Content Provider Quick-Start Guide for managing Springboard pages
From ETS
Currently there are 4 Springboard pages for Blogs, Podcasts, Digital Commons, and ANGEL:
http://tlt.its.psu.edu/blogs
http://tlt.its.psu.edu/podcasts
http://tlt.its.psu.edu/digitalcommons
http://tlt.its.psu.edu/angel
The purpose of a springboard page is to help clarify to the visitor the different websites that are associated with a single service.
The common characteristics of a springboard page are:
- What is it? (a brief and concise bulleted description of the service)
- Benefits to Teaching and Learning (bullets describing key features)
- Quick-Start (bullets giving the basic way to get started with this service)
- Workshops + Training (a list of links)
- Help + Support (a list of links with descriptions)
- Sidebar: RSS feeds from news or community
- Sidebar: Faculty Success Stories
Contents |
Log in (to the secure TLT site)
- Direct your browser to https://tlt.its.psu.edu
This is the URL you will use to log in to add or edit content on the site. You should notice that it is slightly different from the public URL (by one additional letter): http://tlt.its.psu.edu
- You will be prompted to log in via WebAccess using your Penn State username and password.
Note: My [Audrey] personal preference is to open the secure logged in site in one browser [e.g. Firefox] and then open side-by-side in a second, completely different browser [e.g. Safari] to the public URL. That way I can switch back and forth between browsers to see how the public site looks after I've added a new piece of content. Keep in mind that the way you see things in Logged-in view doesn't look or act the same to a regular (non-logged-in) visitor to the site.
Once you have logged in, you will notice that:
- There are now some new links on the right hand side of the page underneath the Search. This is the “personal bar” and contains: [Your Name] and Log out
- On some pages you may see an extra set of tabs around the central content well of the page. Depending on the page and what permissions you have been assigned, these tabs may be some subset of the following: “Contents”, “View”, “Edit”, “Rules”, “Sharing”, etc
Manage your Springboard Page
1. Go to your springboard page
Use the site Navigation to get to the Page, Folder, Event, News, or whatever content item it is you want to edit.
If you are managing a springboard page, you would be navigating to one of the links listed at the top of the page.
Folder Contents
As mentioned before, you will notice a set of green tabs in the Folder of your Springboard page, the first of which is labeled as Contents. Clicking on this will show you a table of all of the items contained in this folder.
Springboard pages are technically a Folder containing a:
- Page (the page you see when you are just a visitor)
- Link(s) (the various links to sites relating to this particular service)
- Images folder (hidden from visitors)
- Collection (Faculty Success Stories)
A folder can have a page set as its default page, or it can simply list the items it contains, using a pre-defined “view”. In the case of your Springboard page, it is set to display the Page in the contents as the default view for visitors. In the screenshot you should note the icons next to each item in the folder. The first, "Blogs" is a Page, the next several items with the world icon are Links, the folder icon for Images is a Folder, and the Faculty Success Stories icon signifies a Collection.
You should also notice that the Page, Links, and Faculty Success Stories all show up in the left-sidebar Navigation. Notice that the folder Images does not show up in the Navigation. This is because the images that I added in this folder are for use on the Page and not to be see by visitors of the site.
2. Edit items that already exist
- When you are in an item you have permissions to edit, you will see an edit tab in a green menubar at the top of the content well.
- Clicking the “edit” tab will show you fields that you can edit. Everything will have a “Title”, most things will have a “Description”, and depending on the item type there may be other fields, such as body text, images, things to upload and so on.
- When in Edit, pressing “save” (at the bottom of a field), you will save any changes you have made to the item.
- Once you save, check the state of the item. If it’s in a state called “Unpublished” or “Published”, the item will be visible to the public. If you don’t want a particular item to be visible to the public, you can hide it in various ways. One is to change the state to Retract (Unpubished).
Rich text fields
A rich text field is one where you can add a variety of content, such as:
- Headings and subheadings
- Bulleted and numbered lists
- Internal and external links
- Bold and italic formatting
- Superscripts and subscripts
- Tables
- Images
You can type directly into the box, or you can copy and paste from another document, such as Microsoft Word. Here are some tips:
- For paragraphs that are not headings or some type of list, put your cursor somewhere in the paragraph and check that the dropdown box (at top right of the WYSIWYG toolbar) says “Normal paragraph”. If it doesn’t say “Normal paragraph”—for example if it says “no style”, choose “Normal paragraph” from the drop down list of options.
- Break up your text with headings and subheadings. Make all headings succinct and descriptive. To make a line a heading or subheading, put your cursor on the line, then choose the appropriate format from the drop-down box (at top right of the WYSIWYG toolbar). Don’t simply use bold the and italic buttons to make main headings and main subheadings.
