Latest Contributions by SydneyBohn

Howdy Hubbers! The Hub team is excited to announce that we will be releasing support for configuring Hub sites with Google Analytics 4 (GA4) measurement IDs today (December 7, 2022)! Hub’s new GA4 configuration option will be available alongside the legacy Universal Analytics (UA) Google Analytics configuration option that already exists in Hub sites today. Site editors will be able to configure both UA & GA4 tracking on the same site to facilitate migration efforts ahead of Google's planned deprecation of Universal Analytics in July 2023. In early 2023, we will share additional information and guidance for site owners regarding Hub's deprecation of Universal Analytics configuration support.   Curious about Google Analytics? If you're not already familiar, Google Analytics allows you to collect anonymous tracking data that can help answer questions like: How is my Hub site performing alongside my other websites How are people finding my Hub site? Are they visiting from a desktop computer or a mobile device? What are the most common keywords people are using to search? What datasets are being downloaded? While answering these questions has been possible with UA tracking, configuring your Hub site to use Google Analytics 4  will make answering these questions and finding useful insights much easier.   Getting Started First, make sure you have a Google Analytics account. Check with your website administrator or your marketing team if you’re unsure. If you don’t already have an account, consider signing up—it’s free and easy to get up and running. If you’ve already upgraded to Google Analytics 4, you will use your Measurement ID. The Measurement ID can be found in the Admin. section of your analytics page under Data Streams and Measurement ID. Copy this number to your clipboard. It should look something like this: G-XXXXXXXXXX. For additional guidance on creating Google Analytics 4 properties, refer to Google’s documentation.   Adding Google Analytics 4 to Hub Sites To add Google Analytics 4 to your Hub site, simply launch your site in edit mode, open the Customize side panel and navigate to Settings > Tracking & Consent, enable the Google Analytics (GA4) toggle, and paste in your measurement ID. Once the measurement ID is added, save and publish the site for the changes to take effect on your live site.    Adding a consent message is optional and up to site owners. It’s important to check with your organization’s policies for data collection. Remember all the data you collect with Google Analytics is anonymous, there is no personally identifiable information collected.   You’ll know it’s working when you see the information for your site such as page titles/URLs, page views, and events in your Google Analytics account.   Not seeing any metrics yet? Don’t worry, over the next few days check back in as metrics accrue, and make sure you have the tracking date range set to overlap with when you added it to your site.   Important functionality notes The Hub team is working to provide updated documentation on Google Analytics 4 support, but in the meantime, here are some important details for site owners to keep in mind when configuring GA 4 measurement IDs: Sites will support having both UA and GA4-based tracking configured on the same site. Site owners can continue to configure their sites with new Universal Analytics tracking IDs for the time being and existing UA configurations will continue to function until Google retires Universal Analytics in July 2023. We will share plans for deprecating the Hub UA configuration option in early 2023. To receive the most accurate page view counts, we recommend disabling the "Enhanced measurement" setting in Google Analytics when creating a GA4 property for use within a Hub site. Leaving this setting enabled may lead to double-counted page views due to a conflict with the way that Hub separately enumerates site and page views.   P.S. If your organization doesn’t use Google Analytics, don’t fret! The Hub team is actively working on incorporating support for additional analytics providers such as Adobe Analytics and SiteImprove. We’ll be sharing more details on these updates in the near future, so stay tuned!   Let us know what you think! ... View more

Howdy Hubbers! Recently, the ArcGIS Hub team has been working on architectural changes to the Gallery Card to make it easier for us to add other highly requested enhancements. With this week’s ArcGIS Hub release (11/1/2022), you may notice a few minor visual changes in your site’s Gallery Cards we begin to roll out these updates. This is a summary of the changes you might expect to see on your Gallery Cards: Item thumbnail ratios are now respected for all card configurations All Gallery Cards will now respect the image ratio of thumbnails set on content items. This change stems from repeat feedback we’ve received asking us to not to responsively crop thumbnails as it often hid parts of images that our customers had worked hard to produce. This will increase the overall on-page size of certain card configurations. This will be most noticeable with rows that have 2 cards. Note: If you notice certain cards appear to be very small or have a short thumbnail image, verify that the thumbnail uploaded is at least 600 x 400px in size as recommended by ArcGIS Online. Text is center-aligned on all card configurations All text displayed on the various Gallery Card permutations will now be center-aligned for consistency. This will be most noticeable with single-card or 2-card row configurations.  Visual differences with Appearance settings Softer drop shadows Small changes in hollow button theming   Here's a quick visual comparison between Gallery Cards:   Before the 11/1 ArcGIS Hub release: Gallery cards before the 11/1 ArcGIS Hub release     Gallery Cards after the 11/1 ArcGIS Hub release: Gallery cards after the 11/1 ArcGIS Hub release   Let us know what you think! Please feel free to post any comments, ideas, or thoughts you may have regarding these changes -- we're happy to hear them! Happy Hubbing! Sydney Bohn ... View more

