Overview

Many aspects of your portal can be customized, including the URL, color scheme, logo, portal pictures, terminology, and more.

To have your own full portal first, you have to go to Admin/App Center and install "Full portal". Then click on Configure to start setting up your options.

General

Click Admin/Portal in order to start setting up your options. In this section, you can set up your URL, color scheme, logo, and language.

URL

This section displays the current URL of your portal. To visit your portal, click on the URL. To change the URL for your portal, click 'Edit your MATRIX URL' in the URL section, and select a new URL. An URL can only be a mix of letters and digits.

Using your own URL

You can set up a foreign domain so that your site can be accessed via a URL that you own. For example, you can allow your site to be accessed via http://www.mycompany.com instead of https://mycompany.matrixlms.com. This is preferable for many companies.

We offer the option to host SSL certificates for your custom sites to support SSL on all pages for free.

To set up the SSL Certificate for your custom domain, open a ticket with our Support team via the Support Forum from your platform. Our Support team will assist with the required steps to set up the SSL Certificate for your portal. Because of security concerns, we do not upload a certificate purchased via other means.

Note that the login and payments are always performed over a secure HTTPS connection, even if your custom domain does not support HTTPS by default.

There are two steps for setting up a foreign domain: (1) changing the DNS settings associated with the URL that you own and (2) entering those values into your portal area.

Step 1

Let's say that you own http://www.adpacademy.com and want to map it to your MATRIX URL http://adp.matrixlms.com.

Here's a screenshot of the DNS settings for "adpacademy.com" at GoDaddy. The last line in the CNAME area was added to perform the mapping.

Once you have updated the DNS settings, it can take an hour or so for the changes to take effect across the Internet. In this example, if you typed "http://www.adpacademy.com" into your browser and it displayed your portal, it means that the changes have become active and you're ready for the next step.

If you want to, you can map a subdomain of your domain instead. For example, to map "edu.adpacademy.com" to "adp.matrixlms.com", use "edu" instead of "www" as the CNAME host.

Step 2

Now that the DNS system is mapping your foreign domain to your MATRIX site, you must enter the mapping into your portal area so that MATRIX generates URLs based on your foreign domain instead of your original domain. For example, when you create accounts, the email invitations will use the new foreign URL.

To set up the foreign domain mapping, click Admin/Portal, then click 'Use your own URL' in the 'URL' section. Then enter the name of your foreign domain without the 'http://' prefix. In this example, we'd enter 'www.adpacademy.com'. Then click Save.

Your new portal URL will be displayed when you click Admin/Portal. If you go to the new URL, you will have to log in again because your browser associates login credentials with a specific URL. At this point, your new foreign domain is live!

To change your foreign domain, click 'Edit your own URL'. To clear your foreign domain, click 'Disable your own URL'.

How to set up your naked domain

If you set up a foreign domain for your MATRIX portal, for example, you mapped http://www.adpacademy.com to your MATRIX URL http://adp.matrixlms.com, you might want to set up the naked domain so that visitors who don't add the "www" will still be directed to your MATRIX portal. To do this, you will have to redirect the naked domain to www via your Hosting Provider (if they offer this service, or you use a naked domain redirect service like http://wwwizer.com/naked-domain-redirect), such as http://adpacademy.com, to your MATRIX portal (http://www.adpacademy.com).

Themes

In this section, you can see the current color scheme of the site, and you can select or create a new one by clicking the "Select new theme" button.

When you click the button, you will be redirected to the Admin/Portal/ Themes area.

In the Standard area, you can select one from the regular themes and also an accessible theme. Many of the standard themes have colored and white-background tile variants, and one of them has the accessibility options set.

If you enable the "Allow users to select separate accessibility theme via their profile settings." option, users can select the accessibility themes in the Settings area of their profile.

You can also create a custom theme by clicking "Add custom theme".

When creating a custom theme, you can select the color values for each graphic element using either the color picker or by directly entering the hex values into the input boxes.

Here you can also choose between color and white tile backgrounds.

If you select "Color", then you can select four tile colors.

If you select "White",  then you have to option to choose grey or color headings and icons. 

In the Text section of the theme editor, you can customize the body and heading fonts. If the Google Fonts integration is enabled, you can install fonts via Admin/Portal/More and then use those fonts as your default font in the headings and body. To learn more about how to enable the integration, visit the Google Fonts article.

