Person Spotlights

Caltech is all about its people, and sometimes you need to show off a handful of your group's most notable people. The Person Spotlight Carousel is a great block to use for that.

To create one, click on the "People" menu in the admin sidebar. You should see at least two options including "Spotlight Types" and "Person Categories". Ignore the "Person Categories" option, that is used when creating Person Pages.

Start by creating a few "Spotlight Types" - these can be used to select groups of spotlights to display together.

Now create a "Person Spotlight Listing" page somewhere on your site. This page exists to be the parent for the individual Person Spotlights so it needs to be published but probably doesn't need to be in your site's menu. Give it a title, header, and a body containing the "Person Spotlight Listing" block, and then publish it.

Now that you've done the setup, you can create individual Spotlights. Hover over the "Person Spotlight Listing" page and choose "Add Child Page". This will take you directly to the edit form for a Person Spotlight. The page title should be the person's full name; this will display in large blue type in the spotlight. The "text" is the main text next to the image - with or without quotation marks. The "title text" field appears above the person's name in small type. And the "Read More" link appears below the text in a blue, all caps style.

Person Spotlights are not listed in the Sitemap. If you want to see all your spotlights or find one to edit, you can either hover over the "Person Spotlight Listing" in the Sitemap and choose "List Spotlights", or you can use the People link in the admin sidebar and choose "All Spotlights".

The most important part of a Person Spotlight is the image. You need a square headshot with good lighting and preferably a neutral or white background. If you really want the spotlight to pop, use Photoshop (or similar) to remove the background and replace it with a white or transparent background, instead. That will make the person really stand out.

You can place a Spotlight Carousel on the top level of a Home Page or Interior Page. Or you can place several carousels in the same section of a page by placing a Tabs Block and then putting a spotlight carousel in each. For example, you can show off some of your faculty, postdocs, and graduate students by creating 3 tabs and then placing a carousel in each - each carousel displaying a different Spotlight Type.