How do I feature a rotating selection of content?

Summary

You can use various "listings" widgets and categories to display a selection of content that changes every time someone visits your page(s):

• Listings widgets can be used with sitewide Topics.
• News Listings widgets can be used with News Types.
• People Listings widgets can be used with Roles.
• Publications Listings widgets can be used with the Publications category.
• Departments Listings widgets can be used with the Departments category. 

Best Practices

If you want to curate the selection of content that's included in the rotation, we recommend creating a Sitewide Topic. For example, you could create a topic labeled "Featured." This allows you to include content of any type in your rotation. If you only want to display one type of content (such as News), you can also use the categories that are specific to that content type.

If you use a listing type that includes an image (such as Grid or Thumbnail List), make sure that each content item in your rotation has a Featured Image.

See Figure 1, below, for an example of a Thumbnail List Listings widget featuring one content item.

Figure 1: Thumbnail List example

Instructions

1. If you have created a Sitewide Topic or another category type, edit your content to apply the tag to all the items you want to feature.
2. Customize a page and add a generic Listings widget or a content-type-specific widget (such as a News listing).
3. Configure the widget:
   1. Add a widget title, such as "Highlights" or "Featured News."
   2. Filter by the Sitewide Topic or another category, if desired.
   3. If there is a pager option, turn it off.
   4. Choose a number of items to display. We recommend between 1 and 4 items depending on the type of display you've chosen.
   5. In the "Sort By" dropdown, choose Random.
4. Save the widget and save your page.
5. If you are using a category to filter featured items, we recommend reviewing the tagged content periodically to refresh your rotation.

See Figure 2, below, for a demonstration of steps A-E (above) on the above Thumbnail List example. 

Figure 2: How to configure the widget