's look at a few lines to see how the _variables.less file is magically transformed into this nice editor.

• Line 1: Adding a '//' followed by text will create a new variable grouping. To turn this grouping into a panel in the styler you'll also need to append *show in editor*. This allows you to also create groups that are not editable.
• Line 2: Line two and we're already adding our first variable. The label for the variable will be the variable name (minus the @ character). All dashes in the variable names will become spaces. The values in the comments will be used for the help text. Finally, if the comment ends with #color, Rock will render it as a color field. The color field is smart enough to render as a plain ol' textbox if it contains less functions like darken.
• Line 4: Placing the characters '//--' will insert line breaks in the editor. This allows you to easily sub-group your variables.
• Lines 7-28 These lines were omitted to simplify the illustration.
• Line 29: Note that there is no end marker for variable groupings. When you're done with one, simply start a new one.

Lava On Layouts

As you create your themes and layouts you might start to see a pattern of having to create HTML blocks to provide content that won't change often. For example, you might add an HTML block at the top of every page to place an image from a page attribute, or some sort of welcome message. Luckily, there is a way of adding content using Lava right on your layout. (You've always been able to do these types of things in C#, but honestly, who wants to resort to C#?!)

When creating your layouts, you can add Lava right in your .aspx files. To do this use the Rock:Lava tag. Below is a quick example of what you can achieve.

<Rock:Lava ID="lavaHeader" runat="server">
    {{ CurrentPage | Attribute:'HeaderImage' }}

    {% if CurrentPerson %}
        Hello {{ CurrentPerson.FullName }}
    {% endif %}

    {% cache key:'external-header-grouplist' duration:'3600' %}
        {% sql %}
            SELECT [Id], [Name] FROM [Group]
            WHERE [GroupTypeId] = 25 AND [IsActive] = 1
        {% endsql %}

    
        {% for group in results %}
            {{ group.Name }}
        {% endfor %}
    {% endcache %}
</Rock:Lava>

The example above is a bit of a kitchen sink script showing all sorts of functionality. Let's look at some of the features packed in there to see what's possible.

• Page Attributes: One of the best uses of Layout Lava is interacting with page attributes. It's a great idea to add a page attribute for things like page header images. You can then place them right on your layout. Bonus points if you provide a default image in your attribute settings so if a page doesn't provide an image a default one is used instead.
• Custom Messages Remember, this is Lava. You have access to common objects like the CurrentPerson. Use this for your fame and fortune.
• Lava Commands We assume that anyone who is allowed to edit a file on your server has administrative rights (because they do, if you can edit a file on the web server you can pretty much do what you want if you know C#) so we've enabled all of the Lava commands when using Lava templates on the layout. This simple example lists all active small groups using the SQL command.
• Think Speed You want your website to be fast right? Think about how you can use the Lava cache tag to remember content that comes from the database. In this case we cache the group list for one hour (3600 seconds). Be careful though. You don't want to cache personalized messages, or if you do use the two-pass option in the Lava cache command.

Rock Folders

• App_Browsers/ – You should not need to worry about this directory. It's a special directory that allows ASP.Net to identify specific browsers and determine their capabilities.
• App_Code/ – This directory contains un-compiled code for Rock. You do not want to alter or add files in this directory.
• App_Data/ – This directory allows you to store data without having to worry that a client could browse directly to it. For instance, Rock writes a log of severe error messages to this directory (specifically ~/App_Data/Logs/RockExceptions.csv). But, because the webserver blocks requests to access these files directly, you do not need to worry about someone being able to access them. You'll also notice that Rock keeps a cache of binary files in ~App_Data/Cache/. For the most part you don't need to know about this, but it’s good to know how things work under the hood.
• Assets/ – This is the global assets folder where Rock stores images, icons, fonts, etc. that are a part of the core install. You should refrain from storing your files in this directory.
• Bin/ – ASP.Net keeps its compiled assemblies (aka .dlls) in this folder. If you have custom plugins with compiled assemblies, you'll want to add them here. Keep in mind that if you add/modify/delete any file in this directory Rock will restart which could impact people using Rock at the time. You should only do this after hours.
• Blocks/ – These are the core Rock blocks. As you can see, they are organized by function. You should not modify any of these blocks nor add your own. This location is reserved for the core blocks.
• Content/ – This is where you'll add your custom content for your various sites. While it's up to you to determine the best file and folder structure, we recommend that you at least keep the content for the various sites separate. Over time these folders can get quite messy so it's best to come up with a good filing structure from the beginning.
• Plugins/ – The plugins folder is where you'll place all of your custom blocks. The organization of the files in this folder is very important. To help keep things straight the following pattern should be used.



