Posts under the ‘Text’ category

Have you created a new Generic (Page) and can’t get the styling just right? Does the right sidebar look funny? Aren’t sure when and where to use headings or bulleted lists? The UMC web team can help “clean up” your web page so that the look and styling more closely matches today’s web standards.

Send us an email at <cmshelp@mtu.edu> with the URL of your web page (a live page or a CMS preview link) and let us know that you’d like a “style and coding clean up”. We will take a few minutes to clean up your web page and have it looking great.

If a faculty member includes a URL with their publication, a “Read More” link will appear at the end of the publication information and will link to the URL that is entered.

Faculty member can link a specific portion of their publication citation to the URL that they specify (avoiding the generic “Read More”). This is done by wrapping the text that they want to link with a “%%”. For instance: Blah blah publication %%linked text is here%% rest of my publication.

You can see both of these options in action on the Biological Sciences website. Open of the slider for Rupali Datta and Charles Kerfoot on this page:

http://www.mtu.edu/biological/research/publications/

You can align paragraphs, divs, tables, images and other elements using CSS classes. Alignment options include left align, center align, and right align. You may align items using the following classes in ePhox code view:

Paragraphs

<p class="right">Right aligned paragraph.</p>

This is an example of a right aligned paragraph.

Images

<img src="test.jpg" class="center" />

Centered Image

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A number of CMS websites take advantage of our Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) feature: styled, expanding sections of frequently asked questions eloquently organized and displayed to the user. Since your department’s website most likely already has an FAQ section, we will first explain how to maintain yours. We will then explain how to create a new FAQ section from scratch.

Maintaining Your FAQs

Your department’s website may have one or more groups of FAQs on its website. You may want to:

• Modify existing FAQs
• Add New FAQs
• Remove FAQs
• Reorder FAQs
• Group FAQs

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You can add, modify, and remove links in the content area (body copy) or right sidebar on your web page:

• Add a CMS Link: link to another CMS web page or file (pdf, doc, etc)
• Add a External Link: link to a page outside the CMS
• Update/Modify a Link: update or modify a preexisting link
• Removal of a Link: remove a link from your page

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We have provided you with some CSS class options for formatting your unordered lists. You may include bullets and spacing. You may remove the bullets, but leave the spacing. Or, you maybe remove the bullets and the spacing. To create an unordered list, use standard HTML similar to this:
<ul>
<li>Item 1</li>
<li>Item 2
<ul>
<li>Sub Item 1</li>
<li>Sub Item 2
<ul>
<li>Sub Sub Item 1</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Item 3</li>
<li>Item 4
<ul>
<li>Sub Item 1</li>
<li>Sub Item 2</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>

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Link anchors are a very useful tool to help users navigate to specific locations in a long, detailed web page of useful information. An anchor is a reference to another point in a page and has the format “#link”. As an example, you can skip to the footer of this blog post by clicking on this link anchor: footer. Notice how the page scrolls down to the bottom for you.

We will begin with a short lesson about using link anchors in general. Then, we will explain how to attach link anchors to CMS links.

Creating Link Anchors

You must use HTML code in order to create a link anchor on your page. Link anchors are created using the following format:

<a name="anchor">&nbsp;</a>

Use the above code to set up link anchors throughout your web page. When in the CMS, you will need to do this using the code view of ePhox. Once you have your anchors set up, you are ready to link to them.

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Tables aren’t as commonly used in websites today as they used to be. They are an outdated way of laying out a design, but are still a viable option for presenting organized data. We have given you some options for styling your data in tables to allow for a clean, visually appealing look.

Although it isn’t a requirement, it is good practice to specify a width for your table and your table headings. Do this in ePhox code view using inline CSS. If you would like your table to take up the full content area available, we recommend setting your table width to 98 percent. Later, if you add a right sidebar next to the table, Internet Explorer will render it correctly. If you would like your table to be smaller, specify a width of your choice.

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You are able to format the text in your right sidebar Highlights in a number of different styles. We have some suggestions to keep styles consistent across CMS sites and usable for users. Its important that your department’s website achieves consistency whether or not you follow our guidelines.

List of Links

If you would like to display a list of links, we recommend listing the links in an unordered list, hiding the bullets. You may remove indenting and bullets by using a CSS class of “none”. Your code would be similar to this:

<ul class="none">
<li><a href="cmslink">Link 1</a></li>
<li><a href="cmslink">Link 2</a></li>
<li><a href="cmslink">Link 3</a></li>
<li><a href="cmslink">Link 4</a></li>
</ul>

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Updating your staff directory can involve a number of steps. We’ll walk you through the steps involved for a Personnel Item in your faculty/staff directory.

1. Create new
2. Update existing
3. Remove from website

There are a few steps involved in creating a new Personnel Item. You must:

1. Create an Image Editor content item for your staff photo,
2. Create a Personnel Item with contact information, and
3. Slot the Personnel Item into its appropriate Grouped Item, so it will show up on your directory web page (not necessary for alphabetized listings).

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