Best Practices

If you change the output URI of a section (i.e. the web address of a published page), there is no longer any record of it in site manager and it will not know to delete it.
Site managers developers were aware that this might happen and their (lazy) solution to this was to have an option to clear down the target directory before the published files are transferred there.

But Site Manager is not the only content creator for our web servers.  For this reason, it has been told not to blindly delete everything it doesn’t know about before it publishes files to the web server.
So this means that site manager will not remove files, that it used to publish under a forgotten name, from the web server.

If you ever need to change the web address of a section, the best thing to do is as follows:

• Delete the old section
• Create a new one with the same name, giving it the new output URI
• Move the content (and any sub-sections) from the old section into the new one

This way, site manager will know about the deleted section, and remove its page from the web server.

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How to stop publishing content and keep it for later

If a piece of content's status is 'inactive', it's in the recycle bin, waiting to be permanently deleted. This is not a good place to keep something you want to reuse later because it could disappear at any time.  There are two approaches you can take to achieve this:

Option 1: Expire the content

Instead of deleting, expire the content so that it will stop publishing and can be easily re-enabled in the future.

The only drawback to this approach is that the expired content remains listed in your section, making it more difficult for you to see which pieces of content, in the list, are being published.  This is why some users prefer to use an alternative method, which de-clutters your content list, while also removing the content from your page, keeping it for later reuse:

Option 2: Move the content to a non-publishing section

To stop publishing content but but keep it indefinitely, for future re-use, create a section called 'Not for Publication' and change its status to 'Pending'. If you like, you can create sub-sections within this to organise your preserved content (you can leave their status' as 'Approved').

Then, simply move the content you wish to unpublish (but keep) into 'Not for Publication' or one of its sub-sections.

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The browser can display many characters that are not on your keyboard.

When you are not in a rich-text editor (i.e. there are no MS Word-like icons at the top of the field you are typing in), then you need to supply the HTML code for the character.
Every character has at a numerical HTML code and the more popular ones have named codes too.

All HTML codes start with an &.  If you want to enter a numerical code, add a # followed by the number - otherwise, type the name.  Finally, finish it by typing a semi-colon (;).
E.g. both &181; and µ will produce this character: µ

A good demonstration of all the HTML character codes is available here: https://www.rapidtables.com/web/html/html-codes.html

If you are in the rich-text editor, you can switch into html view, to use the above method (if you type in a code in normal view, it will convert your first character (&) into its special code (&) and the entire code will appear on your published page instead of the special character you intended).

Or else you can use the Ω button to easily insert a special character - Click on the Insert tab above and choose the Special Character option.

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Most site visitors will be forced to download Office 365 files whenever they click on the link to a document.

Although you could consider exporting your word document to PDF (portable document format) and uploading that PDF document to the media library instead, PDF's are not very accessible for those using a screen reader.  You should follow steps to make your document accessible before converting it to a PDF.  A caveat is that even when converted the PDF may not be acccessible depending on its content.  The only way to remediate an inaccessible PDF is by using Adobe Acrobat Pro (available on subscription) otherwise you will need to correct the error in the Source doccument (if possible) and then export it to PDF again.

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Site manager tries to create pages that confom to  WCAG  Level AA, as per EU guidelines.
But it didn't always do this so you may need to re-edit your content to fill in some empty 'description' fields, wherever an image is used.
Care also has to be taken if you're adding tables - there are certain extra steps you need to take to ensure they are accessible.

We've created a few short videos to explain it:
What is accessibility & why it's important
Ensuring your page's accessibility in T4

Common mistakes to avoid:
 - Never use an image that contains blocks of text - use text instead (so screen readers can read it)

If you're adding a document to the website, it needs to be accessible too:
How to make a Word document accessible
How to make a PDF document accessible
How to make an Excel document accessible
How to make a PowerPoint document accessible

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It's best to use 'Paste as Text' option (Edit tab dropdown menu) if you're pasting into the WYSIWYG editor field particularly if the content type doesn't have a big character allowance.  You can also use the Clear formatting option to remove and in line styles and formatting.

- Removes formatting from clipboard text and pastes as plain text.

- Removes the inline styles and formatting from the current selection.

It's not uncommon for the character count in T4 to be double that which was reported by MS Word, once you paste it into T4.  There is a lot of invisible text in web pages, which use HTML to tell browsers how to display this content: E.g.

• Paragraphs are defined by putting <p> before and </p> after their text
• Links use up far more characters than their visible (clickable) text, to tell the browser where to link to.

Also, because of differences in international keyboards, web pages need to use special codes for certain characters, to ensure they display correctly worldwide. For example:

• a '&' will be denoted by '&'
• an é is defined by 'é'.

