News

AEM Update Email: February 24, 2021

Monthly email series with tips and best practices for AEM Authors

Heart shaped hole in a hedgerow
Heart cut in hedge row Image by Bianca Mentil from Pixabay

Hello AEM Authors!

Here are your tips and updates for February 2021.

In this edition: 

  • SEO & AEM Authoring Tips - Option to Display Last Updated Date on Articles
  • Content Resource – Image Optimization Guidance
  • Systems Update - Luminate Online transition to Engaging Networks
  • Recorded GDUs – Web Accessibility 102 sessions
  • AEM Known Issue: C89 Text and Image Expansion Component

SEO & AEM Authoring Tips - Option to Display Last Updated Date on Article Pages

On article pages, you now have the option to include a last updated date, which will appear next to the original publish date (separated by a vertical line). This should only be used if you're making a meaningful change to the page. While "meaningful change" can seem a little vague, we're hoping all authors will evaluate their own pages to be able to decide if any updates are worth alerting readers that a page has been updated. For example, if you're changing out an image, rephrasing the title and/or subtitle, adding a link or two, making any cosmetic or technical changes to improve engagement or search performance, but not significantly changing the text on the page so that the meaning of the page changes, you would NOT add an updated date. However, if you're updating a program page to include new information that was not available when the page was first published, you WOULD want to add an updated date (regardless of whether you've change the title or subtitle or made any other cosmetic updates). 

Remember that the article date is required in the article detail properties, and that the article date should reflect the original publication date of the page and should not change. Best practice if including a last updated date is to still also display the article date on the page as well.

 

Content Resource  – Image Optimization Guidance

New page! This newly published page is your one-stop-shop for image guidance that covers user experience, SEO, and accessibility. Refresh your memory on using images with text overlay, how to write great alt text for search engines and screen reading devices, how to write captions (and how captions and alt text differ), better file names when uploading images, and plenty of real-life examples of images on nature.org pages.

Systems Update  - Luminate Online transition to Engaging Networks: 

We are implementing Engaging Networks as our new enterprise solution for data collection – such as donation forms, advocacy actions, and event registrations. We are currently designing the new system and the new forms, and we plan to launch in June, although that date may shift by a few weeks. We will be building new AEM components in order to connect EN forms with AEM event pages, and we will be holding trainings on both the AEM components and how to build forms in EN before launch. For an overview of this project, visit the GD Central page

Recorded GDUs – Web Accessibility 102

There were two Web Accessibility 102 GDU sessions held in January:

As always, you can find these and all GDU recordings on the GDU landing page on GD Central.

AEM Known Issue: C89 Text and Image Expansion Component

We have gotten multiple reports of the C89 Text and Image Expansion Component breaking in a way that prevents authors from opening the authoring dialog to edit the component and incorrectly displays text markup. We have investigated this issue and are working on a fix that should go into the next AEM release on March 17th. In the meantime, we recommend that you avoid using text markup (italics, bold, bullets, etc) in that component. You can still use C89 Text and Image Expansion with plain text as it is the markup that is creating an issue with the display. If you have a currently broken component on a page, please submit a marketing request ticket for help correcting the issue.