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Getting Started with CommonSpot

Table of Contents



Table of Contents ..................................................................................................... 2

Introduction ............................................................................................................. 3

Login procedure ....................................................................................................... 4

Templates................................................................................................................ 6

Creating a New Page ................................................................................................ 8

Editing an Existing Page ..........................................................................................11

Approval Process .....................................................................................................12

Glossary .................................................................................................................13

Frequently Asked Questions .....................................................................................13









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Introduction

This document is developed to help you get started with the NLU Content Management System (CMS).

Parts of this document are copied from the CMS user guide, which is available for download in a PDF

format from the oit website. The user guide is a fairly large document describing all the features,

procedures, and complete functionality of the CMS.



A set of templates has been developed in cooperation with the Web Oversight Team. In the future more

templates can be developed in order to meet your needs. There is currently one base template, and

several sub templates that are derived from the base. All pages within the CMS are based on these

templates. Content can easily be inserted by copying and pasting it from word, or any other text editor.



In order to create and maintain pages within the CMS in-depth knowledge of HTML is not required, as the

CMS will let you format pages through an easy to use interface. You can even copy and paste text from a

word document while preserving the formatting. For the more advanced users the CMS will let you access

the HTML code if you want to be in full control of your content and layout.









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Login procedure

In order to login to the NLU Content Management System (CMS) you perform a number of steps as

outlined below. It is important to note that, once you are logged in, if there has been no activity for 30

minutes, you will automatically be logged off.



For each department an account has been established that provides you with access to the CMS. You will

not be able to edit pages outside of your identified content area. Additional content provider accounts

can be setup if required in the near future in order to facilitate access.



The login procedure:



1. Open a browser like Internet Explorer or Netscape

2. Type the following address into the address bar:

http://www3.nl.edu/login.cfm



A login screen will appear in which you type in the supplied username and password.









3. After login in the following three icons appear on the bottom of each page. This is the menu that

provides you access to the various functions. Note: this menu might not show up if you have

insufficient rights in the section of the website that you are currently at. They will show up once

you navigated to the subsite within your assigned content area that needs editing.









Knowledge Maps Menu View Mode Menu Page & Template Menu



4. Locate the page that needs editing by navigating to it through either the links on the web page

or through your bookmarked favorites.







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5. From the View Mode menu icon pick “Author”.





Author









That switches the page you are currently viewing from read mode to author mode. Once in

author mode you can click on the various elements on the page in order to edit them.



Remember, sometimes you might not be able switch from read mode to edit mode. That means

that you do not have sufficient permissions to edit the page. You can only edit ages in the

subsite you have rights to. For example: the content person from the Provost Office can not

change or edit pages within the CAS subsite, but only pages that are within the Provost subsite

and vice versa.



There are also sections on the page that you can not change or edit. Since the page is derived

from a template the design of the page is.









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Templates

All Web pages created in CommonSpot are based on templates, so the first step in creating a page is

choosing a suitable template.



Clicking on Create New Page activates the Template Gallery, a wizard containing descriptions and

thumbnail illustrations of the standard CommonSpot templates plus a categorized listing of other

specifically created templates. Within our CMS two templates galleries are available for use: „NLU Simple

Layout Templates‟ and „NLU Standard Layout Templates‟.



You can only customize the content area within the NLU Base template. This policy is enforced in order to

give the NLU web-site a common look and feel and to stay in compliance with policies and procedures

developed by the Web Oversight Team. Suggestions, comments and concerns regarding base templates

and contents should be brought to the attention of your department or college‟s Web Oversight Team

representative or content provider.



The Web Oversight Team made the necessary decision to launch the NLU web site with one base

template in order to quicken the process that is involved with migrating the current static NLU web site

content to the new CMS system. Custom base templates for your subsite can be developed in

cooperation with the Web Oversight Team, Matt Cira and Gideon Sanstra. The development of new

templates involves many steps such as a storyboarding process, Graphical User Interface (GUI) design,

revisions and review, HTML, JavaScript, and Cold Fusion development. As this can become a time

consuming process, we have scheduled this to occur in a later phase of the CMS rollout project.