And because browsers treat multiple consecutive spaces as a single space, the rich-text editor counteracts this by changing every second consecutive space in your content into a non-breaking space character: ' '.

Also note, pasted Word text can have its own invisible instructions (e.g. use this font, at that size, and in this colour). These will be ignored by the website, and won't display in the editor.  You will need to view the Source Code to see the additional characters, depending on the original formatting instruction it can eat up your 'used character' count. This is why the rich text editor has a 'Paste as Text' feature and a 'Clear formatting' feature.

We have a bookmarklet to Count the Selected Text's Length, just select the text and click on your Count the Selected Text Length bookmarklet to count how many characters are in the selected text.
Note: While this works great on normal websites, using it on WYSIWYG editor text will report zero characters. To get the true length of a WYSIWYG editor's text, you must select 'View' - 'Source Code' and then count the characters.

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A scheduled publish runs at the top of  every hour.  Any content change that was approved since the last publish will be live by 25 past the hour.

Power users or Administrators can  manually publish pages but they'd need a good reason not to wait for the hourly publish - and they can only manually publish if another publish is not already running.

If it’s essential that your edits publish ASAP (instead of at the top of the hour):
Make all your edits for the page (Savng & Approving each time) and then run a single publish, provided the current time is between 25-49 minutes past the hour.
If it’s less than 5 minutes to the hour, wait for the scheduled publish to publish it.  If it’s before 25 past the hour, the scheduled publish will still be running, so wait until 25 past to manually publish it.
If someone else is already manually publishing something, do not choose the option to publish anyway.

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If you change the output URI of a section (i.e. the web address of a published page), there is no longer any record of it in site manager and it will not know to delete it.
Site manager's developers were aware that this might happen and their (lazy) solution to this was to have an option to clear down the target directory before the published files are transferred there.

But Site Manager is not the only content creator for our web servers.  For this reason, it has been told not to blindly delete everything it doesn’t know about before it publishes files to the web server.
So this means that site manager will not remove files, that it used to publish under a different name (but has now forgotten), from the web.

 If you discover an old version of a page, that was since renamed, you can remove it as follows:

• Create a new section with an output URI that will overwrite the old file 
  See Controlling the web address of published pages and files
• Add some content to it and approve it (remember, site manager will not publish an empty page)
• Wait for this to publish to the live site, overwriting the old page.
• Delete your new section - site manager will delete the page from the web server during the next publish/transfer cycle.

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Tip: start at around 5 past the hour to give yourself plenty of time to be finished before the next publish happens - there's no point in putting yourself under pressure!

1. Edit the section you want to overhaul and make its status pending. Then click Save changes.
   The section will be orange on the site structure and will be removed from the live site on next publish.
   (Note: any sub-sections of the orange section will also be removed from your website)

If you want a temporary replacement page, do the following before the next publish happens:

2. Create a new section with the exact same Name and Output URI as the one you just made pending.
3. Add some content to this section saying something like 'This page is being updated'. If you like, add a countdown content type to show when it's due to be back.
4. Save and approve all the content. The page is now ready to go live on the next publish, replacing the one you're working on.

You'll be able to work immediately on your original section (which is now orange), using the CMS's preview to view your changes.

When it's time to make your changes live:

1. Delete the section with the 'temporarily down' message (if you made one).
2. Make sure all the content in your pending (orange) section is approved.
3. Change the status of your pending section to Approved and click Save changes.
4. Wait for it to publish at the top of the hour.

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You can make the changes you want but only click Save changes (instead of Save & approve) so that you'll see your changes in preview but the live site remains the same.
When you’re ready for these changes to go live, approve all your mods in the section. 

But if you are moving content types around, or deleting any content types as part of your edits, then you’ll want to create a complete copy of the page so that your can test your edits without affecting the published page. 
To do this, create another section at the same level (but with a different Output URI), or else create a  subsection (its ok to use the same Output URI if you create a sub-section).
Make sure this new section does not show in navigation – its temporary so you don’t want it to appear on your site.
Create any brand new content in this new section - so that you can test it by previewing.  Copy in all the content from the original page first, if you need to.

Once you are happy with how the new page looks,  Save and approve all your new content.
And then you need to make the new version of the page live:
Either :

1. Delete all necessary content in the original section and
2. Move all the new, approved content from the temporary section into the original (live page’s) section.

Or else

1. Delete the original secton,  
2. Give the new section the exact same output URI as the original (now deleted) section, and
3. Move the new section to the exact same place as the original in the site structure. 