When creating a custom theme, you can enable one or both of the accessibility options and use the theme as your own accessible theme. Note that you should take care when creating an accessible theme since they should typically be high contrast and use saturated colors.

When you finished creating the theme, enter its name, then click Add. The theme also affects the look of your portal, so be sure to look at your portal after saving a theme to make sure that it also looks good.

You can add multiple custom themes. To use one of your custom themes, click its radio button under Regular or Accessible.

You can edit and delete your custom themes by clicking the appropriate icons.

To edit a standard theme, click on its name.

Then click Edit to change the colors.

When you click Save, it will be automatically saved as one of your custom themes.

Users have the option to change between the light and dark modes when they log into their accounts. To switch your display between the two modes, click the dropdown menu in the top right and then click "Toggle dark mode".

Logo

You can add a logo of your company that appears at the top of the left bar. To upload a logo, click Upload picture, select a picture from your computer, and click Save. Whatever picture you upload will automatically be resized to 150 pixels wide. We recommend that the image has a transparent background so that it blends in well with your portal background.

SSL

By default, our site uses SSL everywhere on the site. Even if you use your own URL, we use the SSL certificate of our own site during these operations so that you don't need to purchase your own. A side-effect of using our SSL certificate is that your original *.matrixlms.com URL can sometimes occasionally be displayed by IE in its tabs. In most cases, this is fine, but if you are reselling our site under your brand, you might want to prevent this from occurring.

To disable SSL for your site, uncheck the "Enable SSL" option in the "URL" section of the Portal configuration page. If SSL is disabled, all operations occur over plain HTTP, and your browser will never be redirected temporarily through your original *.matrixlms.com URL.

SSL on custom URLs

If you are using separate custom domains for your sub-organizations, you can request the SSL option from us. We can host SSL certificates for your custom sites to support SSL on all pages for free. 

To set up the SSL Certificate for your custom domain, kindly get in touch with sales at sales@cypherlearning.com. 

Visitor view

In this section, you can configure how your portal will look for the site visitors, with options for portal type, title, logo, pages, pictures, and more.

Portal visual editor

The portal editor provides a point-and-click interface for adding, moving, deleting, hiding panels and their settings. Please note that the changes that you make are live and made immediately. There is no concept of making multiple edits and then clicking Save to apply them. To access the visual editor, click Edit under "Portal visual editor".

To see a live view of the portal at any time, click "Live view" to open your live portal in a new browser.

To get back to the Admin/Portal area, click Admin.

Portal header

To configure the portal header and add a title and/or a logo that will show up on your portal, click on Header from the left bar.

Here you can select between a white and a transparent background for the header. Please note that the transparent background for the header only appears on the home page when the page is not scrolled.

To add a portal title, enter the text into the "Logo text" field. Please note that if you leave this field blank, then it will be removed from the header.

To add your log to the portal header, click "Add picture" under Logo, then upload your logo.

You can change the uploaded logo by clicking the "Change picture" button. To remove the logo, click Clear.

If you select the transparent background for the header, you can add separate images with a transparent background and a white background.

The logo with the transparent background will be displayed with the transparent header when the home page isn't scrolled.

The logo with the white background will be displayed with the white header when you scroll the home page and visit secondary pages.

In the "Login button area", you can adjust and customize the "Log in" button by changing its shape and color. By default, the button is rounded and uses your top bar color.

After configuring the header, click on Back to go to the main page of the editor.

Portal panels

In the left bar of the main editor page, you can see all your created portal panels. The panels that are not visible in the live view are indicated with.

To change the settings of a panel, hover over it in the left bar of the editor and click the icon.

Here you can rename, duplicate, show/hide, and delete the panel. Please note that you can't duplicate the Carousel panel.

To reorder the panels, click and hold the icon, then move the panels using drag-and-drop.

To edit an existing panel, click on it or click its tab in the left bar.

To add a new panel, click on "Add panel".

A pop-up will open with the available options.

Carousel panel

Portals can have a carousel with slides that have custom pictures, custom text, and action buttons. Please note that you can't add multiple carousel panels. To edit the existing carousel panel, click on it or click its tab in the left bar.

