Using Macromedia Contribute to edit Web Content

Transcription

1 Using Macromedia Contribute to edit Web Content SSA Web Team: 1106 Madison St, 4 th Fl. Oakland Jim Damian jdamian@acgov.org Lisa Castillo lcastill@acgov.org Stephanie Hornung shornung@acgov.org Jerome Graham jgraham@acgov.org I. Connect to Web site II. III. Browse, Edit, Publish Introduction to Templates IV. Using Templates to create new Web pages I. Draft Console II. Outline modification and repeating regions III. Table Creation IV. Types of templates V. Creating Links I. Links within WIC Web site II. i. ( Resources in Right Nav) Links to external Web sites i. ( Links in Right Nav) VI. Tables VII. Styles VIII. Q & A 1

2 I. Connect to Web Site In order to use Contribute, you must first connect to the site you are editing. We will be doing all of our creating and editing on a staging server. This is a test area that gets uploaded to the actual Web server every day at 5pm. Once you publish your new pages to the Web, SSA will handle transferring them from the test server to the actual (production) server. II. Browse, Edit, Publish Contribute operates based on a simple process to create and edit pages, following the format of Browse, Edit, Publish : Browse: Enter the path to the location of the page you wish to edit, or if creating a new page click, new page Edit: Enter all of your new text or modify existing text on a document Publish: Click on Publish to send the file to the staging (test) server Click on Send for review to share the unfinished document with other Contribute content editors Click on Save for later to temporarily close a page you are still working on. III. Introduction to Templates We will be using already created forms, called Templates, to enter the information we would like posted to the Web. When creating documents, often times more time is spent on how the document looks than what content it actually holds. Templates allow us to focus solely on the information we want to get across, the content, and leaves the presentation of the content to the Web Designer, freeing up more time for the content writer, and allowing the Web Designer to not have to choose between the content writer s design and their own. Templates are defined by their Editable and Repeating Regions. This means you can only enter text in designated areas. IV. Using Templates to create new Web Pages To use templates, you must first open up Contribute. 2

3 The initial creation of the connection to the site will be done for you. When you open up Contribute you will see the following start page: Notice underneath Begin editing my websites the names of sites you have permission to edit. To begin creating your new pages, click on WIC OPG You re next brought to The WIC OPG home page: 3

4 Once you wish to create your own pages, decide which template best fits the layout of the page. To use the template to create a new page, Click on the button marked New Page at the top of the screen. From this point you can create a page based on one of the eight templates SSA has created for you, by clicking on one of the choices: First off, you can always create a copy of the current page. This helps when creating multiple pages based off of the same template. basic pages have a title, subtitle, revised date, and body. They are reserved for pages that have less formatting definitionlist page works best for documents that follow the List Item, List description of the Item underneath format. homepage will make a template based on the WIC home (entry) page indexwithnav will create an index, or entry page. You may use this if you re creating a new section of the Web site. neclass will create a page based on the Nutrition Education Classes neclassactivities will create a page based on the Nutrition Education Class Activities. outline works best with pages that follow an outline. refchart will create a page to be used for the Reference Charts for Formulas satschedule will create a page to be used for the Saturday Schedule. If you come across any documents that do not fit into any of these three categories, let the Web team know, and we can create another Template. All pages start off with Page Title, Subtitle, and Revision Date To open up a template, click on New Page on the Contribute Toolbar. 4

5 Notice Templates as a list option underneath the site name. The template choices are shown with a green page icon next to them. Choose the appropriate template, and then enter a page title for your document ( Office Policies for example). You must enter a Page title for the document to open up. Definition List: As with all templates Def. List starts off with the Page Title, sub title, and revised date. Definition List also has a summary listed. If any of these categories are not necessary for your particular document, click on template properties listed in the yellow strip underneath the address bar. Template Properties dialog window. If one of the headings listed is not desired, highlight it and uncheck the Show box underneath the window. Then click on OK. You can copy and paste information you already have in electronic format (such as Word) into the editable regions. Highlight the text you wish to copy, copy it (ctrl-c), then in Contribute, select Paste text only from the Edit section of the 5

6 toolbar. Make sure your cursor is in the region you want to paste the text into before you choose the Paste text only selection. List/Definition Items If you have more items to list or define, expand the number of list or definition regions you have. To do this, Click on the + or - signs next to the region. These will be marked repeat The Definition List Template with more regions added. 6

7 Once you re done entering your text, choose Publish, Send for Review, or Save for Later If you choose Publish, Contribute looks to publish your document as a Web page. It then asks for a link to that page. Choose yes on the dialog box that asks you if you re sure you want to publish without linking. If you choose to send it to one of your fellow content editors for review, click on that choice: 7

8 The users listed as Contribute editors Publishers will be displayed. Choose the appropriate user and follow dialog box instructions. If you choose Save for later, Contribute creates a draft of your document, and stores it for your retrieval later. Your draft will be shown in the Draft console on the left side of the page: The Draft Console: Here you can look at the status and progress of the draft pages you ve edited, drafts you have to review, or drafts you ve sent. 8

9 The Basic Template: You can use the basic template for anything that may not fit in one of the other chosen templates, and won t be used on a large enough scale to create a new specific template. The Outline Template 9

