CraftCMS Admin User Setup

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT | Recorded: 2023-09-18 | Verify against current system state

Abstract¶

Craft CMS admin training session covering website content management features. Reviews singles (unique pages like contact, events) vs pages (thousands of standard content pages). Covers SEO/Open Graph settings for social media sharing, Freeform plugin for contact forms with submission viewing and CSV export, invisible reCAPTCHA spam filtering. Also covers alerts ribbon system for site-wide announcements, global fields for content that appears across multiple pages, Retour plugin for managing 404 redirects, and user group permissions.

Key Procedures¶

• Navigate singles (unique templates) vs pages (standard content)
• Configure SEO Open Graph tags for social media sharing
• View and export Freeform submissions to CSV/Excel
• Understand spam filtering with invisible reCAPTCHA scores
• Create site-wide alerts with badge, text, and link URL
• Use global fields to update content in one place site-wide
• Insert global reference fields into page content using widget
• Manage 404 redirects using Retour plugin
• Configure user permissions by group (publisher, editor, etc.)

Notable Statements¶

• 0:01:18 "There's thousands of these pages. Most often it's either Blanca or Michelle making the changes."
• 0:02:43 "Aptify person ID... those are hidden fields, but you can drag them onto the form."
• 0:08:01 "We have something similar but it's hidden. Something behind the scenes that is doing calculations to determine if you're valid."
• 0:08:13 "Google sends us a score and says the probability is like 30% that this is a real person."
• 0:09:01 "Free form, the way the data is saved is just like a huge table... hundreds of columns."
• 0:09:30 "At first Blanca and Michelle were just creating new fields for every single form... we started running out of columns."
• 0:12:00 "Alerts... every once in a while we'll put up one of those red banner alerts."
• 0:13:49 "Instead of typing these words every single time on every single page... you can just enter it here and it's going to update on all the other pages."

Systems & Configurations¶

Systems Mentioned¶

• Craft CMS (admin panel)
• Freeform (form builder plugin)
• Google reCAPTCHA (invisible spam detection)
• Retour (404 redirect plugin)
• Google Cloud Storage (assets)

Specific Configurations¶

Credentials/Access Mentioned¶

• Publisher group permissions
• Admin access for user management
• Freeform export access

Errors & Troubleshooting¶

• Issue: Running out of database columns in Freeform
• Cause: Creating new fields for every form instead of reusing
• Resolution: Reuse existing fields, change label only if needed

• Timestamp: 0:09:30

• Issue: Missing quick export button

• Cause: Publisher group missing export permission
• Resolution: Add "Access quick exporting" to group permissions

• Timestamp: 0:05:00

• Issue: Cannot limit user access to specific pages

• Cause: Craft CMS limitation on page-level permissions
• Resolution: Only option is limiting to pages user created themselves
• Timestamp: 0:21:55

Transcript Gaps & Quality Notes¶

• Training session with new team member (Nick mentioned)
• Covers navigation of admin interface menu items
• Discussion of survey and polls plugin (purchased but not used)
• Workflow plugin not being used (originally planned for editorial review)
• Freeform field reuse critical to avoid column limits
• Aptify person ID hidden fields on forms for tracking
• Assets stored in Google Cloud with no-index option available