Things to Know

Avoiding the Hidden Gotchas

This page is intended to familiarize you with some key tips to help you avoid stumbling blocks down the road as you build your site.

Check out our blogs, and especially the Tips, Hints and Best Practices, to keep up on common questions and issues other users have asked about.

Start with creating your content and build your main navigation afterward. After your page exists, you can then learn how to add a page or add a link to your main navigation. If you make your menu first, your pages won't be built using the proper configuration, which will cause confusion and create more work for you.
Don't delete the default navigation links; most of them link to default Views. Instead, only disable any menu links that you don't need in case you later change your mind.

The Temporarily Unavailable message is misleading. This is a generic message generated by our hosting service Acquia when it notes that your site has become unavailable for some reason. Since this is a generic error, please err on the side of caution and contact the SiteFarm team directly for assistance as we are never notified when this is displayed and no work is being done on your site to rectify the issue. Please note we most often see this error in relation to custom views containing errors, custom blocks, or specifically the Trumba block being misconfigured.

The default out-of-the-box search box only searches your single site and then, only searches pages, not block content. Search engines outside your site will find everything. If you use Google Custom Search with your site, it will find all content and have the capability of searching multiple domains per your chosen configuration.
As block content isn't visible to the search, as much as possible, make use of the page's WYSIWYG for your content and use the blocks for accents and peripheral content. Don't rely solely rely on blocks to convey important information.

Your site can handle up to 185-200 Global blocks before it overloads the site's ability to process them all, so be thoughtful in how you apply your blocks. When possible reuse them (if the content and region location is the same) by listing multiple page locations in the block's Page | Visibility section.
Blocks used in Layout Builder pages are called in-line blocks and do not count towards the Global block limit mentioned above. They are specific to the page they are used on and do not appear in the Block Library page.
Certain types of blocks available on your site are based on a View. A View by itself doesn't contain any content; instead, it relies on a set of instructions (settings, sort orders, filters, queries) to decide what existing content from your site it should display. It's possible you may have a page with main content that is narrower than the width of the available space. It's possible a block containing a View is in the sidebar, but it doesn't have any content to display because nothing matches its display criteria. If you see this happen--an odd open space where you don't think one should be--you can use your Block Layout page to isolate the block creating this effect by disabling each one in turn (likely in the First or Second Sidebar) and checking the result on the page. Read the blog post for more detail.
Blocks are not indexed by the built-in search. (See section above on "search")

Layout Builder is only available on the Basic page type.
Layout Builder works best when Sidebars are disabled using the Regions Override feature.

Images you add to your site should be 3MB in size or smaller, otherwise, they won't display due to an intentional size restriction.
If you're using a selection of images as a group and they need to be a uniform width and height, be sure to size them before uploading them to your Media Library.
Use Box.com if you need to manage a large number of documents or have concerns about security or confidentiality of information.
Videos and audio media should be saved on an alternate hosting platform like YouTube, Vimeo, or Soundcloud. You can link to these services using the External Media link/block and/or your Media Library.
SiteFarm does not use auto-advancing image sliders or carousels.

Your site does not have a limitation on the number of pages you can have.
When using the Workflows and Content Moderation feature, be sure to delete unneeded Drafts from your page's Revision tab, NOT from the main Content list or else you will delete both page and the draft.

Never point your pathways to '/' or the root of your site; this will cause your site to break or malfunction.