1. The top-level should start with a reverse domain organization notation. For instance, if your organization uses the domain rocksolidchurchdemo.org your top-level folder should be org_rocksolidchurchdemo.
2. Under your root folder you’ll have a child folder for each plugin that you develop.
3. Under the plugin folder you’ll have folders for things like Assets, Styles and Scripts. You’ll also put the blocks themselves in the root folder.
• Scripts/ – This is the core scripts folder. You should not add scripts to this folder. Instead add your scripts to your custom theme folders.
• Styles/ – The styles folder is for Rock's core .less files. You should not edit these files as they will be overwritten during updates. If you need to modify the properties of a certain style you should override them in your custom theme files.
• Themes/ – This is the location of all the themes for your Rock install. See the Themes chapter for more information on themes.
• Webhooks/ – Webhooks are HTTP handlers (Web 2.0 geek-speak for very basic webpages) that receive requests from Internet services like Mandrill and Twilio. For instance, Twilio will call a specific webhook every time someone responds to your SMS message to notify you of the details of the response. When you write a custom webhook you can place it in this folder.

Couple of Important Files

While we won't cover every file in the root Rock folder, below are a couple that you should be aware of.

• License.aspx: Rock uses several open-source projects in its core. Attribution for each of these projects is given here. We also note each of their licenses so as to show that our license (Apache) is not in conflict with theirs.
• Web.config: This is the core settings file for any ASP.Net application. Unless you know exactly what you're doing you should stay away from editing this file. Keep in mind that any change to this file will cause Rock to restart.

File Manager

The file manager provides a basic interface to help you to upload and delete files and manage directories without having to set up or share FTP credentials. Its root folder can be configured allowing you to enable a specific user or security role to manage a specific part of a folder hierarchy. By default, a File Manager block can be found at Admin Tools > CMS Configuration > File Manager.

Tips for Creating Your Form

When you're creating your form, you can use any HTML you'd like. We provide an inclusive sample that shows you many of the advanced features. Below are a few points to consider:

• You have access to Lava in your form. If the guest is logged in, you can personalize your message.
• If they are logged in, you can also pre-enter many of the fields. In some cases, you may want to simply add their name to the name field and allow them to change it. In other cases, you can put their information in as text that can't be changed. When you do this, you can pass the value of their name in a hidden field. The sample shows both cases. It's up to you to determine which one will work best.
• Your email form can include attachments. This is shown at the bottom of the sample form.
• You do NOT need to have an HTML <form> tag in your markup. Don't add one or you'll break the page.

How Persisted Datasets Work

Let’s take a look at what makes Persisted Datasets tick.

{%- assign data = 'mydataset' | PersistedDataset -%}
{%- for item in data -%}
  {{ item.Title }}
{%- endfor -%}
                

[
    {% campus where:'Id != "0"' %}
        {% for item in campusItems %}
            {
                "Id": {{ item.Id | ToJSON }},
                "Name": {{ item.Name | ToJSON }}
            }
            {% if forloop.last == false %},{% endif %}
        {% endfor %}
    {% endcampus %}
]
                

How to Use It

Let's see how to actually set up your first Persisted Dataset. In your Rock instance, go to Admin Tools > CMS Configuration > Persisted Datasets and create a new dataset. You’ll see the screen pictured below.

1 Name

Choose a memorable name to use for organizing your Persisted Datasets.