The NLU base template looks like:









Menu Area

Content Area









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The menu area within the template is a page index element and displays pages within a subsite based on

filtering parameters. The layout of the element is defined and can not be changed. The filtering

parameters can be customized.



As previously mentioned only the content area of a template can be customized. You have full control of

this area and can be designed by hand or setup with a predefined template layout from the template

gallery.



If you would like to design the layout off the content area by hand you would pick one of the „NLU Simple

Layout Templates‟ layouts otherwise you can use the predefined layouts from the „NLU Standard Layout

Templates‟.



The „NLU Standard Layout Templates‟ gallery currently has the following pre-designed content layout

areas available:









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Creating a New Page

A page‟s structure relies on the underlying template to drive the layout characteristics of the page. To create a page,

select “Create New Page” from the Page & Template Management menu icon .







Create New Page









Create New Page menu option is accessible in both Read and Author mode (shown above in Read mode.)

Upon selecting the Create New Page menu option, a dialog containing a list of subsites is displayed. Only those sites

or subsites in which you have site-level Page Creation permissions will be displayed. If you do not have Page

Creation rights within the subsite you wish to create a new page, contact your Site Administrator to have the

appropriate permissions assigned.



Once you decide upon the respective subsite for your new page, click „Next‟, to proceed to the subsequent dialog in

the Page Creation wizard. Of course, you can always click „Cancel‟, to abort from creating a new page.



The next dialog in the page creation chain is the Template Gallery dialog. This dialog, pictured above, contains

descriptions and thumbnail illustrations of the standard CommonSpot templates plus a categorized listing of other

custom templates. The list of available templates may be different based upon your security permissions.



After choosing the appropriate template, the next dialog is the Create New Page dialog. This dialog prompts to

complete a number of standard meta-data fields for the page. The screen shot below shows the Create New Page

dialog.









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Category:

The first field to enter reflects the

Category of the page created. Select

from the existing categories listed.



Audiences:

If targeted audiences have been defined

in the CommonSpot Administrator, an

Audience selection box will be displayed

allowing the page creator to choose the

appropriate audience. Typically, „all

users‟ will be selected within the

Audience drop down list box, however, if

you wish to target a specific audience,

then the appropriate audience should be

selected at this time. You can skip this

selection as it will be preformed in the

next dialog.



Name:

The Name provided will be used to

generate the page‟s URL. Each page

within CommonSpot has a separate

distinct and addressable URL, allowing

for easy book marking and direct user

navigation. Spaces and other

punctuations will be converted to

underscores when generating the full

URL name. Pages within CommonSpot

have a .cfm extension.



Title:

The page title as it shows up in the title

bar of your web browser



Description:

The description of the page, try to limit it

to about 1 paragraph. Having a short

description will greatly enhance search

engine performance. Every page should

have a description that applies to the

page.



Keywords:

At this point, Keywords can be identified

to help future users leverage information

found in this page and to enhance search

results. CommonSpot automatically

generates meta-tags for the Keywords

and Descriptions, which are utilized by

both CommonSpot‟s internal search

engine as well as Internet search





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engines. It is advisable that you use the predefined keywords by clicking the „select keywords‟ button on

the form. This will prevent the generation of several variations of the same keyword(s) that might prove

confusion.



Publication Date:

Selecting a Publication Date allows authors to schedule the release of a page at a future date and time.



Indexing:

Additionally, you have the ability to designate whether the page should appear in the various index

mechanisms or not. If pages are excluded from all indexed the page will not show up in the page gallery,

page index element or in the CommonSpot‟s search engine.



Confidentiality:

The Confidentiality section displays a drop down list of user definable options indicating the confidentiality

of the page. This information is typically more useful for corporate intranet sites, as apposed to Internet

sites. This section might be used at NLU in the near future.



Expiration:

The Expiration allows you to indicate whether the content does not expire, or expires on a specific date.



Freshness Reminder:

The Freshness Reminders allows you to indicate when you want to be reminded about the content.





