The Blackbaud Community Tip-Off! Share Knowledge & Earn Points

Ami Defesche · May 2017

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Greetings Luminate Online Community! This month, you’re up for the Blackbaud Community Tip-Off! (Not sure what that is? Click here for more details.)

We’re on a mission to help new users learn all those little tips, tricks, and suggestions that made you say “Wow, I wish I would have known that in the beginning!”
For helping you’ll receive bonus community points for each tip you submit (Max 5).

Here’s how it works:

Post your Luminate Online specific tip or trick to the forum discussion below. (Make sure to follow these guidelines!)
Read through other member posts, and click “Like” if it was especially helpful. This counts as 1 vote.
On 6/2/17, we’ll tally the votes and the top 10 tips & tricks will be compiled into a fully community crowd-sourced beginners guide to Luminate Online.
If your tip was picked for the guide, you’ll receive 100 community points and a shiny new badge for your Profile page.

Now, onward to the Tips & Tricks. Good luck, and thanks for sharing!

Romany Nassief · May 2017

1. WYSIWYG or Plain-Text

The best practice when editing pages it to use the Plain Text mode instead of WYSIWYG. It may require HTML experience, but it will guarantee the accuracy of your page content.

You can set your default edit mode from Administrator Preferences https://secure[2 or 3].convio.net/[organization short name]/admin/AdminPreferences

Note:

Don't work with the content you got after immediate switching from WYSIWYG to Plain Text as it causes extra <p> tags added to your source code that could affect page look and feel.

So, if you edit the page and you found it in WYSIWYG, click Plain Text link >> close the window >> edit it again to have the content originaly in plain text.

2. If you haven't alreay, try URL Shortcuts

It is very helpful when you have a regularly used URL in your pages/emails. For example: if you have donate button/links in your header, footer, inner pages and email messages, you can create "donate" shortcut that points to your donation page URL and then everywhere you have donate link, set the href to "http://[[S29:DOMAIN]]/donate". If want to change the donation form, you will just make the change in one place by changing shortcut target.

Here is how you can pass arguments to URL Shortcuts.

3. FTP make CSS/JS development and modification easier and faster

If you want to have a structured assets (css, javascript and images), you can contact your Blackbaud Account Manager to get FTP access.

4. Front-end doesn't reflect your changes

If you are in the development phase and you make several changes in css or js files, you can force the browser to reload them by adding "?t=[[S9:timestamp]]" at the end of your js/css include lines and remove it later after launch. For example:

<script type="text/javascript" src="../assets/js/scripts.js?t=[[S9:timestamp]]"></script>

Also, if your site doesn't reflect changes you made from backend, try it in a different browser, or open a private browsing window (incognito mode).

5. Useful bookmarks for S E T U tags

Tags are very important for wrapper, pagebuilder and emails development.

- S tags

- E tags

- T tags

- U tags

- E130 Pal helps to visually see how the E130 tag executes within Blackbaud's Luminate

Brian Mucha · May 2017

Wow, E130 Pal! That's cool.

Any idea about the origins of this page? I can remember a pretty long thread here working out what E130 does, but I haven't run across this before.

Chris Geady · May 2017

Hi, I use the Google Chrome to edit a lot of content for Luminate Online. There's a handy plugin for Google Chrome to easily navigate to a public-facing page and edit it.

Find the plugin here: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/luminate-online-page-edit/dpkklfhgpnjklakhoelfnbfgihkfgpap?hl=en

Allison King · May 2017

Chris Geady:

Hi, I use the Google Chrome to edit a lot of content for Luminate Online. There's a handy plugin for Google Chrome to easily navigate to a public-facing page and edit it.

Find the plugin here: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/luminate-online-page-edit/dpkklfhgpnjklakhoelfnbfgihkfgpap?hl=en

That is super cool! Noah also made an extension for Firefox users here: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/luminate-online-page-editor/

Romany Nassief · May 2017

Brian Mucha:

Wow, E130 Pal! That's cool.

Any idea about the origins of this page? I can remember a pretty long thread here working out what E130 does, but I haven't run across this before.

Don't remember if I reached it from the community or from Google search. Here is the github repository for E130 Pal where you can find the stack processing script.

By the way, there is also Conditional Pal tool for writing complex and nested Luminate conditions. I haven't tried it before but it looks interesting.

Allison King · May 2017

The best tip I heard recently came from Go! consultant Kelley Hohl.

Put your CEO or ED signature image/name/title/picture in a reusable PageBuilder page and include the reusable at the bottom of your emails and autoresponders. That way, should your CEO or ED change, you'll only have to update the reusable content instead of editing dozens (hundreds?) of emails and autoresponders. You could expand this out for anyone who you regularly include in the email signature.

Jody Johnson · June 2017

Ami Defesche:

Greetings Luminate Online Community! This month, you’re up for the Blackbaud Community Tip-Off! (Not sure what that is? Click here for more details.)

We’re on a mission to help new users learn all those little tips, tricks, and suggestions that made you say “Wow, I wish I would have known that in the beginning!”
For helping you’ll receive bonus community points for each tip you submit (Max 5).

Here’s how it works:

Post your Luminate Online specific tip or trick to the forum discussion below. (Make sure to follow these guidelines!)

Read through other member posts, and click “Like” if it was especially helpful. This counts as 1 vote.

On 6/2/17, we’ll tally the votes and the top 10 tips & tricks will be compiled into a fully community crowd-sourced beginners guide to Luminate Online.

If your tip was picked for the guide, you’ll receive 100 community points and a shiny new badge for your Profile page.
Now, onward to the Tips & Tricks. Good luck, and thanks for sharing!

When you click manage for one of your TeamRaiser's and go to the participant tab, if you enter a space in the first name and click enter, you will get a list of all the participants registered for your event. This can be very helpful if you are trying to find someone and don't see them right away (i.e. search for Bob, but his registration is Robert).

The Blackbaud Community Tip-Off! Share Knowledge & Earn Points

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