There are two options to make the WWW pages generated by the MatrixMaxx AMS reflect the look and feel of your website
- For many implementations, this integration is manually done. The MatrixMaxx developers load the design styles and images into MatrixMaxx. The plus side of this is that it is cheap and easy. The downside of this is that if you make a change to your website (e.g., change or add navigation), you will need to contact the MatrixMaxx support team to do an update for you. So if you plan on making a lot of updates to your site, this cost can add up
- For those of you who are clients of the Matrix Services division and are using the Sitefinity CMS to power your website, an option is available to upgrade your site to provide these design templates to MatrixMaxx in real-time, thus eliminating the need for manual updates. Nicknamed Scrape & Drape, this is a good option is you are constantly making changes to your design/navigation/styles. [If you are not sure if you have this or not, contact your Matrix services team.]
How it works
Scrape and Drape depends on the use of stub pages in the back end of Sitefinity. Stub pages are blank copies of styled pages that redirect to a MatrixMaxx URL that fills them with content. Stubs live in the same level of navigation as the pages they copy.
When stub pages are built, they typically incorporate the word stub: e.g., Bookstore STUB. In the case that they are not named this way, here’s what to look for:
- They do not have content on them
- In the back end, under Actions > Title & Properties, you will see:
- The page is NOT marked to show in navigation
- The page that shares most of its name (Bookstore, for Bookstore STUB) is marked to redirect to another page. The redirect URL usually begins with /forms/. This is the MatrixMaxx page.
It’s important to know what to look for, because it’s really easy to delete a page in the back end of Sitefinity! If you do inadvertently delete one of the stub pages, don’t despair! The content will still populate on the page that redirects to the MatrixMaxx URL. MatrixMaxx will revert to a ‘fallback’ static design or generic styling so that the page doesn’t error out, giving you time to create a new stub page.
How to Re-Create a Stub page
You can begin recovery by building a new stub page. It’s very easy! Just make sure it has the exact same name as the page that got deleted. It is important to the code we have written to make the integration work. So if the stub page named “Bookstore STUB” has disappeared, follow these steps:
- Create a page
- Give it the same name it had before deletion
- In the first gray block, uncheck the box beside “Show in navigation”
- Click “Create and go to add content”
- Click “Publish”
If the names are the same, the code will pick it up, and your MatrixMaxx-integrated page should be as good as new!
If you have questions or problems, contact your Matrix Services team