2 Access Key

The Access Key uniquely identifies the dataset. This will be the key to use when using the PersistedDataset Lava filter.

3 Description

Include a note about the information you’re storing and where it’s being used. Your future self will thank you for providing an informative description.

4 Build Script

Provide the Lava Template to use for building the JSON that will be used as the cached dataset object.

5 Enabled Lava Commands

Use these settings to control what code can run inside of your build script.

6 Persistence Schedule

If enabled, your dataset will update on a persisted schedule. Choose one of the following types:

• Interval: Saves the cached dataset at a regular cadence, such as every 12 hours or every 3 days.
• Schedule: Sets specific days and times to rebuild the dataset, like M/W/F at 3 a.m. Ideal for large data volumes.

7 Memory Cache Duration

Because Persisted Datasets are generally stored in memory, the duration allows you to automatically remove a dataset from memory after the specified number of hours. For example, if you were to set the field to “24” and the dataset was not accessed for over 24 hours, the data would be removed from memory. This frees up memory for other tasks and keeps Rock running fast.

This is a sliding timeline, so each time the object is read the counter will reset. You can also leave this field blank to not cache the object in memory, which means it will be deserialized into the object on each request (still fast).

8 Entity Type

The JSON object will be associated with the Entity Type selected here.

9 Allow Manual Refresh

If you need to force a dataset to use the most recent data, enable this setting and Rock will add a button to the list view grid to manually update data.

10 Expires on

The dataset will not return data and won’t be updated by the refresh job after this date.

Building Persisted Dataset Lava

The Persisted Dataset Build Script is Lava that has been specifically formatted to output as JSON. You’ll need to format your Build Script to create properly formatted JSON that Rock can then deserialize. So, when you’re creating a Build Script using Lava, keep a few things in mind:

• When outputting values use the ToJSON filter, which automatically sanitizes and formats your output. For example, "Name": {{ item.Name | ToJSON }} will output "Name": "Phoenix Campus".
• You’ll need to add commas between values to create valid JSON.
• Your build script is compiled once, and the Lava should not be customized per user.

Example Build Script

[
{%- assign slots = '140' | FromCache:'DefinedType' -%}
    {%- for item in slots.DefinedValues -%}
        {
            "Id": {{ item.Id | ToJSON }},
            "Slot": {{ item.Value | ToJSON }},
            "SlotDay": {{ item | Attribute:'Day' | ToJSON }},
            "SlotTime": {{ item | Attribute:'Time' | ToJSON }},
            "SlotDateTime": {{ item | Attribute:'DateTime' | ToJSON }},
            "SlotIsSchedulable": {{ item | Attribute:'IsSchedulable' | ToJSON }},
            "SlotLength": {{ item | Attribute:'Length' | ToJSON }},
            "SlotDateTime": {{ item | Attribute:'DateTime' | ToJSON }}
        }{%- unless forloop.last -%},{%- endunless -%}
    {%- endfor -%}
]
                

Now that you know a little bit more about how Persisted Datasets work, let’s take a look at a specific example. A good use case is displaying the output of timeslots for a conference. From the example pictured below, there are a few details we want to point out.

1 Name

We set the Name to “Conference Schedule Slots” so we can easily identify what this Persisted Dataset is used for.

2 Access Key

Like the Name, the Access Key “conferenceslots” makes it easy to identify the purpose of this Persisted Dataset. The Access Key and Name don’t need to be identical but should be closely related.

3 Refresh Interval

This script will refresh every hour, ensuring up-to-date information around the clock.

4 Expires On

The date we set here is the last date of our conference, since we won’t need this after our conference ends.

Given the example Build Script pictured above, you could use the Lava shown below to output to your page:

{%- assign slots = 'conferenceslots' | PersistedDataset -%}
<ul>
{%- for item in slots -%}
  <li>{{ item.Slot }} ({{ item.SlotTime }} minutes) - {{ item.SlotDateTime }}</li>
{%- endfor -%}
</ul>
                

What can be cached?