- If you find yourself writing lists of things, put them in bullet points.
- Apply the nuances of formatting (headings, bullets etc) after you’ve written the bulk of your text (or after you’ve pasted it in).
Images
When inserting images into a rich text field, put the text in first, and add the image(s) last.
To insert an image: put your cursor at the START of a “Normal” line where you want the top of the image to be (note: not the start of a heading or subheading). Click on the image icon in the toolbar. This gives you a dropdown menu. Navigate to where the image can be found (this will usually be in the “images” folder under your main section).
Choose an image and you are presented with options to choose the size of your image, and which side of the page it appears (right is recommended). If you choose “right”, when you click OK, the image will be “floated” to the right-hand side of your page (that is, the image will be placed at the right, and text will wrap to the left of it – and under it if there is a lot of text).
Links
To add a link to another page on the same site (an “internal link”). Highlight the text that you want to form the text of the link. Click on the icon in the WYSIWIG toolbar that looks like two links of a chain. This will bring up a dialogue box that allows you to navigate to the page or folder or other item you want to link to.
To add a link to an external site (an “external link”). Highlight the text that you want to form the text of the link. Click on the icon in the WYSIWIG toolbar that looks like a globe. This brings up a dialogue box where you can enter the external link, or paste it in.
3. Add New Items
In the green menu bar, click on the Add new... link and select the type of item you wish you add from the drop-down list that appears. On a Springboard you can add a Page, Link, Folder, File, or Collection. But most likely, you will only have to worry about Links unless you plan on expanding your springboard page into a larger, multi-page section.
If you click on the folder Images in your Contents, you will notice that you can only add Images to this folder.
Once you add an item, you will almost always see the following fields:
Title (required)
Be aware that:
- If the item is visible to navigation, the Title is what appears in the Navigation portlet (side bar).
- The Title appears in the title bar of some web browsers, and is what might appear automatically as the name of the bookmark if someone bookmarks the page.
- The Title is used by some search engines to help determine where the page appears in search engine rankings. If a title exactly matches the search term it will be ranked higher than equivalent pages that don’t exactly match the search term.
- When you first create an item on the site, whatever is entered into the Title field on the very first save is used to automatically generate the URL of the item (with two major exceptions: for files and images, the name of the uploaded file or image is used in the URL). Therefore, be sensitive to the fact that if you enter a long title, you will generate a long URL. For example, “How do I book a place on an electron microscopy course?” might be a great title for a page, but the corresponding URL (how-do-i-book-a-place-on-an-electron-microscopy-course), while perfectly valid, may be a a bit long for many people’s tastes. If you want a long title, that’s fine, but think about creating the page with a short title first. The URL is created when you first add the item; when you subsequently edit the item’s Title, the item’s URL doesn’t change. So you could create a page with an initial Title of “EM course booking”, save it (to create a URL containing “em-course-booking”), then edit the Title back to the long version (“How do I book a place on an electron microscopy course?”)
Therefore, take care in what Title you give the page. You can always edit a Title at any point. It is also possible to edit a URL, although this is often a BAD thing to do once a page has been live for a while, because all links to the page (and bookmarks) will break if the URL changes.
Description (required)
For many types of item, the Description displays directly underneath the item’s Title at the top of the main view of the item. It is also:
- Displayed in some views that list the item, for example in Collections, Collection portlets (sidebar), and Folder views.
- Displayed in some browsers when the cursor is hovered over the item in the navigation menu
- Displayed by some search engines in the search engine results, below the link to the page
- Used by some search engines to help rank the page
Therefore, take care in writing the Description field. It should:
- Be short and succinct: note form is fine (don’t worry about full sentences)
- For all item types except talks and seminars (see separate instructions), contain key “trigger” words that will
- (a) help people get people to this page and
- (b) reassure them that they are in the right place once they’ve arrived.
Other fields
Depending on the type of item, you may also have a variety of other fields to fill in, including fields where you can type in rich text (bold, italic, bullets, hyperlinks etc), upload an image or a file, link to related items or whatever.
Saving an item you’ve added
When you press “save” (you may need to scroll down to see this button), the item is added to the folder. By default:
- The item adds to the folder contents underneath what is already there; therefore you may want to reorder the items if you want things to display in a different order in the navigation portlet (qv)
- Once you save, check the state of the item (look in on the right-hand side of the green menu bar). If it’s in a state called “public draft” or “published”, the item will be visible from the moment you save. If you don’t want a particular item to be visible to the public, you can hide it in various ways (qv)
Note: It is critical that you always either push Save or Cancel on every part of an item you create before navigating away from the page. Sometimes if you navigate away before Saving or Cancelling, Plone will lock the item and make it impossible for you to edit or delete it.
Note: These instructions were modified from the Weblion Instructions for content providers wiki page
