Overview COE Faculty Web Content Management System Getting Started Our faculty Content Management System (CMS) is based on Wordpress, using theme and functionality we have tailored to meet COE needs. Although Wordpress is easy to use, a little basic overview is helpful. Wordpress uses three basic content types: pages, posts, and media. Pages are for mostly static content, and are commonly linked from menus or lists. Posts are typically for dynamic content, like news articles or announcements. Media includes pictures, PDFs, and videos. Media can be brought into any Page or Post using the built-in CMS editor. The starting point for your faculty page is simplified: All you really need to do is: A. Login with your UCD LoginID (Kerberos) B. Setup Screen Options C. Edit your Contact Information and picture (Sidebar page) D. Edit (perhaps with copy/paste from other documents) the other pages: - Home, Biography, Publications, Teaching Interests, and Research Interests - See Appendix 1 for importing Publications from BibTeX or EndNote A. Log in 1. Your site URL is of the form http://faculty.engineering.ucdavis.edu/name. (There are a few exceptions to this for repeat names. Please ask.) Log in by adding login to your site URL, e.g. http://faculty.engineering.ucdavis.edu/name/login. You will be prompted for your credentials. Public viewers to your site will of course just use http://faculty.engineering.ucdavis.edu/name/ and cannot login. B. Setup Screen Options You ll need to set screen options for Pages and Posts in order to manage page revisions, and other attributes. Settings stick across all pages, so you ll need to do this just once. 1. While editing any page, select Screen Options (Fig 2, below). Fig 1
2. With Screen Options open, check all the boxes (Fig 3, below) except Custom Fields. You will need to do this again for Post content, using the same method (Screen Options while editing a Post). This just needs to be once it sticks for all future page or post editing. With Screen Options set, you can see, restore, or delete past revisions from the bottom of the editing screen. You ll also notice an AutoSave version among your notice in revisions. Note that Auto-saving is set to 3 minutes. In other words, if you have Edit open on any page for at least 3 minutes, you ll have a new Auto-saved version. Fig 2 C. Edit your Contact Information and picture (Sidebar page) 1. The horizontal gray bar in Fig 4 (below) is the Toolbar. Click on your site name ( Faculty Demo Site in Fig 4) to toggle between the public and CMS view of the site. Click on My Sites (left side of the Toolbar) and select Dashboard, and then Pages. Fig 3
a. Mouse over the Sidebar page label and select Edit. (dismiss any popups). b. Delete the plain avatar image and click Add Media to add your avatar image. c. Upload your image. It needs to be preformatted on your PC/Mac to 180pixels wide by 240tall, 72 dpi. Once you have a suitable avatar, upload it, then Click Update to save the Sidebar page. d. Now scroll below your picture and edit your name and contact information (Fig 5). You ll need to keep with the template formatting (what appear in the editor as separate bulleted lists) to maintain good spacing on the publically viewable site. Click Update to save! A few more general notes about the Editor see figure 4, below. Whether in the minimal or expanded (kitchen sink) editor, holding your mouse over any of the editing tool icons to see the tool function hint. Fig 4 If you should like to create a table in any of your pages, it is best done by just copy/pasting one in from Word or Excel. Note the Paste from Word tool icon (although it is not likely needed). D. Edit the other pages Although you can work through the Wordpress Dashboard, the easiest way to update all your initial site pages, is to view the site by clicking the site name from the toolbar as described in step C-1, above.
This displays the public view of the site, the CMS toolbar, and an Edit button below any page. So, you can select any menu item on your site, then click the Edit button at the bottom of that page. Again, remember to click Update to save your page edits! Get out of the editor by clicking on the site name from the toolbar. For your Publications page, if your starting set is in MS Word or plain text, it works well to simply copy/paste them in through the editor. If you manage your publications with EndNote, or BibTeX, please see Appendix 1. Note that Publications added to your site will be crawled by publication index and rating sites such as Google Scholar within about a month. This will substantially improve the ability for your publications to be found and cited by others, and will contribute to citation rankings such as H- index. (You may wish to create an Google Scholar account to track references to your publications, but this is completely optional.) Additional Tools: Wordpress Edit Options (right column): You can get Wordpress help on these by clicking on the Help tab under your login name at the top right corner. A few additional notes: Visibility: Private means only those with a login account to your site can view the page. Template: For the main menu pages, please do not change to a different template. This may be desirable for new pages you create. Parent: This affects only the page URL it puts the current page name after whatever page name you might specify as parent. It has nothing to do with Menu placement or hierarchy. o Order merely specifies the order your pages appear in the Dashboard list of pages. Page Attributes (below the Edit window): Note, your ability to see the Attributes is dependent on setting Screen Options in step B-2 above. Discussion: Recommend that you uncheck Comments and Pingbacks unless you want to allow and manage them from public viewers. Slug: forms the URL for this page. (comes from the page title) Post Revisions: This allows you to view/compare/delete previous versions of the page. Restore means to make that version the current version. You may also notice Auto-Saved versions. Any page opened in the editor for more than 3 minutes will have an Auto-Saved version created. Appendix 1. Publications from EndNote or BibTeX We use a plugin called TeachPress to import publications from BibTeX format. Indirectly, this also allows import from EndNote, since EndNote has the capability to create BibTeX files.
1. Creating a BibTeX export from EndNote, open your EndNote file. a. From the Edit pulldown, go to Output Styles, then Open Style Manager b. Scroll down the list of styles and check BibTex Export, as shown: c. From the EndNote File pulldown, select Export. Enter a Filename and select an Output Style of BibTeX Export, as shown: 2. Importing BibTeX into your CMS site. Select Publications from your Dashboard, and under that, Import/Export With Notepad or Wordpad, Open the exported file BibTeX format file created in step 1, and paste the entire contents into the text area, and click Import. (This is likely a large quantity paste and will look like the example below.)
3. Displaying publications from your Publications menu page. a. View your site, click on the Publications menu to open the Publications page, and then select Edit at the bottom. Alternatively, you can select your Publications page from the Dashboard/Pages. b. Delete all the random text from the Publications page and replace it with this (screenshot below): [tplist] Update the page. Then preview or exit the editor, and the Publications are listed in date order. Other listing options are available and being explored. Let us know what you d like.