Updated 3.03.09
Top Issues
CMS locks up or crashes when editing (IE). This problem manifests itself a number of ways, depending on the nuances of the system. The Webmaster may experience CMS crash when uploading a file or system errors at certain points while editing. The culprit appears to be Google Add-ons. Try disabling all Google Add-ons within your browser.
Changes to the Menu Editing Process. All menu creation, editing, and deletion should now be done through the CMS. The create and delete links are located on the Smart Desktop, near the bottom of the right pane. To edit an existing menu item, choose "View" > "Menus" from the drop-down menu in the CMS work area. Changing the name of a menu item will not change the name of the corresponding folder. Do NOT use the "Add" or "Edit Menu" links on the menu itself. These will be going away shortly, and are unstable.
Content location. You can place any of your content in any of your folders. Some webmasters prefer to have everything located in their root folder, while others prefer to locate it in individual menu folders. What matters is what collections you add it to. The collections don't care where the content actually lives, as they are just pointing to it. You only need to create a piece of content once, but you can add it to any number of collections.
You created new content, but it is not showing on your site. Make sure you place your content in a collection. You can create new content, but it will not display on your website until you actually point to it by placing it in a collection.
Content is not showing even after being placed in a collection. Except for the "Organization Name" and the "Welcome Text", all content needs to be built in a "Smart Form" template. Within the "Affiliate News Story" Smart Form, there are three main sections: Short Description, Long Description, and Body. The Short and Long Descriptions are what are displayed on the web page. The Body is displayed when you click on the "more" link. Display of the Short or Long description depends on which collection a piece of content is placed. For example, on menu page, a content piece placed in the Top Headline collection will show the Long Description, while the same piece placed in the General News collection will display the Short Description. To eliminate the "more" link, simple leave the Body section empty.
You have multiple content items placed in a collection, yet your page is still blank. Added 7.02. The cause for this is probably a corrupted piece of content within the collection. If you have a number of items placed in a collection, and one of them has become corrupt during migration (that is, it shows a page of xml errors when you open it), it will stop all other content pieces from showing up in the collection, rendering a blank page instead. You will need to go through those items one-at-a-time to find the offending file. Once you delete the file or remove it from the collection, all other content items in the collection should magically re-appear.
General CMS and Login
The new CMS seems really confusing.
And no one was more confused than us when we first encountered it. But with anything as robust and feature-rich as our new web platform is, there is an inevitable learning curve that goes with it. Trust us, the more you work with the CMS, the easier it gets, and quite frankly we're a little amazed at how quickly we've picked it up.
What address do I log into to edit my site?
Your website exists at the "www" version of our address, however all editing is performed on the "wwa" version. You may login using the "Sign-in" link at the top of either the main USA Hockey web page or your own web page--both links take you to the same admin area located on the "wwa" site.
When I login from my home page, I am taken to a generic Admin area. How can I edit my pages, but view the results at the same time?
We have found that a good way to administer your site is to open two browser windows or tabs. Open the first window, then login to your site at "wwa" from either your own home page or from the USA Hockey home page; it doesn't matter which. This will open the Admin interface. Next, open the second window and type in your home page URL ("wwa" version) in the address bar. This will open your home page with the Administrator options available. If you open your webpage in this fashion, you can use the right-click shortcut method to enter the CMS. With two windows open on your desktop, you can edit in the first, then refresh your page and see your changes in the second.
Navigating to my directory in the CMS is a pain. Is there an easier way?
Here's a CMS shortcut: When you are logged in as an administrator, open your home page in another browser tab or window (you should see the red "Administrator" button at the top of the page if you are logged in). Navigate to the web page you want to edit. Hover your mouse cursor over the story want to edit. You should see a green bounding box appear around that collection. When you see the green box, right click, and a smaller box will open. Click "properties" in the smaller box, and it will open a CMS window directly into that collection. You will see the content items that have been placed in that collection, and by clicking "more info" It will give you clickable access to those items, and you can edit from there. This will save you a ton of time. From within the collection, you can also navigate using the back arrow to access the rest of your site.
How long will my old site be available?
The old sites are now gone.
Content and Collections
Where is my homepage?
Due to technical considerations, your homepage was migrated as a menu item. The new home page that was created is located as the top menu item and should be empty. The second link in your menu should be labeled "Home" and is also empty. Your migrated home page will be somewhere below these two menu buttons (probably third) and will contain your migrated home page content. This migrated information will need to be moved to the new home page by moving it out of the collections of the migrated home page and into the collections of the newly-created page. The "Home" link can be deleted, renamed and used as something else, or linked back to your home page (to give users an easy link to your home page). Please note: if you delete the unused menu items, delete only the menu button by using the "edit menu" link at the bottom of the menu. DO NOT delete the corresponding directory in the CMS.
Where is my content? My pages are blank!
When you open an existing content piece in the CMS, you will notice that it is built into a "smart form" which has several sections, notably "Short Description", "Long Description", and "Body". The web page collections display the Short and Long Descriptions directly, depending on which collections they are placed into; the information in the Body is accessable by clicking on the "more" link on the web page, but is not displayed directly. In many content pieces, the bulk of the information was migrated into the Body section of the piece, and the Long Description was left blank. To have this information display directly, simply open the content in the CMS and proceed to edit mode, move the information in the Body to the Long Description, and publish. Your content will now appear on the web page itself, without having to click on the "more" button to see it.
Where is my content? Part 2
In some cases, a migrated piece of content has not migrated in the porper format. For a piece of content to display in a collection, it must be built in a "smart form" template. A number of content files came over as stratight html blocks. These files may be placed in a collection, but still do not display. If you encounter one of these files, you will need to rebuild it in a smart form (see the manual for instructions on creating new content).