Here you can change the carousel speed and enable accessibility.

To hide or delete a slide, hover over its tab and click the icon.

To reorder the slides, click and hold the icon, then move the slides using drag-and-drop.

To edit a slide, click on its tab.

Here you can change the slide content by editing the heading and the description text, changing the text color and the image. You can also edit the call to action button text and the page to which the button links. The carousel picture should be at least 1550px wide and 773 px high.

When you’re done editing the slide, click Back.

To add a new slide, click "Add slide".

You have the option of adding a picture slide or create a custom HTML page.

You can completely replace the visitor portal carousel with your own custom HTML by using the Custom HTML option. Add your content, then click Save.

Counters

You have the option to add a graphical background with up to 3 counters. Click Add panel in the left bar, then select Counters.

To configure the counters, click on their tabs.

Enter the number, and the description for the counter, then click Back.

The changes will be displayed instantly.

To hide a counter, click on its icon and select Hide.

To change the background image of the counters, click on "Change picture". In this case, you can use an image of 1030px X 514px. If you need a very clear image on big screens, you can use 1440px X 1920px images for better quality.

Custom panel

You have the option of creating a custom HTML panel. Click "Add panel" in the left bar, then select Custom.

To add the content of the panel, click on its tab in the left bar.

Enter the content, then click Save.

Image blocks

You can add portal panels with image blocks. Click "Add panel" in the left bar, then select "Image blocks".

To configure the image blocks, click on their tabs in the left bar.

Give a title to each block, enter the content, and change the default pictures of the blocks. You can configure each button by entering its text and selecting the destination page where it will take the users when they click the button. Here the recommended images size is 500px X 375px with the content focus on the middle. When you're finished configuring the block, click on Back.

You can also define to show or hide CTA buttons, and you can choose their shape, style, and color. The changes you made are visualized instantly.

Simple text and button

You can add panels that contain simple text and an optional button. Click "Add panel" in the left bar, then select "Simple text and button".

Enter the text of the panel and select the background color. You can configure the button by adding its text, selecting the portal page where the button will take your users, and choosing the shape, style, and color of the button. The changes you made are visible instantly.

Clickable text blocks

You can add panels that contain up to 6 blocks of text. Click "Add panel" in the left bar, then select "Clickable text blocks".

To hide blocks, hover over their tab and click the icon, then select Hide.

To edit text blocks, click on their tabs in the left bar.

Enter the heading, and description text, then set a link to a portal page for each box. When users click the box, they will be taken to the selected page.

Split text and image

You can add panels that contain an image, text, and an optional call-to-action button. Click "Add panel" in the left bar, then select "Split text and image".

Enter the text for the panel and add an image. On this panel type, the recommended image size is 600 x 300 px.

In the Appearance section, you can change the background and text color, and you can reposition the text and the image.

In the "Call to action" section, you can disable/enable and customize the call-to-action button.

Text and buttons

You can add panels that contain a background image, a title, some text, and 2 buttons. Click "Add panel" in the left bar, then select "Text and buttons".

Enter the text for the panel and change the background image. Here you can use an image of 1030px X 514px. If you need a very clear image on big screens, you can use 1440px X 1920px images for better quality.

To hide the CTA buttons, hover over their tab, click the icon and select Hide.

Here you can also configure the buttons' shape, style, and color.

Click on the button's tab in the left bar to add its text and select the page where it will redirect the users who click the button.

Simple portal editor

If you are using a simple portal (background + login box), then click Edit to make changes to it.

Here you can change the logo image and logo text on the Login box.

You can also change the color and the pattern of the background.

When you are finished configuring the simple portal, click on Admin.

Please note that later in Q2, we'll make it easy to upload your own background as well (you can already do this using custom CSS).

Portal pages

Portals have default pages such as Calendar, Catalog, News, Contact, which can be enabled. Only pages that are enabled show up in the carousel. Each page can be separately edited and enabled.

To edit a page, click its icon.

Edit the content and click Save.

You can also create your own custom pages, which can be HTML pages or links to an external reference.

You can set SEO metadata for custom portal pages by clicking the icon in the SEO column of the page.

Then enter the description and keywords and click Save.

You can also set SEO metadata for news postings by clicking the News portal page.

Click on the news item, then click on the "+".