Custom Page Information

Once you press „Next‟ the Custom Page Information

dialog prompts you to enter additional information.

If the page needs to be included in the side menu

check mark the „Include Page in Side Navigation‟

checkbox. You can also select the audience for the

new page.

To view the newly created page, click on the Finish

button. The „submit‟ button, „Prev‟, returns the user

to the standard meta data form, while the „Cancel‟

button, exits the dialog box without saving.



The newly created page defaults to inactive. Once

content has been added, and submitted for review if

necessary, the page becomes active and is

published to the live web-site.









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Editing an Existing Page

Follow the login procedure as described in chapter: „Login procedure‟. Once you have completed all five

steps your page should look something like:









Bread Crumb Element









Index Element





Content Area (Text Element)









You can click anywhere on the text, in the context area in order to edit it. In the example above that

would be “Welcome to the web …..” Just follow the prompts once you have clicked it.



The group of four icons right above the text in the content area provides access to the

properties of the item. You‟ll notice that multiple items have icons, in the example above the

index element, the content area, and the bread crumb link bar. Since a page is built with

several items you can access each of these items‟ properties. Just click on the symbol and explore the

options. We will go over the options in more detail during the hands on training.









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Approval Process

The CMS at NLU is setup to include a content approval process. As more and more contributors within a

department are assigned to maintain content it becomes harder to make sure the content meets the

standards of the department, thus a content approval process. When contributors submit their new

content for a particular page and approval request is e-mailed to the site primary content provider for the

department. This person then goes to the page to review the changes and approve, reject, or discard it.



The approval process is unique for each department and will be setup on a per department basis.









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Frequently Asked Questions

When using digital photos of individuals do I need to obtain a waiver releases?



The person supplying the images will usually be the individual responsible for obtaining the

waivers. The CMS also has an image repository and as images are collected and licensed by NLU

they will be placed here for everyone to share.



If faculty members would like an individual web page, do you have a standard format for

these pages?



The Web Oversight Team established standards for a disclaimer and specific information and

links on personal web pages hosted on NLU web servers, but faculty web pages will not be in the

CMS. A separate server has been established for this type of site and it will be up to each faculty

member to requests the account and maintain the site within the NLU Acceptable Use

Policy. Individual design is left up to the discretion of the faculty member.



Do you have a standard format for departmental websites?



Structure and navigation will be left up to the discretion of the Content Providers. Common

elements like „Meet the Faculty‟ sites will be generally managed and consolidated by the project

team responsible for that content area.





What topic areas should each department prepare for input into the content manager

software?



Things to consider when developing your sub site:



1. What are the mission & goals of the site?

2. Audience: Who is your audience? Is it current or prospective students, staff, faculty, alumni,

etc.

3. Functionality: Describe the key functionality desired. What do you want it to do? What

features would you like to have available to your audience (now and in the future)? Prioritize

each item.

4. Navigation of site: Links should be simple and easily understood by all audiences. A

flowchart or organizational chart is sometimes helpful. The individual site should be broken

down into six or seven sub-sites maximum. Prioritize each item.

5. Content: Create all content to be included on the site. You could type up the text in MS-Word

or equivalent to ensure it has been spell checked. Each item should be in a separate MS-

Word document. Look at existing department sites for and adhere to the naming convention

used.

6. Identify any graphical elements: Coordinate design and implementation of corresponding

graphics with Matt Cira.



Examples of topics to cover are:

 Meet the faculty and staff

 Frequently Asked Questions

 Course Information

 Message from the Dean

 Program Outline







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 Links relevant to the program



Structure and navigation will be left up to the discretion of the Content Providers. Common

elements like „Meet the Faculty‟ sites will be generally managed and consolidated by the project

team responsible for that content area.



Who are the specific contact people in OIT spearheading the CMS project?

Matt Cira - Web Development (Implementation member, template and graphic design,

CMS trainer)

Gideon Sanstra - Web Integration Manager (Implementation member, CMS system

administration, CMS trainer and development of more sophisticated backend

integration with external systems)

Travis Wynberry - Project Management and Web Oversight Team Chair.









