January 13, 2012 by Creative Services
It’s hard to believe but Creative Services is two years old today. Our first birthday blog post tells of how the first year was one of transition as we merged two campus organizations together.
Our second year has been filled with lots of collaboration and accomplishments. I’m going to be optimistic and assume if you are reading this post that you are a regular reader of our blog and have an idea of what we’ve been up to this past year. But, I will highlight a few (wait, what’s the definition of “few?”) that we proudly display in our baby brag book.
Okay, okay, that’s more than a few and is certainly not inclusive. It’s been a fabulous year.
Happy Birthday to us!
~ Tina L. Coleman
Posted in Creative Services | 1 Comment »
January 12, 2012 by Creative Services
W&M Cascaders, embedding a YouTube Video in the content of a page or story is an easy and powerful way to engage visitors. But often the poster frame and the placement in your page do not provide enough context and the impact of the video is lost. Not to worry, much like content images, your videos can now include optional (but highly recommended) captions. For example to embed a small, left-aligned version of the W&M holiday video in your page with the caption, “Enjoy this musical greeting from William & Mary students.” you need only type the following in your editor:
{{youtube:small:left|MbtyALJGahk, Enjoy this musical greeting from William & Mary students.}}
Details in the help pages.
-Mark Windley
Posted in Cascade CMS, Cascade Tip of the Month, Content, Tools, Video | No Comments »
January 9, 2012 by Creative Services
The scrolling images at the top of many of our news stories and features have a fresh new look. Behind the curtains it is another step toward the consolidation of all javascript into the lighter and more flexible jQuery library <rubbing hands, evil nerd laugh>. Visually, we’ve removed the arrows from the images (a usability issue) and replaced them with familiar number navigation under the caption and we tweaked the font and background colors to make the captions easier to read. These photosets are also more forgiving of images that are not the ideal width (no more str–e–tching.)
Browse our sites and check them out.
W&M and Arts & Sciences
School of Education
Mason School of Business
Law School
Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS)
W&M Cascade users don’t worry, you can build photosets the same way as you always have. However, if you prefer the “widget” building method (entering captions and selecting images in one file) you can do that with the new photosets too! More in the help pages.
- Mark Windley
Posted in Cascade CMS, Content, Features, Tools | No Comments »
January 5, 2012 by Creative Services
The moment you’ve all been waiting for:
*drumroll*
Spring 2012 Cascade Training Dates! Hooray!
-Justin
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January 3, 2012 by Creative Services
As the new year begins, this “quieter” period between semesters is a great time to take a moment to look at the content on your site. Here’s a quick checklist you can follow in just an hour or two to get you started “freshening up” your content:
Here’s to a great (and updated) 2012!
-Tiffany Broadbent
Posted in Cascade CMS, Communication, Content | 1 Comment »
December 20, 2011 by Creative Services
From time to time we stumble on tools that make our lives easier. Here is one we have found for searching out those pesky broken links in your site.
It’s a free software download, and comes with no implied warranty, but several of us over here have found it very helpful. You’ll find versions to download for Windows, Mac, and yes … even Linux. From the link below select your operating system to kick off the download. Click the usual “yes, let this program touch my computer” and the installer will take it the rest of the way.
http://linkchecker.sourceforge.net/
Once installed, when you open Link Checker simply fill in the address of your site and click Start. You can watch the report building, and then save it for later if you like. Your report will tell you exactly where on your page to find the link, what the link text says, and to what url it is pointing.
Tip: when typing in the address of your site, be sure to use the trailing “/” (http://www.wm.edu/xxx/ VS. http://www.wm.edu/xxx).
As with other tools of this nature, you will see some false positives. But with a little practice, you’ll get a feel for those.
Happy editing!
~ Jesse
*UPDATE* Here are a few examples of the false positives you can just ignore: javascript, foursquare, facebook, any other social media url errors, and any errors for links that lead to a login page (like myWM) or email addresses.
Posted in Cascade CMS, Content, Tools | Tagged broken, cascade, links, tool | 2 Comments »
December 7, 2011 by Creative Services
In the Cascade editor hold down the “Shift” button when you click “Enter” to add a single line break instead of starting a new paragraph. This trick also works in Microsoft Word.
Posted in Cascade CMS, Cascade Tip of the Month, Content | No Comments »