Blog

You can have a public blog on your visitor portal. To enable the Blog, visit Admin/Portal/Visitor view and click the checkbox.

To write a blog post, click on Blog under Portal pages, then click on Post.

Enter the content of the blog and choose if you want to allow comments, then click Save.

Visitors can visualize the blog by clicking on Blog from the Portal menu.

When a visitor leaves a comment, you will get a notification.

If you want the comment to be visible on the Portal, you have to accept it.

Portal menu

Here you can choose which pages to use in your portal menu.

To edit an item, click its icon. Enter the title of the page, then choose the page from the list, and click Save.

To add a new menu item, click Add. Enter the title for the menu item, then select the page from the list, and click Save.

To add a submenu item, click on the arrow of the item that you want as a submenu.

For example, if you want to add Calendar as a submenu to Catalog, click on its arrow, and it will be indented.

You can replace the visitor portal menu bar with your own custom HTML. To do this, click the Custom HTML option,

then enter the HTML that you want to replace the Portal Menu with.

The custom HTML will be displayed in the visitor portal, wrapped as follows:

<div class="custom-header">

  <!-- Your custom HTML goes here ->

</div>

Remember that since the HTML will replace your visitor portal menu, you won't be able to log in unless your custom menu system includes a login option. If you mess things up, you can go back to the regular menu by adding ?disable_custom_menu=true to the visitor URL. This would allow you to log back into the Admin console and then disable the custom portal.

Portal panels

Portal panels allow a visitor portal to be composed of a stack of panels. Currently, we have support for 7 types of panels:

Carousel

A customizable picture carousel.

Counters

A graphical background with up to 3 counters.

Custom

Custom HTML.

Image blocks

Up to four images, each with a title, text, and a button.

Simple text and button

A colored background with some text and an optional button.

Clickable text blocks

Up to six clickable blocks of text.

Text and buttons

A graphical background with a title, some text, and up to 2 buttons.

To configure the portal using panels, click on Edit under "Portal visual editor".

You can also click Add under Portal panels, then select the panel you want to add.

The selected panel will be added to the portal, and you will be redirected to the visual portal editor to finish configuring the panel. To see more details on how to configure portal panels, please visit the "Portal visual editor" section above.

Footers

In the footer section of the portal, you have the option of adding portal pages or create a custom HTML footer.

To edit a footer item, click its icon.

Edit the title for the footer item, then select the page from the list, and click Save. To add a new footer item, click Add.

Enter the title for the footer item, then select the page from the list, and click Save.

To add a sub-footer item, click on the arrow of the item that you want to appear as a sub-footer.

For example, if you want News to appear as a sub-footer to Information, click on its arrow, and it will be indented.

User view

In this section, you can configure how your portal will look for logged-in users, with options for avatar display, menu bar decoration, home left bar picture, home tabs, left bar, welcome pop up, and more.

Home left bar picture

You can add a menu bar picture that can be your logo or the user's organization logo.

Home left tabs

This area allows you to enable/disable and reorder the tabs in the Home menu. You can reorder the tabs by using drag and drop.

You can reset the tabs to the default order by clicking the appropriate button.

Home top tab

Here you can enable/disable the News and Agenda optional home top tabs.  

Home landing tab

In this area, you can select your landing tab by checking the appropriate box. By default, when a user goes to their home page, they are taken to a 'Dashboard' tab that shows them the best view for their account role. For example, a learner is taken to the Enrolled tab, which shows the courses they are enrolled in or some customizable instructions if they are not currently enrolled in any. We highly recommend that you do not override this default.

Left bar

To display a list of current courses and paths in the left bar in addition to the Course and Paths pop-ups, enable the "Display my courses" and "Display my paths" options. To display a list of current groups in the left bar in addition to the Groups pop-up, enable Display by groups. These options are disabled by default.

Please note that for users that teach more than 40 courses, we no longer display the courses they are teaching in the left column in order to keep their dashboard fast.

Simplified learner navigation

If you enable this option, then students will no longer see the drop-down upper-left navigation or the pop-out navigation to jump to a course or group. 

They will simply see a "home" icon in the upper-left when they are in a course or group, and clicking this option will take them back to their homepage.

Modern thins navigation

Here you can enable to use the modern thin navigation in the left bar.