Rock has several different types of caching available in different blocks. Caching can also be done through Lava or by using the Persisted Dataset feature. Below, we'll break down what can be cached and how.

{% cache key:'decker-page-list' duration:'3600' %}
    {% person where:'LastName == "Decker"' %}
        {% for person in personItems %}
                {{ person.FullName }} <br>
        {% endfor %}
    {% endperson %}
{% endcache %}
                    

{% cache key:'decker-page-list' duration:'3600' twopass:'true' %}
    Hi {% raw %} {{ CurrentPerson.NickName }}! {% endraw %} 


    {% person where:'LastName == "Decker"' %}
        {% for person in personItems %}
                 <br>
        {% endfor %}
    {% endperson %}
{% endcache %}
                    

Toggle Web Cache

While you want things to be cached as much as possible, sometimes caching can present you with challenges. For instance, if you're developing a new site, you'll want to configure the blocks with caching, but the cached items can get cumbersome if you're making changes and need to see how things look right away.

As pictured below, you can enable or disable the web cache for certain blocks by accessing the admin toolbar and clicking the icon. This allows administrators to temporarily disable the cache for certain blocks, via a cookie. As of the time of this writing, this only impacts caching for the following blocks:

• HTML Content
• Content Channel View
• Content Channel Item View
• Internal Communication View

A Different Kind of Cache - Persisted Datasets

Traditional caching in Rock is limited to specific blocks, or to a particular format when using the Lava cache tag. Persisted Datasets are an always-ready cache that allow you to shape data for speed and use across many different blocks, and with different types of markup. Persisted Datasets are cached on the database or in memory using a job, so they’re quick every time.

Persisted Datasets should be used when a large dataset is resource intensive to process, leaving people waiting seconds, or even minutes, for results. They can also be used when certain queries, like getting an attribute of another attribute, would cause issues at scale.

{% assign data = 'mydataset' | PersistedDataset %}
{%- for item in data -%}
  {{ item.Title }}
{%- endfor -%}
            

If you want more details, we have a whole chapter on Persisted Datasets.

Caching & Rock Performance

When working with Rock pay attention to your page load time, located in the lower left-hand corner of the admin bar. Ideally the load time should be under 0.2 seconds. Keep in mind that “Page Load Time” is not an accurate measure of how long it takes to load in a browser, but it is an excellent measure of server processing time. For browser performance metrics, we suggest using the Network tab in Developer Tools or performance audits like Google Lighthouse.

To understand server side performance for Rock pages, add ?ShowDebugTimings=true to your query string. The page will append performance statistics for each individual block to allow for performance tuning.

Adding Cache Tags

To add a cache tag, go to Admin Tools > CMS Configuration > Cache Manager. On the left column you can see any currently added cache tags. To add new tags, click the button at the bottom of the grid.

When adding a cache tag, the tag name should be as short and descriptive as possible. We highly recommend using the Description field to describe the purpose of the cache tag in detail. You’ll want to be careful, as cache tags cannot be removed or modified. Also, keep in mind that tag names must be all lowercase without any spaces.

Using Cache Tags

After adding cache tags, blocks with caching enabled will have an additional attribute of “Cache Tags” populated with the tags you've added.

Open the block settings of a page in your external Rock site and click the button. The cache tags created in the Cache Manager are displayed. Select the tag(s) you want to assign and click the Save button.

* Cache Tags

In the Content Channel example pictured above, the Cache Tags have been set to “messages”.

Now we have the ability to clear the single tag (see Clearing Cache Tags) and update all blocks using the “messages” tag.

Optionally, you could set a block to use multiple cache tags. This way, when any of the tags are cleared, the cache for the block would be updated.

Clearing Cache Tags

To clear all items that are tied to a specific tag, go to Admin Tools > CMS Configuration > Cache Manager. Click the button to the right of the tag's row. This will empty the cache of all linked keys.

