Adobe Contribute / Web Content Management Training Workshop

Introduction:

The Content Management training includes detailed information on managing your website content using the software program Adobe Contribute. Emphasis of the training is on adding and changing page text, creating and modifying links, uploading and linking PDF’s, basic formatting of documents, and using tables to create and modify tabular data.

Additional information covered in the training includes:

Communications Style Guide:

Whether you are communicating with an internal or external audience, this editorial guide is designed to help you make decisions that are in keeping with the College’s overall style for print and the Web.

Guidelines for Departmental Publishing:

As of February 1, 2011, individual departments are permitted to make changes and updates directly to their websites, but only after their sites have been placed in the College's new template by the I.T. Division and the content has initially been reviewed and approved by the Media Relations Office.

Content Strategy:

Content Strategy includes reference information and available resources needed to develop effective web content. Resources include:

• Referencing (linking) to the undergraduate and graduate smart catalogs • Referencing (linking) to existing website content • Active Data Calendar (ADC) • Creation and linking of new pages • Side navigation • Modules & right side links • Naming conventions • PDF upload, naming, and linking • Content auditing o Broken link and orphan file reports o Targeted search to identify tertiary /redundant content • Social networking o Facebook o Twitter o Newsletter (Wordpress) and/or blog • Media assets o Video (flow player, embedded in page, lightbox, or link to YouTube) o Photos (banner photo, or embedded thumbnail images, photo galleries) o Podcasts (iTunes U, or embed in page) • Google Analytics o Use of our analytics tool to monitor site usage and track page views, time spent on site, etc.

Contribute Software: The hands-on Contribute portion of the training includes:

• Downloading & activating your Contribute key (One time configuration) • Editing page content including text, links, & pdf’s • Creating pages • Saving drafts • Workflow • Publishing changes to server • File sharing & permissions • Versioning / Rollbacks • Viewing page updates in a browser (Firefox, Safari, Chrome, or IE)

Step 1: Downloading and Activating Your Contribute Key

Login to your webmail account and download the attached Education Contribute key. Double click on the key and when prompted by Contribute enter your name, email, and password.

Step 2: Connecting to Your Site

Once you’ve activated your key, Contribute will automatically open to the division or department site that you have editing privileges for. Once in the site, navigate to the page that you’d like to make changes to and click the ‘edit page’ button in the upper left portion of the screen.

Step 3: Contribute Interface

Contribute uses a Microsoft Word type interface which makes editing content highly intuitive. Formatting and function options at the top of the Contribute window include:

• Ability to change headings • Page formatting options including bolding text, bulleted lists, and creating tables for displaying tabular data • Ability to create and/upload links

Additional tools at the top of the page include:

• ‘Publish’ and ‘Send’ buttons which allow you to publish your pages or send to other contribute users for review/approval • Save a draft for later - allows you to save your edits without needing to publish to the production server • Discard Draft Button-- allows you to disregard any changes that have been made thereby reverting to earlier versions of the page • Page Properties - allows you to customize links, change titles, and change appearance, but these options are not necessary given how we've coded the site templates • Spell Checker

Step 4: Editing Page Text

To change page copy, position the cursor on the area of the page and select the region of content to be edited, or for content to be added.

Note: For web accessibility and readability purposes, use bold and italics formatting sparingly. People consume information on the web differently than a printed document, so the use of section headings (h2’s or h3’s) is recommended. Users tend to quickly scan web pages for relevant information, so breaking up content into manageable ‘chunks’, and including ‘more information’ links is also recommended.

Step 5: Creating Links

Your options for creating links in Contribute include: • Linking to existing Lehman web pages or external websites • Uploading and linking to PDF files • Linking to users email addresses

To create a link do the following:

• From a web browser (Firefox, Chrome, Safari or Internet Explorer) navigate to the page you’d like to link to and copy the URL (Control > C) • From within Contribute, type in the text that will be the link title, or highlight text to be used as the link source, then click the ‘link’ button at the top of the Contribute window. Click on the ‘browse to a webpage’ option and paste the URL (Control > V)

To upload and link to a PDF do the following:

• From within Contribute, type in the text that will be the PDF link source, or highlight text to be used as the link source, then click the ‘link’ button at the top of the Contribute window. Click on the ‘Files on my Computer’ option and navigate to the PDF file on your local computer. • Upload the file – Note: The PDF file will be placed in a ‘documents’ folder after you’ve published the page.

Step 6: Creating a New Page

To create a new page based on an existing template page do the following: • From within Contribute, navigate to the page that you’d like to use as the template for your new page • Click the ‘New’ button at the top of the Contribute window (next to the Edit button) • Make sure the ‘copy of existing page’ option is selected and enter the page title • Click ‘publish’ and when prompted enter a file name (be mindful of our naming conventions by separating names with dashes, and making sure no spaces are in the file name. Also, use small case only. No need to name the file with an extension as the .php extension will automatically be added to the file name.

Step 7: Publishing Pages

Once you have completed making page edits, click the ‘Publish’ button at the top of the page, then using a browser, navigate to the page on your website and refresh.