The Alert content typeA collection of fields that describe a specific type of content, like a news article, a person, or an event. Site admins can add additional content types by enabling optional modules. WDS can also create custom content types for a site. is used to show a brief message or announcement that can be displayed on either your home page or all pages. We recommend that you only publish one alert at a time. When the alert is over, you will need to unpublish it manually or specify a date that it should be automatically unpublished.

Example alert message:

It's important to not overuse the alert content type on your site. If your visitors become accustomed to always seeing an alert on the homepage, they may tend to skip over it and an important message could be missed in the future.

Alerts can be dismissed by visitors by clicking the close button in the top right corner. If an editor makes an update to the alert, it will appear again for visitors that previously dismissed it.

Adding an Alert

Visit the alert form by clicking Manage » Content » Add Content » Alert.

All alerts must have a title and body, both of which should be kept brief. It's common practice to add a link to the body to a separate page that contains more details.

Alerts can be set to Standard or Extreme. The only difference between them is that extreme alerts will include a prominent icon to help draw attention to it.

Alerts can also be set to optionally include the last date and time they were updated. This can be useful for ongoing situations where it's important that your visitors understand the last time a status update was provided.

Published alerts will immediately appear on your site for visitors and will remain there until you've unpublished them. If you have a planned outage or message, you can use the scheduling options in the sidebar of the content entry form to schedule when the alert should be automatically published or unpublished.

More options

Remove or Unpublish an Alert 

1. From the Admin toolbar, click Manage » Content  

2. From the search/filter toolbar select Alert from the Content type pulldown menu.

3. Click Filter 

4. Click Edit next to the Alert

5. Uncheck Publish to unpublish your alert or click Delete to permanently delete content and confirm.

6. Click Save

Additionally, you can use use the following features to create prominent or less prominent alerts:

• Billboards 
• Feature Block
• Utility and Footer Menus