FAQ - Frequently Asked Questions
Click on your Question to View our Response.
The Basics
OU Campus is the Content Management System which ETSU is now using to store and manage our website.
CMS stands for Content Management System.
Companies and organizations which have many web pages in their website use content management systems to build and edit their webpages. A Content Management System is essentially a frame work which allows for the sharing of common elements across many different pages. This efficiency helps the web team locate, track and make changes to many pages in the ETSU web site very quickly.
ETSU's website consists of over 600 subsites and about 10,000 individual web pages!
ETSU's web team consists of just 4 people! :)
--as of March 2012
Every page in OU Campus has a direct edit link located in the bottom left corner of your page. If you can't find it click Control and left mouse click to highlight everything on your page. This should turn the login link light blue.
PASTE PLAIN TEXT! When copying content from a MS Office product like Word, be sure to choose Edit then select Paste Plain Text.
The current CMS system is up to date and far more robust than the previous CMS. We encourage you to do all of your editing within your page's WYSIWYG editor.
Managing Your Site
The web team maintains a current list of approved CMS editors. For a list of your department/division's CMS editors email Sherry Martinez .
1) Within OU Campus, Browse to the folder where you want to add the new page.
2) Expand the window to full screen view , then press the "new" button in the top right corner of the page.
3) From the drop down, choose "New Web Page"
4) Fill out the appropriate items...don't forget to change the filename, but leave the .pcf at the end.
CMS editors cannot delete pages from their sites. To request a page to be deleted click here.
CMS keeps at least 2 "old" versions of your documents. This PDF will explain how to retrieve an old version.
YES. The current CMS system allows users to create pages and schedule them to be published in the future.
Watch this brief tutorial for more information on how to schedule a publication.
Yes, please be sure that file names contain only lowercase letters, numbers, and underscores "_".
DO NOT use periods (except for the file extension, such as ".docx", ".pdf"), or any other special characters, such as &, ?, #, or spaces.
Examples of improper file names would be: policy.update.0301.pdf or this really large filename&important stuff!.docx
Examples of good file naming would be: policy_update_0301.pdf or thisSmallerName_Important.docx
- Browse to your documents folder by clicking on the documents folder in the file tree
- verify you are in the documents folder by checking the breadcrumb path. It should end with /documents/
- Expand the split screen by clicking the green arrow that points right
- You should see an empty directory, because the documents for your website are not loaded into OU Campus, they are loaded directly onto the live web server. Click the production tab at the right of the screen to see the documents that are currently part of your website.
- You should now see a list of documents that are in production on your web (note the production tab is now active and the staging tab is now greyed out.
- Verify the name of the file you wish to overwrite, and check to be sure the file on you local machine has the exact same name. Click the upload button on the right.
- In this example, we will be uploading and overwriting a file called training numbers.docx. Click the browse button and find the file you wish to upload on your local machine. Here, I have selected the file training numbers.docx from the ats folder on my computer.
- Be sure to check the overwrite checkbox so that the file you are uploading will take the place of the original file on the server.
- Scroll down and press the Upload button.
- Once the upload is complete, you will see a success message
- Your new document should now be on the server and all existing hyperlinks will still be valid
- Be sure to click back to the Staging tab before continuing to work in OU Campus
No. At this point background colors are generated automatically by the Content Management System.
In order to have a single line return in the CMS WYSIWYG editor, hold down the shift key and hit the enter key. The enter key by itself will give a double line return.
YES. You can change the layout of your pages as many times as you like. When you change a page from 2 columns to 1 column the right column will be hidden and the contents of the left or main column will expand to fill the void. Any information in your right column will be hidden but will remain in your site should you choose to return your page to a 2 column layout.
Watch this short video for a demonstration.
YES. Turning the media box on each page on or off will not delete any images or videos stored there. Turning this box off will simply hide the contents of this region.
Insert video tutorial here.
YES. Images, videos, or image galleries are all accepted into the media box area.
If your department has its own social media pages a member of the web team will have to link your accounts with your subsite. To schedule a time to do this and get more information click here to email the web team.
Insert video tutorial here.
The current CMS allows individual departments to integrate YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and iTunes accounts into their subsites.
YES. If your CMS site does not currently have a GA/TEMP login contact Sherry Martinez to set one up.
If you would like to review changes to your site made by a GA before they go live, click here to learn about setting up a Workflow in CMS.
A workflow allows changes to your site by an editor to be viewed by one or more approvers before being published to the live ETSU website.
Insert video tutorial here.
A workflow allows changes to your site to be viewed by one or more approvers before being published to the live ETSU website.
Insert video tutorial here.
Edit before you upload!
Currently CMS will not accept images with .gif extension. It’s best to use ".jpeg" or ".png" images that are under 500kb. The larger your image is the longer it takes to load the image and the webpage.
Images should have a resolution of 72dpi.
As a rule of thumb images should be 500px Wide or less.
Table with Images
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Image size is 127 pixel wide |
Image size is 127 pixel wide |
Image is 127 pixel wide |
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Tables are a great way to organize content on you page. The maximum size of your table should be 500 pixels. You should only place images whose total width is less that 500 pixels in the table. Therefore if you have three images to place in a table, size the images using Photoshop or some editor, so that the width of each image is the same and will fit the 500 pixel maximum allowed.
If you want the images to be larger, use thumbnails and link these to the larger images. For more information on formatting images visit the following link: organizing images.
Great question, there is an open source program called IrfanView that works easily and quickly. This program is fast to down load and learn. To view the handout click here. The url to download is www.download.com/IrfanView/3000-2192-10021962.html.
Have Fun!
Yes! To add your social media accounts to your OU Campus account contact the web team @ cms@etsu.edu. You will need to have an administrator login for each of the sites you would like to connect.
Yes. OU Campus allows users to post updates to their department's facebook wall or twitter feed directly from OU Campus when an update is published.
Advanced Editing
CMS editors by default do not have access to view or edit their source code.
To request special access to html code for your site click here.
Currently, changes to left navigation have to be made by a member of the web team. To request a change to your left navigation click here.
CMS users have the ability to create their own image galleries.
Watch these tutorials on creating an image gallery and adding an image gallery to your page.
A snippet is pre-formatted web content that can easily be placed into any web page. Some examples of snippets that are already available to you are: colored buttons, styled content containers and horizontal rules.
Please contact the web team if you have an idea for a snippet and we will help you develop it.
From the WYSIWYG editor, click the "Insert Snippet" button to see a list of available snippets.
An asset is an item that can be created one time (in one place) and used in many different locations on a website. Assets can be the following types: plain text, web content, script, image galleries or forms. Some examples of things you might want to make an asset are: hours of operation, fee schedules, student enrollment. When you need to change an asset, you only have to change one instance then that change is propogated everywhere the asset is used on the site.
Yes, depending on your permission leve, you can create certain kinds of assets. All users can create text and web content assets. To learn more, contact us about advanced training opportunities.
Once an asset has been created, it can be used on any site. Note...it can only be modified by the person who creates it, but it can be used anywhere. You can see a list of assets by logging in to OU Campus then clicking the "Content" tab and then selecting "Assets" from the sub-menu.
East Tennessee State University
PO Box 70267
Johnson City, TN 37614
423-439-1000
Academic Technology | Web Department
PO Box 70427
Johnson City, TN 37614
423-439-8249 |cms@etsu.edu