Web Talk

Benefits for you and your department

• Short URLs (fit in an email without wrapping and breaking, easy to write or type if needed, works better in print)
• No ‘%20’ text in your URL (occurs in the browser when spaces are used)
• Easier for you to manage your site as you can quickly identify file names
• If you include spaces in file and folder names the link may not work for some people accessing your site

Use lower case letters and hyphens

• File names and folders are case sensitive. They should be in lowercase for easier readability and to ensure they work on all systems
• File names and folder names should have no spaces between words. Spaces between words and letter display as %20 in browsers. Instead, use ‘-‘ (hyphen). To make a hyphen press the minus key on your keyboard
• Do not use any special characters such as %, ! or ?

Date formatted file names

• For file names with dates, use the format YYYYMMDD.html, for example, 20170611 for 11 June 2017. This will list your files in chronological order and be easy to track and manage

Keep file and folder names short and simple

• Keep your names short, succinct and meaningful. The longer the filename, the longer the URL. Long URL’s are hard to read, type or write, and wrap and break when pasted into emails. They also look ugly and intimidating in print

1. Editing content on a page
2. Submitting and publishing content updates

Editing Content

1. Access the page that you wish to edit by selecting it from the left folder menu.

2. Select the page you wish to edit.

You should see a preview of what the page looks like.

3. Select the “Edit” tab.

You should now see the WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) or page content editor.

4. Add or edit existing text in the WYSIWYG editor.

5. Save a draft of your page if you plan to make more edits at a later time before publishing.

Submitting and Publishing Your Page

If you are satisfied with your edits, you are now ready to publish your page.

6. Add an annotation describing what changes you’ve made.

7. Click on the “Submit” button.Submitting your page will register your updates with the CMS tool. You’ll still need to “Publish” your page to push it to the live website.

8. Click on the “Publish” tab and then click the “Submit” button again.Your page will now publish to the live website.

9. Check your page on the live website to confirm that your edits are there.

There are various page templates for specific sections with a specific function. When creating new pages, the page template you select will depend on the section you are working on.

For example, if you are working with a Langara Department section (see: http://langara.ca/departments), there are a set of page templates specific to departments, that can be found under: New –> Default –> Department.

Template options can be found under the main menu: New

For Offshoots (Alumni, Library, International Education, etc.), there are another set of page templates that can be found under: New –> Offshoots.

And so on…

Below is a summary of all the page templates that are available. Be sure to select the appropriate template. The Default set of templates will likely work for most situations, but if you are not sure which template to use, please contact your Communications Officer.

1. Types of pages
2. Index pages
3. Secondary pages

Types of Pages

There are different types of page templates that serve different purposes.

They can be broadly grouped in 2 categorizes:

1. Index pages (or homepages)
2. Secondary pages

Index Pages

Index pages are often referred to as homepages. Every folder on a website should have an index or homepage.

For example, the index or homepage for Human Resources is: http://langara.ca/departments/human-resources-payroll/index.html.

Try clicking on the following links with and without the “index.html” portion:

With “index.html”
http://langara.ca/departments/human-resources-payroll/index.html

Without “index.html”
http://langara.ca/departments/human-resources-payroll

Notice that both links resolve to the same page? This is because web servers recognize “index.html” as the “human-resources-payroll” folder’s homepage.

When we visit the Langara.ca, http://langara.ca, we are actually viewing it’s homepage, http://langara.ca/index.html, but we don’t have to type the “index.html” portion explicitly because it is implied as the default page for the site.

Let’s go through the process of creating a new index page.

First, let’s create and name a new folder. For the purposes of this exercise, let’s create a new folder under “/departments/redundancy”.

1. Create a new folder: New –> Default –> Folder.

2. Enter the name of your folder in the “System Name” field.

3. Hit the “Submit” button. Your new folder should now appear in the left folder nav.

Now, let’s create an index page for this new folder.

4. With the folder selected: New –> Default –> Department –> Index Page.

The System Name field will be pre-populated with “index”. Do not change this. This is the name of your file that will be published to the website. Note that you do not need to add the “.html” extension — Cascade CMS will add the extension automatically.

5. Add a name for your page in the “Display Name” field. This is user-friendly heading that will appear at the top of your page. E.g. “About Us”.

