Editing Pages

Pages are edited in a separate website to the "live" website - the changes are copied over to the live website once they have been approved by the Webmaster. To edit your pages you need to visit https://umcontent.umn.edu/UMRTEST. We call this website the workspace.

Table of contents:

• Finding Your Page
• Using the Editing Window
• Pasting Text
• Inserting Images
• Adding Links
• Saving Your Page

Finding Your Page

• After you load the workspace, navigate to the page you wish to edit by using the website menus.
• Before you can edit the page, you need to be in Contribution Mode. To trigger this, hold down Ctrl+Shift and then press and release F5 before releasing the other two keys (Note for Mac users: you may also need to press Fn along with F5).
• The page should reload, and you should see something similar to the following:

• There are several buttons marked on the page (when in contribution mode) which control the content and layout of the page. The only one you need to worry about is the one called MainContent (marked with a green arrow on the above screenshot).
• In the MainContent rectangle, click on the Edit icon  to launch the editing window. Note: this opens in a popup window - you might have to tell your browser to allow the popup the first time you do this.

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Using the Editing Window

• When the window loads, you will see two grayed-out boxes. Click on them to load the editing interface for each box.

• Most pages have two editable elements, one per box:
  • Page Title corresponds to the Maroon bar underneath the yellow navigation bar
  • Content corresponds to the white box in the middle of the page - this is where the actual content (text, images and links) of the page is stored.
• The buttons in the Content box should look familiar to you - they are similar to those found in most word processors. A description of some of the more important ones follows.

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Pasting Text

There are three clipboard icons that can be used for pasting text. Usually you will need to use either Paste as plain text or Paste from Word . The latter allows you to maintain some formatting from your original document; however it isn't foolproof and you might have to do some additional tweaking to get it looking how you want it. It is usually easier in the long-run if you use Paste as plain text and then re-add your formatting via the edit window.

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Inserting Images

Step 1: Move your cursor to the position you want the image to appear in, and click on the Image icon . A popup window will appear with a list of images already uploaded to the server. You might need to search for your desired image using the "Quick Search" at the top of the page. Once found, click "Select".

Step 2: Your image should now be displayed on the page. Right-click on it, and choose "Image Properties".

Step 3: Click on the "Reset Size" icon to automatically fill in the image height and width. Also pay attention to the "Alternative Text" - this is used by Screen Readers to describe the image, so ensure that the description given here makes sense. Click "OK" to apply the changes.

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Adding Links

Step 1: Select the text you want to use for the link, and click the Link icon  . A popup window will appear as follows:

Step 2: Choose the type of link you want:

• To link to another page within the UMR website, choose "Link to a section".
• To link to a file you have already uploaded, choose "Link to a file".
• To link to a different website, choose "Link to the following URL" and enter the link address in the box.

Step 3: Unless you have chosen "Link to a section" or are adding an anchor or email link, click on "Options...", check "Open link target in a new window", and choose "_blank" from the drop-down box. This ensures that external links open in a new window or tab, rather than throwing people off the UMR website when they follow the link.

Step 4: Click "Next" and follow the instructions for your link type.

• Link to section: Choose the section you want to link to and click "Finish".
• Link to file:
  
  • Click "Existing file from server" and click "Next".
  • Choose the file from the popup window that appears. Search for it using the "Quick Search" at the top of the page if necessary. Once found, click "Select".
  • Choose "Link to the Content Item's URL" and click "Finish".
• Link to URL: Check that you typed in the link address correctly, and click "Finish".

Linking to an Email Address

Follow the instructions above for linking to a URL, but delete the "http://" from the input box. Prefix the email address with "mailto:", e.g. mailto:umrweb@umn.edu. 

Adding Anchors ("Jump To" Links)

• Sometimes you want to link to an area within the same page - an example can be found at the top of this page. To do this, first you create an anchor and then you create a link to that anchor.
• To create the anchor, move your cursor to the point where you want the anchor, and click on the Insert/Edit Anchor icon . Enter an Anchor Name (lower-case, alphanumerics only), and remember it for the next step. Click OK.
• To create the link to the anchor, follow the instructions above for linking to a URL, but delete the "http://" from the input box. Enter a hash ("#") followed by the name of the anchor you just created, e.g. #section1.
• There is one anchor present in the design of every page - top. This can be used to create "back to top" links on longer pages, such as the ones you see on this page.

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Saving your page

While editing your page you may click on the Preview icon  to see what it will look like once it is saved. Only click on the Save and Close button  when you're sure you are done, because this will lock the website and trigger the approval process. For more information on this process, please read Approval and Publishing.

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