The left bar will look like this.

Dark mode

Here you can enable/disable the dark mode option for the learning portal.

If enabled, users can toggle to dark mode from the dropdown in the upper-right corner of the screen.

Tiled view

You can set it to show the tiled view of modules by default.

Table of contents

Here you can configure when to show the mini navigation when viewing modules.

If you enable mini navigation, then the left bar of the course will take up less space, making room for the course content.

Learners will see the new table of contents with the modules and sections. Their overall course progress and the progress for each section are also indicated. To hide the table of contents, click the icon.

Learners can navigate the course content by using the "Previous" and "Continue" buttons at the top of the page or clicking the sections in the table of contents. Note that administrators can change the color of the navigation buttons via Admin/Portal/General/Customize color scheme.

The table of contents only shows the current module expanded by default, which makes the display clearer, especially in the case of course with a lot of modules. The new style also indicates indented sections.

You can expand/contract all the modules via the toggle at the top of the table of contents.

To expand/contract an individual module, hover over it and clicking the +/- icon.

Default video dimensions

You can change your default video dimensions site-wide via Admin/Portal/User view. Click Edit under Default video dimensions.

Then enter a specific percent of the available width (90%), px number, or ratio (X:Y) and click Save.

Note that anywhere videos are displayed, they will use those dimensions unless you've explicitly overridden them where it's used.

Wide screen support

You can allow your site to fill the browser window or limit the width of your site. This feature is enabled by default.

Content maximum width

The maximum width of the content is 1400px. You can change this by clicking on the dropdown.

Shortcuts

You can add custom shortcuts to the left menu bar that all members of your site will see. If added, they appear in the Shortcuts area right above the Courses area. This is useful if you want to add links to, say, your organization's primary portal or another important resource. You can also add links to areas within your portal.

To add a link, click Add. Then add the name, the URL, and whether a new window should open when the link is clicked. Then click Save.

To change the picture associated with a shortcut, click its icon, select a picture from your computer, then click Save.

To edit a shortcut, click its Edit icon. To delete shortcuts, select the ones you want to delete and then click Delete.

Footers

You can customize the footer area that is displayed at the bottom of each page when a user is logged in. To enable/disable a footer, click its "Enable?" checkbox. To edit a footer, click its edit icon. You cannot edit the default footer links.

Terminology

You can customize the terminology of your site by adding one or more substitutions. These substitutions are applied to all the built-in text which appears on tabs, buttons, headings, instructions, and tips. To add substitutions, click Add.

After that, enter the original text and its replacement, then click Save. You should only enter the lowercase singular version of the text; the capitalized and plural versions are handled automatically.

SEO

You can choose if you want your site to be indexed, set up a meta-description and keywords. You also have the option to upload a custom robots.txt that overrides the default robots.txt for your site, and you can upload a custom sitemap.xml that overrides the default sitemap for your site.

To enable Search engine indexing, check the Enable? box.

To add a meta description and/or keywords, click Edit. Enter the description and keywords, then click Save.

You can include the name of catalog items in their public URLs automatically. Visit Admin/Portal/SEO and enabled the "Named catalog URLs" option.

After enabling this option, then public catalog URLs will include the item's title.

Note that the title itself is ignored by the site, so if you change an item's title later, it won't break previous URLs.

Social media

You can set up which icons you want to show up on your portal in both the visitor and user view. Check the appropriate boxes for the icons that you want to have in the visitor and/or user view.

To edit a link, click its icon, enter the URL, and click Save.

Custom CSS

You can use custom CSS in order to give your site a more personalized look.

To add a CSS file, click Add, select the file from your computer and click Save.

To remove the CSS file, click Clear. To disable using CSS, click Disable.

CSS classes

If a page has the relative URL/controller/action, we automatically add the CSS classes ctr_<controller> and act_<action> into the <body> tag of the page. 

For example, if you look at the HTML source of /student_dashboard/completed, you will see the tags:

<body class='left-nav new-left-nav ctr_student_dashboard act_completed'> since the controller is "student_dashboard" and the action is "completed". 

If there is no action (for example, the URL might be /admin_dashboard), then the action is set to "index". This feature allows you to easily control the CSS down to the page level.