Media Player Lava Shortcode

Trying to get a video displayed on a page used to be kind of a pain. But not anymore, thanks to the Media Player Lava shortcode. At a minimum, you can add a media player and a video to a page by simply providing the video's URL in the src parameter of the shortcode as shown in the example below for a YouTube video.

{[ mediaplayer src:'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZUH2tFM2Zg' ]}{[ endmediaplayer ]}
            

Pretty easy, right? All it takes is that single line of code. And if you're using Rock's media features for your videos then you can also easily choose which file (e.g. HLS, HD, SD) you want to use by copying the URL directly from the Media Files page, which is accessible from the Media Element page under Admin Tools > CMS Configuration > Media Accounts > [Your Account] > [Your Folder] > [Your Media Element].

But the example above only scratches the surface of what you can do with the Media Player shortcode. Especially when combined with Rock's media features, you'll see how powerful this can truly be. We'll go over an example below, but for full details you'll want to check out the shortcode yourself under Admin Tools > CMS Configuration > Lava Shortcodes > Media Player.

{% assign mediaElement = Item | Attribute:'MediaElement','RawValue' %}

<article class="message-detail">
	
	{% if mediaElement != '' %}
	    {[ mediaplayer media:'{{ mediaElement }}' autoresumeindays:'14' combineplaystatisticsindays:'14' width:'75%' ]}{[ endmediaplayer ]}
	{% endif %}

	<h1>{{ Item.Title }}</h1>

	<p>
		<strong> {{ Item | Attribute:'Speaker' }} - {{ Item.StartDateTime | Date:'M/d/yyyy' }}</strong>
	</p>

	<div class="row">
		<div class="col-md-8">
			{{ Item.Content }}
		</div>
		<div class="col-md-4">
		    [...]
		</div>
	</div>
</article>
                

Again, you'll want to check out the shortcode for yourself to get familiar with the many different parameters you can use to adjust the look and functionality of the media player to suit your specific needs and digital strategy. It's still only one line of code, but will have thousands of lines of impact.

Library Viewer

The Library Viewer is an intuitive gateway to a wide array of articles and resources. Seamlessly search by topic, date, and popularity, downloading content into your Rock instance with ease. Whether enhancing connections or tackling challenges, the library's transformative wisdom enriches minds and hearts, all while aligning seamlessly with your digital strategy.

You’ll use a Content Channel to access the Library Viewer, as described below.

Once in the Library Viewer you’ll see a list of content items along the left. You can click on any of these to see the associated content. You’ll also notice a “Download Article” button, which will download the content as a new Content Channel Item into the Content Channel from which you accessed the library.

1 Content Item List

This is the list of articles or other resources available for download.

2 Sort/Filter

You can change the order in which the content items are listed. You can also use a variety of filters to only show certain content.

3 Experience Level/Topic

These tags are set for each Content Channel Item, which we’ll cover below.

4 Download Article

With a single click you download the content from the library to your Rock instance. It will be added as a Content Channel Item within the Content Channel that was used to access the page.

If you’ve already downloaded the item, the “Download Article” button will change to say “Re-download and Refresh” which will update (overwrite) the item from your previous download. If you made any changes to the content after you downloaded it, those changes will be lost.

You may also notice a green icon that appears both within the item itself and in the list of items along the left. This is simply a visual indicator that the item has been downloaded.

You’ll sometimes see other icons associated with the item, as listed below:

To download from the Library Viewer, you must access it using the Download from Library button on the Content Channel as pictured below. This tells the Library Viewer which Content Channel to use when downloading content.

1 Download from Library

Click this button to access the Library Viewer and download content. See below for additional details.

2 Library Icons

A green icon indicates downloaded items. Click to refresh with the latest version (your changes will be overwritten). The blue icon marks items uploaded to the library. Click to resend with your updates.

3 Upload to Library

Each Content Channel Item within the channel can be uploaded to the library by clicking the gray icon.

Setup

The Content Library features are enabled on specific Content Channels (Admin Tools > CMS Configuration > Content Channels) and apply to all the items within the channel. You can then choose individual items to share or download.

