Customizable call to action button in Home Section

[carolromero]

This is a Feature Proposal

🎩 Description

For feature proposals:

• What is the use case that should be solved. The more detail you describe this in the easier it is to understand for us.
  As an admin, currently I can customize the claim of hero section in homepage. But in terms of highlighting a specific participatory process, an important meeting, or a new participation space, I should be able to customize the text and link of the CTA button as well.

• If there is additional config how would it look

📌 Related issues

• Customizable home section in multitenant installation #1323

[mrcasals]

What's the use case for this?

This might be harder to implement than it looks:

• Should we check that the URLs are local (eg. we only accept paths instead of full URLs)?
• Should we add a default text value for each organization available locale? How do we know what value should we put there, if we remove it from the locale files?

For the last question, I tried to check how the processes "announcement" field works: it's translatable but not required. This allows the user to set some text in English, but leave it blank in Spanish, for example. Visiting the process page in English shows the announcement, but visiting it in Spanish does not render it. Is this the correct approach?

We could do something like check for the field in the current locale or render a default value from the locale file, but this could cause problems when implementing #1127 😕

[carolromero]

Hi @mrcasals, the idea is to use this whole section (background image, slogan and call-to-action) to provide a quick access to any resource you want to highlight (e.g. a new participatory process, the results of a consultation, etc.) and not only as a static banner always pointing to '/processes' (besides, very soon we'll have new items in the top menu, such Assemblies, Initiatives, etc.)

Should we check that the URLs are local (eg. we only accept paths instead of full URLs)?

I would say that we allow full URLs, since for example the specific need we have right now is to communicate the upcoming JAM event, and link to the Conference website.

Should we add a default text value for each organization available locale? How do we know what value should we put there, if we remove it from the locale files?

Since the CTA button needs to go hand in hand with the image and the slogan, we could set a default value for both the slogan and text button.

@JuanLi1979 may have more thoughts about this.

[mrcasals]

Hi @carolromero!

As of now, the background and the slog are already editable, so the only missing thing would be changing the button text and link, right?

Still, I have some concerns on this:

• In my opinion, it's superweird that the link can point to external URLs, as a user.
• If we want to highlight a process, maybe we should have a dedicated section for highlighted processes/assemblies instead of changing the button link. I feel like it's not responsibility of the CTA section
• Also, this makes me realise that currently this button points to processes, while it should be able to point to assemblies or other participatory spaces if the admins so desire. But that should be a select input, not a free input where to put a URL IMO

/cc @josepjaume

[xabier]

@mrcasals I agree with you, most probably @carolromero wanted to make it an easy feature, the right-elegant one would be to tick any element (a specific participatory process, debate, survey, etc.) as MAIN-CALL and automatically redirect the call-for-action button at the home page. But this solution I imagine is rather costly in terms of time. The easiest way to implement this functionality is for the admin to be capable of copying the url of the most relevant participatory opportunity in the platform and to paste it on a button-config field at the admin panel.

The problem here is the cost of the elegant solution because the button should not redirect to "Processes" or "Assemblies" or other generic spaces but more directly to a specific action: e.g. create proposal for phase 4 or a specific participatory process, or a meeting or an active voting phase of a consultation. I don't think admins are going to add an url that drives the users away from the platform.

The solution to simply add an url to the button seems fine to me. Also it would be temporary, since the home will be redesigned shortly.

[xabier]

@mrcasals The reason for this feature request is that Decidim sites have plenty of content but very little oportunities for participation are open to the user when the visit the site (maybe there are 12 processes but only one has the oportunity to create proposals opened, the rest being dead, e.g. the city council is studying the proposals). Thus, participants need to navigate a lot to find the right page where they can directly interact: search among the participatory processes, find the one that is active, find the section that is open to proposals, make a proposal. They are often lost and leave the site.

[xabier]

@mrcasals @josepjaume what needs discussion or definition? is it hard to add a link configurator to the home call-to-action-button?

[mrcasals]

It's not hard, but it's something that once we create we need to stick with it and maintain it, and I keep having doubts about this. Specially with allowing external links on the Call To Action button. I still think this button should link to either processes/ or assemblies/, if present.

I'd be OK with adding an input to add internal links, something like what we did for slugs: #1874 (comment) (see gif in the link)

[xabier]

hi @mrcasals a button that points to any url doesn't seem hard to maintain as software. We need this feature. I very much like the slug idea but can we directly point to a phase inside a process? or a specific meeting inside an Assembly?

[mrcasals]

We can make the input accept slashes, so you can write processes/my-process-slug/f/8/proposals/10 for example, and the button will point to that URL. This way admins can point the button to any page inside decidim, but no external links. Is that OK?

If @decidim/product really thinks this should be able to handle external links, we'll do it, no problem 😄

[josepjaume]

I think end users don't really know about paths but URLs. If we wanted to restrict hosts, I'd add a validation.

[carolromero]

Hello @mrcasals, sorry I didn't answer sooner!
Actually I think it is better to allow only internal urls from the call-to-action of the home page. It's kind of weird getting to a website and the main button taking you out. The use case I mentioned (linking to the JAM website) will be solved when we have the new Conference module.
Until we have it, one solution is to target call-to-action to a specific participation space, and from there link to external urls if needed.

[xabier]

We can make the input accept slashes, so you can write processes/my-process-slug/f/8/proposals/10 for example, and the button will point to that URL. This way admins can point the button to any page inside decidim, but no external links. Is that OK?

this is a perfect solution @mrcasals 👍