Introducing Domain Redirects Starting at today’s Hub release (July 6, 2022), site editors will see a new option to configure a redirect domain on their site. Domain redirects can be configured by launching the site editor and going to Settings > Domain Settings > Modify Domain Settings > Domain Redirects     What is a domain redirect?   A domain redirect is a URL that can be set for a site that, when visited, will automatically route users to the site's current primary domain. This is particularly useful in scenarios where a site's domain needs to be updated but links referencing the previous domain have already been shared out or cannot be easily updated. For instance - if a site's domain changes from this-domain.mysite.com to that-domain.mysite.com, setting this-domain.mysite.com as a redirect URL will route users to that-domain.mysite.com without any action needed on the visitor's part.   See redirects in action:   It happens quickly, but you can see that the set redirect - nova.cantilever.dev - automatically routes to the site’s primary domain – cool-site.cantilever.dev.   Important notes about the initial release of domain redirects: Redirects can be configured on sites with or without an applied custom domain BUT redirect URLs themselves must follow the same configuration requirements as custom domains: subdomain.mysite.com domain format CNAME set to hub.arcgis.com See the custom domain documentation for general requirements The default URL style of domain (*.hub.arcgis.com) cannot be used as a redirect URL If a custom domain is set on the site, configured redirects will ONLY point to the custom domain (as opposed to the site's default URL) If a custom domain is added or removed while a redirect is configured, the redirects will update to point to the new custom domain (if added/changed) or the default site URL (if custom domain is removed) If a redirect domain was not previously used as a custom domain in Hub, there may be a delay before the applied redirect becomes fully functional.   If you have any questions, thoughts, or suggestions for how we can improve domain redirects, please let us know! Ideas can be submitted on the ArcGIS Hub Ideas page.   Happy Hubbing! Sydney ... View more

On October 12, 2021, ArcGIS Hub will release a manual update that increases font size of the base font text on all sites and pages from 14px (10pt) to 16px (12pt) and changes the root html font size from 10px (8pt) to 16px. While most of you will notice only a subtle visual difference in font size, you can preview your sites ahead of publishing the update. If your sites are configured with custom HTML or CSS using ‘rem’ measurements, you may see a more pronounced difference in font size due to a change in the root html value and you should reconfigure your ‘rem’ sizes before proceeding with the update.   Frequently Asked Questions   Why is font size changing? ArcGIS Hub recognizes the importance of making web content accessible to people with diverse abilities. While there isn’t an official WCAG standard for font size, 16px (12pt) font size is commonly used by most web browsers to improve the readability of web content.   Why is Hub changing font measurements? rem stands for “root em” and is considered a relative size text format; it is calculated based on a value set on the root html element. The benefit of using relative text size measurements is that it improves the ability to scale a site or page layout proportionately based on the root value, which in this case will be 16px.   Where is base font text used? Your base font is any text that has been added to a site or page layout using the preformatted paragraph font size included in the text card or through HTML/CSS in the text card editor. Headings and other preformatted font styles included in the text card will not be impacted.   How can you tell if a site uses rem values? You can check your site’s HTML now by opening the any of the HTML/CSS editors (text card, header, footer) and looking for the presence of rem measurements. Starting September 21st, ArcGIS Hub will scan all sites with custom HTML or CSS in an attempt to detect usage of ‘rem.’ If the possibility of ‘rem’ is detected, a notification will appear in the site editor. Note: Site templates that include a timeline component have already been updated to account for the change. You do not need to take any action on the timeline component.   How do you update a site? The update will be released on Tuesday, October 12th, but will not be applied until you publish your site. On this day, you can open your site in edit mode to view a draft version of the update and look for visible changes. You can edit your site as needed. When you’re ready, you can publish the draft version to officially update your site to the new font size and font measurement.   How can you update your site’s rem values before the release? Since Hub will not be releasing the rem update until October 12th, if your site uses rem, the only way to dismiss the notification ahead of time would be to convert to pixels. You may not wish to switch to pixels if your site already benefits from relative font sizing. We are not requiring you to change. We simply ask you to tolerate the rem notification alert for a bit while we try to communicate the change with our customers.   How can you update your site’s rem values the day of the release? If you want to keep your rem measurements, you will need to wait to publish any changes in rem values until after we release the change to the rem root html on October 12th. The easiest way to update your rem values to be calculated based on the new root html value is to establish the pixel size and then use a pixel-to-rem converter. To determine pixel font size, view your published site (not the draft) and with either browser dev tools or a plugin like Chrome’s WhatFont, identify the pixel font size for the text that looks incorrect in the draft version. Take the pixel value, open the converter, make sure base is set to 16, and generate your new rem value. Update your custom code with your new rem values, save the draft, and publish.   Will content shared on a layout or through a site’s search results be impacted? This update primarily affects the base font text of sites and pages and not items embedded on a site or page layout. You may also notice the font size increase slightly in the search results, content views, and site editor.   Can I continue to use pixels in custom HTML/CSS? Absolutely! If you are currently using pixels, the rem update will not replace your code and you do not need to make any changes. You can safely continue to use pixel-based font sizes in your work.   ... View more