UH CMS Basics. Cascade CMS Basics Class. UH CMS Basics Updated: June,2011! Page 1

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1 UH CMS Basics Cascade CMS Basics Class UH CMS Basics Updated: June,2011! Page 1

2 Introduction I. What is a CMS?! A CMS or Content Management System is a web based piece of software used to create web content, simply and easily without the need to know complicated programming languages like HTML and CSS. This allows non-technical authors to update websites. Content Management Systems also allow technical administrators to better manage web sites. II. Author side vs User side! There are two modes for using the Cascade CMS. There is the Author side which allows for web content to be edited and the User Side which is a presentation mode that does not allow for the web content to be edited. Requirements UH CMS offers full support for all major browsers, including Internet Explorer on Windows and Netscape/Mozilla/Firefox on Windows, Mac, Linux, and Solaris. Safari on Mac is supported for all features except the WYSIWYG editor. Getting Started During the UH CMS basics training course we will be using a Sandbox environment for training. This is an area that can be used for creating content and learning how to use the software. The publishing features are not enabled in this area but it will give you a very true look and feel to what working in the live production CMS will be like. During Training: Go to mars.matrix.uh.edu:8080 The port (:8080) is important Use trainer01, trainer02, etc for the username and the password: CMStraining! to log into the training enviroment After Training Go to Use your cougarnet credentials to login The Business owner for your college must request access permissions for their users to the IT Web Technologies group before users are given access to the site. IT s Web Technologies group will send the business administrator a Site Intake form to fill out At UH CMS Basics Updated: June,2011! Page 2

3 that point Web Technologies will also go cover the available templates for a site and any further customizations needed. Once approved Web Technologies sets up the top level folder for your site in the CMS CMS Home Screen Cascade Menu- Main menu has options for Search, Publishing tools and User preferences Home Home returns the contributor to their Dashboard view. From this view, the contributor can view their Starting Page, any associated Content Wizards, any Active Workflows, a current list of Messages, a list of locked assets, and their recent history. New New opens a contextual menu that allows users to administer and edit files, such as adding Internal Links, External Links, Standard Content Pages, etc. This menu will change based on the Contributor s current permissions. History History is a detailed list of the latest assets a user has accessed. This can be used as a shortcut to get back to often used assets. Tools Tools will give the Contributor the ability to search for existing assets (using a basic or advanced search). The Contributor will also be able to adjust their current User Preferences. Help Help allows the user to access the online Cascade Server User s Guide as well as a User Forum. Files and Folders UH CMS Basics Updated: June,2011! Page 3

4 Cascade CMS uses files and folders to organize web content. The files and folders have special parent-child relationships. These operate just like files and folders on your PC. To access these files and folders click the arrow in the upper far left corner of the home screen. Asset Types Before attempting to create assets within the system, the contributor must understand what types of assets are available and how the assets interact with one another. File (Default - File - Images,PDFs, Docs, Excel, etc) Files are generally linked as external files associated with other content. These are usually used as supporting materials or main content that cannot be contained within a Standard Content Page format. Folder Folders are used to contain assets within the directory structure. They are the building blocks that let the contributor define the relationships within the hierarchy. All assets within the site must be contained in a folder at some level. Folders can be nested in order to deepen the site structure and thus keep the navigation usable for end users. Folder with Standard Content Page This asset creates a folder at the specified level and generates a Standard Content page within that folder. The default naming of the Standard Content page is index. This page type is used to create the majority of pages found within the site with the exception of News Articles. UH CMS Basics Updated: June,2011! Page 4

5 News and Events Article This asset creates a News and Events Article and will automatically be placed within a pre-defined folder (your site s news section, if your site has one). Each page, when created will also receive an automatically incrementing filename that can be overridden from the system tab. Articles located in the predefined directory will be indexed and used on other pages within the site such as the main News and Events Listing page. Redirect Physical Page This asset creates a Redirect Physical page at the specified level. These pages are not visible as a preview through the CMS. These pages can be created throughout the site and will be indexed as though they were a Standard Content page. When pushed to the live server, these pages will create a physical file on the live server that will utilize PHP scripting in order to initiate a server side redirect. This will send the end user to the editor designated URL. Creating a Standard Content Page How to do it: (any option of these three) 1. The New menu 2. Content Wizards 3. Copying an existing file To create a page first choose one of the methods above and choose Folder with Standard Content Page. This will create a folder with a basic page inside the folder (index). There is only one page per folder and its always called index. UH CMS Basics Updated: June,2011! Page 5

