The Activate tab consists of two main features, the Widget Design, and the Widget Management tab.
The Widget Design tab allows you to access the markup for your widgets and to make edits to the content and its style.
From the Widget Management tab you will create an instance of that widget style, select your sorting preferences, photo source, and advanced settings, and grab the widget code.
Widget Management
The Widget Management tab is where you generate a widget code that you will implement on your site. In this tab, you will choose the widget style, the source for your media, the sorting option you prefer, and set any of the advanced options such as development mode.
Here's the process in a nutshell:
Configure the look (choose your widget style). The Widget style must have been created in the Widget Design tab before it is available as an option on the Widget Management page.
Select your uploader style.
Configure the source of the content the widget instance will display. A more detailed look at each option can be found here.
Choose your sorting preference. This determines the order in which photos will display in the widget.
Select any advanced settings. See below for a thorough description of development mode.
Click save and then grab your code! The widget code will be generated at the bottom of the page!
Development Mode
The "Development mode" in the Advanced settings provides two main features:
It allows the widget to bypass the production environment's cache layer. This means any style & markup changes (excluding the widgets' settings as these will take about half an hour to take effect) made to the widget in the editor will take effect immediately. Development Mode should be used when making edits to widgets so any changes can be seen in real-time without delay.
Development Mode prevents the widget from rendering on your page unless you add a force-render parameter to the URL. The force-render parameter is ?olapicForceRender. Adding this to the URL will allow you to see a widget that is still in Development Mode. This is so you can test a widget live on your site without displaying the widget to your visitors. When you turn Development Mode off, the widget will render without this additional parameter.
When turning off the "Development mode", this change will take about 30 minutes to propagate.
Development on an Existing Widget
When developing on a live widget, you can use the ?olapicDevMode parameter to see your sandbox assets. Once content with the changes made, press the deploy button to push those changes to production. The sandbox assets will then replace those on production within 30 minutes.