1 Enable Library for This Channel

Activate Content Library features on specific Content Channels, aligning with your organization’s digital strategy goals.

2 License

The license determines whether you need to reference the author or organization who created the content, and whether you can edit downloaded content. See below for details.

3 Attributes

Ideally, you’ll have all these items to help connect people with content relevant to them.

As mentioned above, there are three License options available to you:

1. Open: Enjoy ultimate flexibility—use articles as needed, without attribution. Customize downloaded content to suit your organization.
2. Author Attribution: Use articles as-is, with no changes. Acknowledge the original author's contribution when showcasing the article.
3. Organization Attribution: Use articles unaltered. Attribute both the author (if specified) and the organization that added it to the library when displaying the article.

With an Open License you won’t want to give attribution to the author, because as soon as you change any of the content it’s no longer their work. If you change the License, any items you’ve previously uploaded to the library will retain their original License. So, changing the License only impacts new uploads going forward.

Lastly, let’s look at the options available for individual Content Channel Items.

1 Experience Level

Classify content as Foundational, Intermediate, or Advanced for easy filtering in the Library Viewer. While not mandatory for all items, a selection is required for content to be uploaded to the library.

2 Topic

a. Assign a relevant topic to each content channel item. Topics are organized under categories ("domains"), such as "Personal Growth" or "Explore Faith." Like Experience Level, a Topic is required for uploading an item to the library. The list of topics cannot be changed.

Rock's Content Library helps propel your ministry to new heights through seamless integration into your digital strategy. As we look ahead, the horizon promises even more content possibilities beyond articles. So, stay engaged and explore this evolving landscape of ministry enrichment.

Experience Manager

You can access the different Interactive Experience pages in Rock by going to Tools > Interactive Experiences. First, we’ll look at the Experience Manager.

The Experience Manager is typically what you’ll use to, that’s right, manage the experiences. Pictured above, under the Live Event tab, you can see a live count of how many people are participating, and you get to control, in real time, the Actions that will show up on people’s mobile devices. It even includes a preview window so you can see what they see.

Under the Moderation tab you can review responses to questions, particularly short answer questions, and can approve or reject them based on their content.

The last stop in our tour of the Experience Manager is the Live Questions tab. This is where you can see a list of responses to the selection action. This list is filterable by campus. Only responses that have been approved (for those requiring approval) will appear here.

Experience Questions

This area is meant for the pastor on stage, to view the results of the actions (e.g., poll answers) live and in real time as people are responding through your church’s app.

As pictured above, the pastor can select which question to view. And there’s an optional Campus filter, to ensure they’re viewing the correct set of replies.

Experience Visualizer

The answers to your questions can be read in a list like we’ve seen so far. But the Experience Visualizer lets you see the responses graphically.

You can also see the responses presented as a word cloud. The larger the word, the more responses it got.

Experience Administration

Experience Administration is where you’ll go to create and maintain your experiences, actions and what gets displayed on the app.

Let’s walk through setting up a new experience. We’ll start by adding a new row to the Experience Administration page under Tools > Interactive Experiences.

1 Name

This is going to be what the experience is called. You might have an experience named Weekend Services.

2 Active

You might Inactivate an experience if it's not needed for now but will be used in the future. This way you don't have to delete experiences you're not using.

3 Description

Adding a good description helps provide clarity and purpose for the experience and when it's to be used.

4 Public Label

The name you choose here will be visible to people using your app. For instance, on the person’s device they can choose which Interactive Experience they want to join, when more than one is available.

5 Experience Photo

You might reference the Experience Photo on your external website when displaying information about the experience. This isn’t required.

6 Push Notification Configuration

When you select an Action from the Experience Manager, you can choose to send a push notification to people who have your mobile app, alerting them of the action. If you choose a push notification option, you'll be asked to provide a Lava-enabled Title and Detail. These are the actual contents of the push notification the person receives on their mobile device.

Next, we’ll look at the schedule configuration. As it says on the page, Schedules determine when and where the experience occurs.