For info on moving sections, see http://www.nuigalway.ie/t4training/course/#editMenus (4m, 24s)
For info on copying / moving content: see the first 2.5 minutes of http://www.nuigalway.ie/t4training/course/#usefulInfo (12m, 17s)

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NUI Galway web addresses are structured and consistent to maximise site navigability.
The CMS does most of the work for you but there are simple rules you must follow to ensure it can do this perfectly:

1. You should give sections a name and an 'Output URI' only (i.e. leave 'Output File Name' blank) there should be no spaces in it.  You should use hyphens instead.
   Unless its a course page - in this case give it a name and an 'Output File Name' only (leave 'Output URI' blank)
2. For non-course pages, it’s not illegal to fill in 'Output File Name' too (it’s just unnecessary) but, if you do, there should be no spaces in it.  You should use hyphens instead.
3. And for both ‘Output URI’ and ‘Output File Name’, you need to avoid certain characters that are reserved by the HTTP protocol:
   ! * ' ( ) ; : @ & = + $ , / ? % # [ ]

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If you want to share any office document for collaboration, you should save your document to OneDrive (Microsoft's cloud-based storage) or else create it in office.com, which always saves to OneDrive. Then, in MS Word, share it with people in your organisation who have the link.
If you need the link to be on your site, copy the share link from Word and use this to create a link in your web page.

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If you want to share a file that is larger than 15MB, you cannot do this via the media library.
However, if it is an MS Office Document (e.g. .docx, .pptx, .pdf) you can reduce the filesize by web optimising the images it contains. Online tools (e.g. wecompress.com) allow you to do this very quickly.
Then you can simply upload the document to the media library and then link to it in your webpage.

For files that cannot be reduced to below 15MB, or are not office documents, you should upload it to OneDrive (Microsoft's cloud-based storage) and put a link to it on your webpage:

1. Log into office.com
2. Use the waffle menu (top left) and choose OneDrive.  Or else click on the cloud icon on the left bar.
3. Upload your file (look for the upload button near the top of the screen).
4. When the file is listed in Onedrive, hover over it and click the share button (or else right-click it and select 'share').
   A 'Send Link' popup appears.
5. Change who can view the file and copy the link:  
   a. At the bottom (Under 'Copy Link'), it says 'People you specify can view'.  Click this.
   b. Click 'Anyone with the link'
   c. Click 'Apply'
   d. The link appears - click the copy button.
6. In another tab, go to site manager and edit your page's section.  Add an external link  (use Ctrl-V [PC] or Cmd-V [mac] to paste in the copied link address).

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If you have multiple sections or content which you no longer need and your site structure is looking cluttered. 

1. Create a section called 'TRASH' or 'DELETED'
   
2. Under the General Tab set the section status to 'Pending'. 

As per the image above, once set to pending the folder colour will be Orange and will not publish.

• Select the content you no longer want on your site and Select Delete from the dropdown menu. 
• Once you have deleted a content item the status will be 'inactive', once set to inactive the folder colour will be Red.   
• You can now move the deleted content into the newly created 'TRASH' or 'DELETED' section so that it is not cluttering up your view.

At intervals the system will be purged of any content within sections labelled 'TRASH' or 'DELETED' and your unwanted content will be permanently deleted.

Do not place items which you might want to use again in the future into the 'TRASH' or 'DELETED' sections.  Content can not be retrieved once permanently deleted from the system. 

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Find the document in the media library.
Click on the Actions button and choose Edit
Click on the 'Drop file here or click to Choose' field to select the newer version of the file from your hard disk. Or drag and drop the file into this field.

Tip: Make sure the filename does not contain any spaces or it might not upload.
Also, remove any characters that are reserved for web addresses ( ! * ' ( ) ; : @ & = + $ , / ? % # [ ] ) or you may not be able to browse to the file once it's uploaded. 

Click 'Save changes' to save your changes.

Any links to this media item will point to the updated document within 2 hours.  The old version of the file will be deleted from the web server.

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If you are replacing an image, you must make sure the new image you're uploading has a different name - if you don't, browsers will show the old image, remembered from when they visited the page before.
Also ensure its filename does not contain any spaces or else it might not upload. 
And don't use any characters that are reserved for web addresses in its filename ( ! * ' ( ) ; : @ & = + $ , / ? % # [ ] ) or you may not be able to load the image once it's uploaded. 

Now that you've renamed the new image, it's time to upload it to the web server:

If the image is in the Media Library:

Find the image in the media library.
Edit that media item, click 'Drop or choose...' field and select the newer version of the file from your hard disk.
Click 'Save changes' to save your changes.

Anywhere the old image was shown will begin showing the new image within 2 hours.  The old version of the image will be deleted from the web server.

If the image is embedded in a content type

Edit the content type. 
In the image field, click 'Download Image' (if you want to keep a backup of the old one).
Click 'Drop or choose...' and upload your new image as normal.

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