10 Note on Outlines: When using the Outline template, click on the + and - next to repeating region to add outline items. If there is a category list item without a subcategory listed press enter and then click on the Indent button. This will create a subcategory on the line below. Navigation.cfm: You may need to edit the navigation files (the left Nav ), the files that control your side navigation. To do so, choose the navigation.cfm file corresponding to the folder you wish to edit the navigation in. Any change you make to these files will correspond with the side navigation once you ve published the file. V. Creating Links: Creating Links Using Macromedia Contribute As we may already know, a link is a connection between two places (usually Web pages) on the Internet. Links are sometimes called Hyperlinks. To create links you need to know three things: 1. What page you wish to link from. 2. What the text you wish to be the actual link (called link text ) is. 3. What page you wish to link to. There are two types of links you will be creating: 1. Links to pages within the WIC OPG Web site (including forms). 10

11 a. You can link to a draft or a page you ve worked on recently. b. You can link to any page on the WIC site 2. Links to pages outside of the WIC OPG Web site. To create a link within the WIC OPG Web site to a page you ve worked on recently, or a draft: 1. Browse to the page you wish to link from (if you are creating a new page, you re already there!) 2. Select the link text (left click in front of the word or sentence that is your link text and drag your cursor across it, until you see the link text darkly highlighted) 3. Click on the button marked Link on the top of the page and select Drafts and recent pages In this example my link text is Calendars and Schedules. I selected it, clicked on the link symbol on the top of the page, and chose Drafts and recent pages 11

12 4. Next the create link dialog box opens: This section lists where your link will take you. I chose Vendor Listings: Albertson s Stores. Whatever you choose will be previewed in the mini window. 5. Click OK, and after a few seconds, your link is created! You ll notice Calendars and Schedules is now in a blue text font. You will not be able to preview your link until after the page is published. 12

13 To create a link to any page already created within the WIC OPG Web site: 1. Browse to the page you wish to link from (if you are creating a new page, you re already there!) 2. Select the link text (left click in front of the word or sentence that is your link text and drag your cursor across it, until you see the link text darkly highlighted) Click on the button marked Link on the top of the page and select Browse to Web Page 3. In the Insert Link dialog box under the Browse button, click on the button marked Choose. 13

14 After clicking on Choose, the Choose dialog box opens: Now you would choose the page you wish to link to by navigating through the folders and files. Double click on a folder to open it, and then single click on the file (Web page) you wish your link to take you to: In this example I linked the page to the WIC calendar. You ll notice next to your choice is the page previewed visually, and under the preview box the path listed to 14

15 your link destination, called Web address ( Click OK, and your link is created! Finally, to create a link to a page outside of the WIC OPG Web site (the state WIC site, for example): 1. Browse to the page you wish to link from (if you are creating a new page, you re already there!) 2. Select the link text (left click in front of the word or sentence that is your link text and drag your cursor across it, until you see the link text highlighted) Click on the button marked Link on the top of the page and select Browse to Web page 3. Under Web address, enter the address (or copy paste from an outside browser window) 15

16 4. Click on OK, and your link is created. Resources and Links You may have noticed on the right side of the page sections titled Resources and Links. Resources are provided to highlight a form that is referenced in the body of the page. The form may be linked within the text, but we would also like it linked here for easier reference. The Links section is for information contained in an external site. 16

17 If you are referring to a particular form on the page, to link to it in resources simply highlight the text Resources to use as your link text. Notice Resources highlighted and ready to be used as link text. At this point you would link to the form, either to a form in the docs section using Choose, or to a form on your computer using Browse to a file on my computer when you link. 17

18 VI. Tables To create a table place your cursor in the location of the page you wish to insert the table (any editable region of your template), and then click on the button labeled Table The table dialog box opens up. Here you set the parameters of the table. Choose number of rows Choose number of columns Set Border thickness at 0 Set Cell padding at 3 Set Cell spacing at 0 Set Header to Top Click OK You ll now see your table inserted with the appropriate number of rows and columns. There will be a dark line around the border of your newly created table. This means the table is selected. (You can also select a table by placing your cursor in any of the tables fields and choose table and select table from the top menu) While your newly created table is still selected, click on the drop-down menu next to Normal (These are called your Styles ), and select Showing 18

19 Table created with nine fields (selected); Styles drop down menu with Showing selected Insert (or copy paste using Paste text only ) your header (title of table) into the top (header) row, and your text into table fields 19

20 VII. Styles Styles are the appropriate header, font, and table parameters allowed for use in a site. As demonstrated by templates, having uniformity throughout the site not only helps aesthetically, but also allows for easy page creation. Styles do this for header, fonts, and tables. Below is a snapshot of the styles available to us: If you are creating a new page and want to duplicate the orange bolded header text, you would select Heading 1 from the dropdown styles list, and whatever you typed after would be in that font style. You can use Headings 2-6 in the same fashion. The Showing style is used when creating tables, as described above. The Error and greytable styles may be used if desired. There should not be a use for any of the other styles listed. As is the case with templates, if there is a new font style desired simply inform the Web team, and we ll create one for you. (In light of the issues communicated regarding Bold and Italic, we ve created bold and italic styles and included them in the drop down menu. VIII. Q & A Any other questions that you do not have at this time and have not come up during this training can be fielded by phone or . Thank You! SSA Web Team 20