Category: Modern Campus CMS

Research Projects

Academic departments have the option to automatically pull in research project information to their CMS website. The information comes from a database of projects that are approved for public knowledge by the Research Office. The standard information that is pulled in is:

  • Principal Investigator
  • Co-PI
  • College/School
  • Department(s)
  • Sponsor
  • Center/Institute

The PI and Co-PI fields will automatically link names to their faculty page if one is set up in the CMS.

Example of research projects listed on a website.

Departments can be given the ability to override this information (as viewed on your departmental website only) or manually add projects that are not listed. If you have never used this function before, you must contact webmaster@mtu.edu to get set up. Departments currently set up are Mechanical Engineering-Engineering Mechanics, Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Computer Science.

Creating Headings

It is important to use properly structured HTML headings when organizing your web content. Think of webpage headings as a table of contents for a story.

Headings are not required on webpages. However, they help break up and organize lengthy informational webpages—improving readability. Proper heading use is not only important for accessibility, it also has search engine optimization benefits, which can help your webpages rank higher in Google’s search results.

According to the University’s editorial guide, headings are always title case, meaning you should capitalize all words that are not articles, prepositions, or to-be verbs. Do not use a colon (:) at the end of a heading.

Creating and Styling Tables

Data tables present tabular information in a grid. They are made up of columns and rows that communicate the meaning of the information and relationships between data. There are several options for styling your data in tables to allow for a clean, visually appealing look.

The use of HTML tables is reserved for displaying data in an organized manner. It is not proper to use table code to control webpage layout or design. To display content on your webpage in multiple columns, please refer to the Boxed Sections Snippets or the List Spread Buttons Snippet

Approval Workflow

The Approval Workflow in Modern Campus CMS is an optional function that a department can use when creating or editing content that needs approval from someone else before being published. This process allows the item to remain checked out to a user throughout the process until it has been completed—either published or reverted back to the previous version. Keeping content checked out is important so that the item is not published unintentionally before it should be.

  • The item goes from being checked out to the editor to being checked out by the approver and possibly back to the editor depending on what the approver selects.
  • The approver can deny the changes or publish/approve them.
    • The approver must have CMS access, but could have view-only access or edit access. An approver with edit access could publish the changes if approved, with view-only access the approver can only approve the content and return the item to the first person for publishing if approved.
  • Modern Campus CMS will send an email notification to the approver letting them know you have sent them something. This email can include a custom message from you.