1 Campus Behavior

This controls how the campus is determined. Because you may have different campuses with different actions. The options include:

• Filter Schedules by Campus Geofences: Geofences are used to display schedules based on your current location, matching you with the closest campus. Your interactions will also be associated with this campus. Your campus configuration will need to include a geofence for this to work.
• Determine Campus from Geofence: Your campus for interactions will be determined by the geofence of your current location. Your campus configuration will need to include a geofence for this to work.
• Use Individual's Campus: Your chosen campus in Rock will be used for interactions, without considering geofences.

So, you can optionally use geofences to determine things like if the person is at home or on campus. And don’t forget you can also check out the help icon in Rock for additional information.

2 Schedule

This is where you set the date, time, and recurrences for your experience. But that’s not all. For each schedule you can determine who should be able to see the experience based on a data view or group membership. You might use group membership to use Interactive Experiences for team training.

3 Welcome Content

The title, message and header image you select here will appear in your mobile app just before the experience kicks off. Use this to welcome people to the Interactive Experience experience!

As we move down the page, you'll find additional settings for what people will see in your app during the experience.

1 No Actions Content

This is what people will see in between actions. For instance, when you choose to stop collecting responses from a question, this is what will be shown before the next question appears. That would all be handled through the Experience Manager.

2 Background Color

If you don’t have a background image, this color will appear as the background.

3 Text Color

When you ask for a short answer or poll response, this will be the color of the question/prompt text.

4 Primary/Secondary Button Background Color

Whenever a button appears (e.g., the Submit button) these are the colors that will be used as the background.

5 Primary/Secondary Button Text Color

This is just like the above setting, except it applies to the text (e.g., “Submit”) of the button.

6 Background Image

The poll and short answer questions will sit on top of the picture you upload here. Be sure to choose a picture/color combination that works for you and is easy on the eyes.

Below is an example of what the No Actions Content might look like.

As we continue down the configuration list, we get to customize what the person sees when the experience has ended. You'll also see options to provide a custom theme for the experience.

1 Experience Ended

All good things must come to an end, and Experiences are no exception. The Lava-enabled content you provide here will be shown to the person after the experience has ended.

2 Audience Appearance

You can choose a separate set of colors (and an optional image) to apply to the experience in general. For example, if you used an image in the Welcome or No Actions Content, then those images will be placed on top of your experience’s background image or color.

Next, let’s dive into the action configuration, which you would access from the same page, as pictured in the last screenshot below. What you’ll see will vary depending on the Type of action you’re working with. We’ll use an example from the Poll action type.

1 Action Type

Currently there are 3 Action Types to choose from:

• Embed Webpage – To set up, just provide the URL you want to embed. It's a straightforward process, yet quite powerful. Embedding a webpage, like one with a Rock Workflow Entry block, greatly enhances the experience. But it could also be files, like an image or a PDF. Imagine the possibilities! The only requirement is you need to have a web page to point it to.
• Poll – We’ve already seen an example of a poll, now you can see how they’re set up. The screenshot above is for a Poll action.
• Short Answer – We also saw one of these in an earlier screenshot. The configuration is similar, except you also have the option to review and approve/reject the responses before they get published.

2 Question

This is the question that people will see and respond to on their mobile devices during the experience.

3 Answers

This section is where you list the available options a person can choose to respond with.

4 Allow Multiple Submissions

This simply indicates whether the same person can answer the same question more than once.

5 Anonymous Responses

If you recall from earlier when we were looking at Live Questions and Experience Questions, you may have noticed that people’s names were listed. You can choose to hide the names on those pages by enabling this option.

6 Response Visual

The options here include “Bar Chart” and “Word Cloud” which we’ve seen examples of previously. Whichever one you pick, you’ll have additional configuration options that are specific to the visual you chose. For instance, you can have the bar chart be horizontal or vertical.

After you’ve got your actions configured, you’re ready to go live with this experience! With everything set up, your Experience Administration page will look similar to the below screenshot.

We can edit the configuration for this experience by clicking the Edit button pictured above. Below that you can edit the Actions or add new ones.