6 The folder itself is used for navigation purposes. For example if you name your folder Science the URL to get to the index web page inside that folder would be: or Depending on how your site is setup in the CMS This is called a system name. The system name refers directly to the URL for the page. System Names should not contain spaces or special characters(except for dashes) and be all lower case After creating a Title and System Name, you can check to Include when publishing and Include when Indexing (whether you want the page to show up as a link on the left hand side of the page(menu)) Click submit UH CMS Basics Updated: June,2011! Page 6

7 Editing Standard Content Pages Click on your index page to start editing and creating web content. Click on Edit UH CMS Basics Updated: June,2011! Page 7

8 Fill in Display Name (This shows up on your page a like a heading) Fill in Title (This is meta data for the browser and Google to use when indexing your pages) Also Keywords and Description Web Content Editor This is an area for Rich text editing or HTML based editing. Formatting Controls UH CMS Basics Updated: June,2011! Page 8

9 Special Characters Strike Through Find and Replace Super and Sub Script Bold,Italics,U nderline Alignment Controls Paste in plain text Spell Check Unordered lists Indent Undo Redo Link/Unlink anchor link Insert Image/media Horizontal Rule Remove Formatting Insert a Table Edit HTML Source Code Cleanup Messy code Toggle Guidelines/ Invisible Elements Toggle Fullscreen CSS Styles Text Formatting Editing Web Content in HTML In order to edit web content in HTML click the Edit HTML Source Code Button You can also copy and paste into the HTML editor as a quick way to move your existing site. When finished editing web content don t forget to click submit UH CMS Basics Updated: June,2011! Page 9

10 Additional Content Areas additional content areas allow users to create more content that is appended at the end of the Standard content areas. Users can create Rich text content or append another webpage internally from the CMS. Easy Editing Shortcut From the Folder list on the left, each folder and file has a small arrow pointing down that will open up shortcuts for editing. The option available are : View, Edit,Move/Rename Copy, Delete, Reference,Versions Inserting Links To Create links do the following: 1. Type the text you would like the user to click on in your link. 2. Select the text 3. Click on the Insert/Edit link button UH CMS Basics Updated: June,2011! Page 10

11 Internal vs External Links Internal links are links to objects and pages in the CMS. External links are URL s to external sources outside the CMS UH CMS Basics Updated: June,2011! Page 11

12 Choose a file from list of folders and files on the left and click Confirm Links UH CMS Basics Updated: June,2011! Page 12

13 In order to create links, simply create an external link. Instead of typing in a URL in the link field, type: mailto:your address@uh.edu Working with Images Uploading images 1. Click on New - File (this same process is used for uploading images as well and documents like PDF, Docs, Power Point, Excel files.. 2. Click on Choose File and select a file off your computer Uploading Multiple Images 1. Create a Zip file from the images that you want to upload. UH CMS Basics Updated: June,2011! Page 13

14 2. In the CMS, select the folder you would like to upload the images to. 3. From the Tools menu choose - Zip Archive UH CMS Basics Updated: June,2011! Page 14

15 4. Click on Choose File and select the Zip file you created. 5. Check the path to make sure that the images are being saved to the correct location you specified earlier. 6. Click Submit. 7. Now your newly loaded images will appear in the folder to the left. Inserting Images into your Web Content 8. Select the page where you would like to insert the images. 9. Place your cursor where the image(s) will be used in the editor and click the insert image icon in the tool bar. UH CMS Basics Updated: June,2011! Page 15

16 10. Choose the Internal tab and click the Browse icon and select the image to use from the pop up window that appears. Click on Insert, then click on confirm. UH CMS Basics Updated: June,2011! Page 16