I built a new piece of content and published it, so what do I do now?
You've now done the hard part, but for it to actually display on your website, you need to add it to a "collection". To do this, navigate to the folder of the page where you want your content to display (your root folder for your home page). In the "Work Area" window, click "View" > "Collections". This will display the collections that comprise that page. Click on the appropriate collection to see what's already inside. Clicking on the yellow "+" or "-" buttons will allow you to add or delete content from the collection. (If this process takes you more than ten seconds, you're doing it wrong. Like we said, creating the content was the hard part).
Can you explain “Collections” and “Content” in terms a human can understand?
Think of your web page as a department store window, and "collections" as the space behind the glass. The decorator (webmaster), places merchandise (content items) in the window (collection) for everyone to see. The only difference is that in this system, one item can be placed in many windows simultaneously. You only edit the content once, but affect how it appears in all the windows. (if you have a better analogy, by all means, let's hear it)
Why do you keep getting upset when I delete my Collections?
The collections are necessary to view the content, and are hard-coded to each page. They are the necessary middle cog between the web page and the content. If you delete or change the name of a collection, you disable your web page’s ability to display your content, and that's why they can't be deleted or altered. The ability to delete collections has been removed, so theoretically this should no longer be an issue.
What is this “Landing Page” folder I see in my menu directories, and what does it do?
The sub-menu pages contain one "Landing page" (this is where you "land" when you click on the menu button). The landing page houses two collections (top headline and general news). It is the same for all sub-pages that are associated with a menu button. It is not necessary (or advisable) to edit the landing page directly. You simply need to add your content items to one of the two collections (content in general news and page title in top headline). The content can be whatever you want, formatted however you want (within practical limitations); the collection just displays it. So as you can see, these two collections are simply containers for your content, and the landing page is the container for the collections.
How should my content be formatted?
Generally, content on your website must be formatted using one of two "smart form" templates. Additionally, different collections are set up to display different areas of the smart form. The two exceptions are the "Welcome Text" and "Organization Name" collections, which must have their content built as a straight html file (just a block of text). They are the only two collections on the site like this. The “Events” collection on the home page uses the “Affiliate Events” smart form, which displays its content in a date/link format. All other content uses the “Affiliate News Stories” smart form.
The content within the “Affilate News Story” has three main content sections, “short description”, “long description”, and “body”. Most collections display the “long description” on the webpage itself. The exception is the “News” collection on the home page. It displays the “short description”. When you place content within the “body”, that is what creates the “more” link on the web page to allow you to click to the “body” section. No “body”, no “more” link.
Why are there different content sections in the SmartForm I use to create articles?
Different collections are set up to display different areas of your articles. For example, the "Top Story" collection on the home page is set up to display the "long description", as well as a "more" link if content exists in the "body" section. The "News" collection, on the other hand, displays the "short description". So depending on which collection you place a particular piece of content within, it will display a different section of the story on your web page. If you simply don't want to deal with it, you can just repeat your information in all sections of the article and cover your bases that way. The specific formatting of each section will take a little trial and error.
What happens to a content file when I add it to a collection? Did I move it? Did I make a copy of it?
Nothing happens to it. Adding content to a collection merely creates a link or pointer to the content. The actual content file does not physically move, nor is it copied. The collection is just told to display it. That's why you can display one piece of content in multiple collections, but still only have to edit it once.
Menus
Where do I go to create and delete menu items?
All menu creation, editing, and deletion is done through the CMS. The create and delete links are located on the Smart Desktop, near the bottom of the right pane. To edit an existing menu item, choose "View" > "Menus" from the drop-down menu in the CMS work area. Changing the name of a menu item will not change the name of the corresponding folder. Do NOT use the "Add" or "Edit Menu" links on the menu itself. These will be going away shortly, and are unstable.
Home Page
I am not using all the sections of my home page. Can I delete those unused areas?
No, those are hard-coded to the template. Our suggestion is to find one or two permanent items to place there, so those areas have something in them, and your page looks complete. We are discussing future enhancements that may allow you to add and remove areas from the home page, but that will be down the road.
The "Events" area on the home page shows my site alias in the title. Can I change that or remove it?
That title is hard-coded to the template. It borrows the site alias to display a personalized title. We are looking into changing that so it borrows the organization name instead of the alias, but as for now, that's the way it has to be. And no, you can't delete it, either.
What is the difference between "Events" and "Featured Events" on my home page? What type of story do you put in each?
Featured Events holds content built in the “Affiliate news stories” smart form and displays content normally, while Events displays content as date/link, and those items must be built in the “Affiliate Events” smart form. See this site for a good example of each: http://wwa.usahockey.com/southeast48/
I can create events without a problem, but how do I display them on my home page?
It's a 3-step process:
- From within "Event Management", create your event and open it in a browser window, so you can copy and paste the URL from the address bar.
- From within the CMS Work Area of your website folders, create a new content piece, but instead of choosing the usual "Affiliate News Stories" smart form as your template, choose the "Affiliate Events" smart form. You will paste the URL of your event in the appropriate field of this smart form.
Add the new content piece to the "Featured Events" collection in your root directory. This will display a link to your event as a clickable bullet point in the Featured Events section of your home page.
Note: When creating an event, it's important to remember that the event is tied to the administrator that creates it, not to any particular website. Consequently, events you create while logged in under your ID can only be administrated under your ID. And that's also why once you create an event, you need to create a piece of content on your website that links to the event, in order to make it accessable to the general public.
More to come...