Frequently asked questions

Short answers to things hub managers ask, each checked against Hubzero 2.4, and ordered roughly by how often the question comes up rather than by component. Every answer points at the chapter that covers the screen properly.

I made a menu and it does not appear on the site. Why?

Because a menu and the thing that displays it are two separate objects, and creating one does not create the other. A menu is a list of links with no position and no presence on any page; a Menu module is what puts it somewhere.

Go to Menus → Menu Manager and look at your menu's row. If the Modules Linked to the Menu cell offers Add a module for this menu type, there is no module — follow that link and make one. If a module is named there, open it and check two things: its Status is Published, and its Position is one the current template actually declares. The Modules Linked to the Menu column lists modules whether or not they are published, so seeing one there proves nothing on its own.

A plain install is the common case of the second problem: the shipped Main Menu module sits in position-7, which neither site template in this tree declares, so it renders nowhere. See Menus and Modules.

How do we email everybody in a group?

Through the group's Messages tab, which is the Groups - Messages plugin. Only a group manager or a site administrator can compose one.

1. Open the group and select Messages, then Send New Message.
2. Pick the recipients: All Group Members, All Group Managers, All Group Invitees, All Group Applicants, one of the group's member roles, or one named member.
3. Fill in the subject and the message, and select Send.

The group's Members tab has a Message link beside each member and each role that opens the same form with the recipient already chosen. Sent messages stay on the Messages tab.

How do I point one URL at another?

Use the Redirect Manager at Site → Maintenance → Routes: a Source URL, a Destination URL, and a response code. It also records every 404 the site serves, so it doubles as a list of the addresses people are asking for and not finding — which is usually where you find out a link is broken in the first place.

A menu item of type External URL does the same job for a path that belongs to a component rather than to an article — redirecting /groups/mainclass to /groups/spring2016class, say. Both are covered in URLs.

How do I set an option for one article rather than the whole site?

Open the article at Content → Article Manager and use the Article Options panel down the right-hand side. It repeats every option from the component's Articles settings — Show Title, Show Author, Show Hits, and the rest — and every one of them defaults to Use Global.

Use Global means "look one level up". On a single-article page the order is article, then menu item, then the component's global setting. Blog and featured layouts reverse the first two: the menu item wins, and the article's value is used only where the menu item's setting is Use Article.

See Article Manager.

Why does the Featured switch do nothing?

Because it writes to a column the site does not read. The site's Featured Articles page reads a separate table that nothing in the administrator interface writes to, and the administrator's own Featured Articles screen is unreachable. This is a defect, recorded in docs/plan/review-findings.md.

It matters more than it sounds, because the home page a plain install ships is a Featured Articles item. A hub left on it has an empty front page and no way to fill it from any screen. Point the home item at a Single Article instead — Menus walks through it.

Can one article be in two categories?

No. An article belongs to exactly one category. If a page has to appear in two places, point two menu items at the same article rather than making a second copy of it. See Categories.

A member says their account is "temporarily disabled". What do I do?

Nothing, usually. That message means the account has failed to log in too many times inside the window set at Users → Members → Options → Login Settings — ten attempts in an hour on the shipped settings. The block is not stored on the account: it is a count of recent rows in the authentication log, so it lifts itself as the window slides forward. Tell the member to wait and try again, and to use Forgot your password rather than guessing.

If it is happening to many accounts at once, or repeatedly to one, read Security considerations, which explains what is being counted and what the three thresholds do.

A member is stuck on a "spam detected" page. How do I release them?

Their lifetime spam counter is over the limit. Go to Users → Members, open the member, and on the Account tab select Reset beside Lifetime Spam Incidents. That field only appears when System - Spamjail is enabled, which is also the only reason the page exists. The whole procedure, including the per-session counter that clears itself, is in Spam.

How do I allow another attachment type on support tickets?

1. Go to Components → Support.
2. On Support: Tickets, select Options.
3. Open the Files tab.
4. Add the extension to Extensions.
5. Save & Close.

Think about what you are allowing. Every attachment is scanned by the command in the virus_scanner configuration key before it is accepted, but a scanner is not a substitute for keeping executables and archives off the list. See Security considerations.

How does a project connect to Google Drive?

A project manager creates the connection and authorizes it with their own Google account; everyone else in the project works through it.

1. Open the project and select the Files tab.
2. Choose Google Drive from the New Connection drop-down, give the connection a Name, and save.
3. Authorize it. Sign in to Google and accept the permissions the hub asks for.
4. Google returns you to the project, which now shows the connection beside the project's own file repository.

The same tab carries Edit, Delete, Refresh Connection Credentials and Refresh Connection Path. If a connection stops working for the whole project, Refresh Connection Credentials is usually the fix: the authorization belongs to one person's account, and it fails when that person revokes it or leaves.

The provider does not work until an administrator has enabled the plugin and supplied credentials — see Integrations. Some hubs still run the older project-wide Google connection instead, which puts a Connect link on the same tab; that one is covered there too.

How do I change the status of a wish?

Open the wish on the site and select Change status beneath it. The statuses are radio buttons, not a drop-down:

Status	Meaning
Pending	Awaiting a decision from the list owners.
Accepted	The list owners have agreed to implement it.
Rejected	The list owners have declined it.
Granted	It is done and available on the hub.

Choose one and select change status. The member who made the wish is told. A wish on a resource wish list can only be marked Granted by the person it is assigned to.

How do I see the outline a student sees?

Enrol in your own course as a student, from a test account. An instructor or course manager sees the whole outline, published and unpublished, and sees it regardless of prerequisites. A student sees only what the prerequisites and the availability dates have released to them, so the instructor's view is not a preview of the student's.

What was removed from this page

The imported version of this page had one further answer, a second step-by-step for redirecting /groups/mainclass to another group, duplicating the one above it. Both have been replaced by the single entry under How do I point one URL at another?. Nothing else was dropped; the remaining answers were corrected rather than removed — most visibly the group message answer, which described an email icon on the Members tab as the only way in, and the wishlist answer, which described a drop-down where the interface has radio buttons.