17 11. Your Image should appear in the Editor with your content UH CMS Basics Updated: June,2011! Page 17

18 Banner and Column Images Banner or Column images go in the top of your page. To insert an banner image: 1. Select the page you want to create a banner image for. 2. Select the edit tab and scroll down to the Page Banner section. 3. (See instructions for Inserting images from previous section) Related Links Related links are banks of links on the left or right of the page. These links are customizable and can be added in sets. Related links should be information relating to content, not actually content itself. For example, if you have a link to a PDF or PowerPoint document in your content, a good related link would be a link to download Acrobat reader software that the customer can use to read that PDF. Related links should NOT contain Navigation links UH CMS Basics Updated: June,2011! Page 18

19 Creating Related Links 1. Click the Edit tab on the page you would like to place the related links section in. 2. Scroll down to the related links section 3. Click the Plus Sign to the left of Related Links Header to add an additional section of links. 4. Click on the drop down menu to choose if you want the related links section to appear on the left, or the right hand side of the page. Layout Preferences CSS Override- For attaching an additional CSS sheet. Javascript Reference- For attaching an additional.js file to add Javascript on your page Column Display- Standard or Wide. Wide gives you more room for content. Standard gives room for a column image on the right hand side. UH CMS Basics Updated: June,2011! Page 19

20 Creating News and Events Articles Here is how to create a News and Events Article News and events articles are ALWAYS created within the Your Site /news/stories folder. This means that the folder location where you begin creating News and Events Articles does not matter. 1.Select New/UH(CMS Sandbox)/News and Events Article from the main tool bar. This will take you to a new page waiting for creation. UH CMS Basics Updated: June,2011! Page 20

21 4. Enter other information as required (Sub Header, Dateline, Location, and Article Copy). 5. Add in optional article image(s) (size 362px x 263px) UH CMS Basics Updated: June,2011! Page 21

22 6. Add Contact information if applicable. 7. Select the + sign if there is more than one contact. (Click the system tab and adjust the System Name if you would like a specialty file name to be used for the article. By default the article file name will simply be article# where the # sign is incremented based on existing articles. ) Adjusting the file name is highly recommended as it makes finding an existing article in the system much easier. 7. Click Submit at the bottom of the editing window. Creating a Redirect Physical Page This creates a physical Redirect page. These pages are not visible as a preview through the CMS. This page will redirect the end user to the editor designated URL. 1.Select New/UH(CMS Sandbox)/Redirect-Physical Page from the main tool bar. UH CMS Basics Updated: June,2011! Page 22

23 2. Edit the Display Name. 3. Edit the title. 4. Select the browse button to create an internal link to an object in the CMS or fill in a URL in the blank labeled External link UH CMS Basics Updated: June,2011! Page 23

24 Publishing Publishing happens in stages. You need to click the submit button at the bottom of each page to lock in changes you made to your pages on the edit tab. Once you want to publish your pages to the website, click on the Publish tab. You can preview your content in a browser at if your site is the main uh.edu site. Other sites, including college websites, ask your site administrator for the preview URL This is an internal link only and you have to be on campus or using VPN to view this site DO NOT SHARE THIS URL WITH THE PUBLIC- This is our last chance to fix any errors or make corrections before the content is made available to the public Steps for Publishing (may vary slightly depending on the site) 1. In the CMS, browse to the folder or page you want to publish. 2. Click on the publish tab 3. Uncheck the checkboxes for all publishing targets 4. Check the checkboxes for the staging publishing target 5. Click Submit 6. After the content has published, review it for errors on the staging server (Correct any errors. Go to step 2 if errors were found). 7. Click on the publish tab 8. Check the checkboxes for both the staging and production publishing targets 9. Click Submit UH CMS Basics Updated: June,2011! Page 24

25 10. After the content has published, review it for problems on the production server Once you click publish, your pages go into a queue. The times it takes to publish new content solely depends on how many other pages are in the queue. You can check the progress of the publishing queue by doing the following: 1. In the menu bar, click cascade logo > Publisher > Active Jobs This will list the active jobs that are publishing UH CMS Basics Updated: June,2011! Page 25