We also have CSS classes for the video resources container DIVs:

Custom HTML

To add custom HTML to your portal, visit the Admin/Portal/Custom HTML area and click Add. Please note that this area replaces the previous "Bottom HTML" and "Head HTML" options from Admin/Portal/More.

A pop-up will open where you can select the scope, which can be:

Then select the match option from:

Enter the custom HTML fragments, then click Save. In the example below, the various HTML fragments are inserted into all logged-in user pages whose URL starts with "/portal".

If you enable "Templating?", then you can use the variables @user_first_name, @user_last_name, @user_email, @user_full_name, @userid in the text.

You can add multiple custom HTML rules, and you can enable/disable them.

To delete an HTML rule, select it and click the Delete button.

Adding conversion tracking

This feature allows you to set up conversion tracking for your conversion pages and also set up conversion tracking using global site tags. If you want to learn more about setting up conversion tracking for your website with Google, click https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/6095821.

To set up conversion tracking using global site tags, select "All" from the Scope and Match dropdowns, then enter the code in the "Head top" section.

To set up tracking for a conversion page (for example, purchases), select "User" from the Scope dropdown and "URL" from the Match dropdown.

Enter the conversion page URL in the URL field, then add the tracking code in the "Head bottom" section.

More

This section allows you to configure options for session timeout, login widget, favicon, captcha, Google analytics, URL redirection,  suppress embed links, IP constraints.

Session timeout

This option is important for security reasons. You can add the time, and when that time expires, users are automatically logged out. Click Add, enter the time, then click Save.

You can also set for individual users a time after which they are automatically logged out. Go to the profile of a user and visit the Settings tab. There you will see an option for 'Log out automatically after the specified minutes of inactivity. 

Google Analytics

You can enable Google Analytics by entering your Google tracking code. Click Add, enter the code, then click Save.

Captcha

Here you can choose to enable Captch in order to prevent spam.

URL redirection

You can add redirections so that when someone visits a particular URL on our site, it is automatically directed to a different URL. An example of when this is useful is if you want to create your own version of our help content and map "/help" to a different site that contains your custom help. Please note that when redirecting users after they log out, the best option is to use "/log_out/logged_out".

To add a URL redirection, click Add, enter the original URL and the replacement URL, then click Save. The original URL is always relative to our site and should be of the form '/path/tail'. The replacement URL should be a full URL of the form 'http://domain/path/tail'. For example, if you want anyone who visits our help system to instead be taken to an external help area, you could map '/help' to 'http://mysite.com/path'.

To delete redirections, select them and click Delete. To edit redirections, select them and click Edit.

Log in widget

You can use our login widget to allow people to log in to your portal from a web page on another site. To do this, click "Get widget".

This displays instructions on how to download and customize the HTML widget.

Favicon

You can replace the icon that appears in the browser tab. This gives a more professional look to your site.

To upload a replacement favicon, click  Upload picture, select a replacement picture from your computer, and click Save. The picture should be either a .ico file or a 16x16 image with a transparent background.

Google Fonts

If the Google Fonts app is installed via the App Center, here you can edit or remove your installed Google Fonts.

Suppress embed links 

If enabled, this feature allows you to hide the links of embedded videos within the platform. 

IP Constraints

You can restrict learners' access to your platform by whitelisting and blacklisting IP addresses. To set up whitelisted/blacklisted IP addresses, go to Admin/Portal/More, then click Add under IP Constraints.

Enter the IP address, write a comment, and select if you want to whitelist or blacklist the address, then click Save. If you whitelist IP addresses, learners are limited to accessing the site from those addresses, and if you add blacklisted IP addresses, no users can access the site from those addresses.

The added IP addresses are listed under IP Constraints, and it is specified if they are whitelisted or blacklisted. You can edit the IP addresses by clicking their Edit icon. 

To delete an IP address from the list, select it, then click Delete.

Calendars

If you don't want to adjust repeating events during daylight saving time enable the "Don’t adjust repeating events +/- an hour during DST." option under Calendars.

Please note that by default, this option is enabled for new customers and NOT enabled for existing customers (for backward compatibility), and we automatically adjust repeating events based on DST. This means that if an event is 5 pm during normal times, it might appear as 4 pm during daylight savings time. If you check this option, a repeating event at 5 pm will always appear as 5 pm regardless of DST.