6. Add content in the WYSIWYG editor. Some templates offer a sidebar option for right-hand column content. Add content in the sidebar as needed.

7. Add a note in the comments field describing what you’ve done. Adding notes will help you keep track of any changes you’ve made should you need to recall a previous version of your page.

8. Hit the “Submit” button to confirm your new page.

9. Click on the “Publish” tab, “Submit” again and “Publish”.

10. Open another browser tab and check your new page on the live site (e.g. langara.ca/departements/redundancy/about-us).

Secondary Pages

Secondary pages are similar to Index pages, except that they don’t have to be named index.html.

Let’s create a new secondary page that will allow visitors to find our contact information. We’ll call this page, “Contact Us”.

1. Click on the folder you wish to create a new page in or create a new folder.

2. Create a new page: New –> Default –> Department –> Page.

3. Enter the name of your page in the “System Name” field.

This is the name of your file that will be published to the website. E.g. contact-us.html. Note that you do not need to add the “.html” extension — Cascade CMS will add the extension automatically.

4. Add a name for your page in the “Display Name” field. This is user-friendly heading that will appear at the top of your page. E.g. About Us, Contact Us.

5. Add content in the WYSIWYG editor. Some templates offer a sidebar option for right-hand column content. Add content in the sidebar as needed.

6. Add a note in the comments field describing what you’ve done.

7. Hit the “Submit” button to confirm your new page.

8. Click on the “Publish” tab, “Submit” again and “Publish”.

9. Check your new page on the live site.

1. Quick tools in the Dashboard

The Dashboard offers quick access to a number of tools that help you manage your website content.

Website dashboard

There are 3 that you’ll likely use on a regular basis:

History

The “History” section allows quick access to files and assets that you have previously worked on.

Dashboard History tool

Drafts

The “Drafts” tool lists files and assets that you are currently working on and have saved as a draft.

Dashboard Drafts tool

Recycle Bin

The “Recycle Bin” lists files and assets that you have deleted. To retrieve a deleted file or asset, click on the green recycle icon .

Dashboard Recycle Bin

1. How to log in and out of Cascade CMS
2. Selecting a website

1. To log in, open a browser tab and go to: http://webcontent.langara.bc.ca

2. Enter your Langara network username (e.g. bsmith) and password.

Cascade CMS login window

3. At the top left, select the “langara.bc.ca” option from the website selector dropdown menu.

Website selector dropdown menu

4. You should now see the site Dashboard.

Website dashboard

5. To log out, click on the “Log Out” link at the top right.

Logging out of Cascade CMS

1. What is Cascade CMS and how does it work?
2. Submitting vs. publishing

What is Cascade CMS and How Does It Work?

Cascade CMS is the content management system used to manage Langara’s website (http://langara.ca).

The diagram below demonstrates how Cascade CMS works.

Cascade CMS Publishing Model

Cascade CMS: On the left half, CMS users log in and interact with the CMS software. Users can create and edit assets — whether they are web pages, files (images, PDFs) or folders.

WWW: On the right half, a network of load balanced servers host static HTML web pages that are viewable by our site visitors.
E.g. http://langara.ca/departments/human-resources

The load balanced network helps alleviate stress by distributing visitor traffic evenly across all 3 servers. The Langara.ca site is replicated on all 3 servers to ensure visitors are seeing the latest content.

The separation between the two ecosystems helps create a layer of security and robustness. Should the CMS software fail, Langara’s website will continue to operate. However, this model of publishing comes at a cost of speed and limited dynamic functionality.

Submitting vs. Publishing

Getting updates to the live website is a two-step process: Submitting and Publishing.

Submitting

On the Cascade CMS side, we log in and interact with the CMS tool to create or edit our web pages. Once we have completed creating or editing pages, we submit our changes to commit them to Cascade CMS.

Our changes are stored in the CMS database where we can then preview our changes on the a dynamic version of the site. I use the term “dynamic” because pages on the CMS side interact with the database and pull information to generate the content on the fly.

At this point however, our updates have not reached the live website on the World Wide Web. We still need to publish our updates.

Publishing

After submitting our updates to the CMS, we still need to publish them to the live website (http://langara.ca).

When the publish function is invoked, the CMS creates a static HTML file on the Load Balanced Servers and it should now be viewable to site visitors on the World Wide Web.

Note: You may need to refresh your browser to see any changes that are published.