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Content Providers

Following a list of the identified Content Providers per functional area:



Major Organizational Unit Functional Area Content Provider



Enrollment Management Marketing / Enrollment Suzanne Depeder

Enrollment Management Marketing Nadine Brown

Enrollment Management RARC / Admissions Pat Petillo

Enrollment Management Recruiting (overall) / Stud Serv. Jeff Geisler

Enrollment Management Recruiting (Chicago campuses) Jeff Geisler

Enrollment Management Matilde Ojeda

Enrollment Management John Hemmeter

Enrollment Management Olga Govea

Enrollment Management Registrar Brisbane Rouzan?

Finance Financial Aid Marty Rossman

Finance Work Study Dorota Drozdowski

IT User Services Helpdesk

IT Web Services Matt Cira

Institutional Advancement Alumni Relations/ Development Dradyne Eudeikis

Institutional Advancement Alumni Relations/ Development Jim Jarocki

Institutional P.R. News & Events Dina Anderson

Institutional P.R. Public Relations Chris Anderson

OOS International Sites International Sites Jim Falco?

OOS International Sites D.C./Northern Virginia Mary Lou Pomponio?

OOS International Sites Florida Helene Wisselman?

OOS International Sites Georgia Shirley Nottingham?

OOS International Sites Germany ?

OOS International Sites Poland ?

OOS International Sites Wisconsin Jennifer Petersen?

Provost Office Academic Events Julia Baker

Provost Office CAD Jadwiga Piper

Provost Office CAD Cynthia Watkins

Provost Office CAS Maria Malayter

Provost Office CAS Stephen Thompson

Provost Office CAS - Natural Sciences Renee Judd

Provost Office CAS - ESOL Julie Howard

Provost Office CAS - ACE Tom Heaney

Provost Office CAS Christie Muir

Provost Office CAS - Focus Omari Confer

Provost Office CAS Program Pages Renee Judd

Provost Office CMB Don Grady

Provost Office CMB Ellen McMahon

Provost Office CMB Ewa Wodzinska

Provost Office CMB Izabela Oplatek

Provost Office CMB Program Pages

Provost Office Grants - PT3 Rob Bowe

Provost Office Grants - ITEP Christine Damon

Provost Office NCE Jean Gallinger

Provost Office NCE - Baker Dem School Irina Lobo

Provost Office NCE - Program Pages Jean Gallinger









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Provost Office Provost's Office George Litman

Provost Office Provost's Office Mary Bridgette M.

Human Resources Human Resources Tina Turnbull

Human Resources Human Resources Kathy Tooredman

Diversity Margaret Wong

Provost Office Student Affairs / Career Dev. Connie Webster (Secondary)

Provost Office Student Affairs / Career Dev. Sid Friedman (Designee)

Provost Office Student Affairs / Residence Life Kenrick Peters

Provost Office Student Affairs Marlen Govea

Provost Office Student Affairs Wendy Levinson

Library University Library Kathryn Miller

Library University Library Alexey Chamkin

Senate Senate Fred Widlak

Senate Senate Ken Kantor

Senate Senate Edyth Leone (Administrative Support)

General Counsel Lori Fedele

Michael Cowan









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Glossary



Base Template

A predefined layout for a web page within the CMS. All pages are derived from this template.



CMS

Abbreviation; see Content Management System





Content provider

The content provider is responsible for collecting information and assuring its accuracy in a timely

manner.



Content Management System

A System that allows users to contribute and participate directly in the web site without having to

depend on technical HTML Web resources. No longer constrained by their dependence on

Webmasters, all users can now share information from the desktop with anyone, anywhere,

effortlessly and in real-time.



HTML

Hyper Text Markup Language, used to create hypertext and hypermedia documents on the World

Wide Web incorporating text, graphics, sound, video, and hyperlinks



Layout Template

A predefined content area that is inserted into the content area of the Base Template and

shortens the web page creation process.









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Notes









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