Copy/Paste Text from Word Documents
Never copy text directly from a Word Document and then paste it into a Serena Collage page. There are hidden tags embedded in Word that conflict with the Serena style sheets and cause web pages to load as blank.
You can save your Word document as plain text under the File menu (choose "Save As..." and make sure you change the format to Text Only). This will strip out your formatting, and give you a clean document whose content you can copy and then paste into Serena.
On a PC: It may be even easier to use Notepad (make sure not to use Wordpad). Open the Notepad application on your PC and paste the text from Word into your Notepad document. This will strip out all formatting and give you a clean document for copying/pasting.
On a Mac: You can use the TextEdit application (or even SimpleText), but as with Word, make sure you "Save As..." a plain text document. First, go to the Format menu and choose the "Make Plain Text" command. Then go to File>>Save As... and change the format to Text Only (the file must have the suffix .txt).
After you've pasted your text from Notepad (or TextEdit) into Serena Collage, you should have "clean" HTML. If for some reason you still see some formatting in the text, select that portion of the text and then click the "Clear Formatting" link at the bottom right-hand corner of your Serena Collage Edit window.
This will ensure that your Serena page does not have any stray HTML tags.
Making changes to Home Page
If you're authorized and need to apply changes to the home page there are additional steps required to have your changes pushed on the next Deploy that are dependant on your home page change:
If you are making changes to anything that touches the Home Page you will need to manipulate the Intruder Bank - Home.site structure and approve the Intruder Bank - Home.site changes, the next step you will need to take is on the home page here you need to apply a non intrusive alteration the page, save and approve your changes.
Applying changes to the home page does cause a majority of all files to be redeployed that takes about 40 minutes for deployment.
colorScheme for stand-alone sites
Many sections of the college web site are outside of the primary site file "Main.site" -- which means that the pages within those stand-alone sites don't automatically adopt the correct color scheme (they have the default green color).
The color scheme for pages that are part of the Main.site are derived from the section they flow from, so that pages in "Academics" have an overall light blue color for the breadcrumbs bar, and pages in "Admissions" have an overall fuschia color for the breadcrumbs bar.
To fix this for stand-alone sites the page at the top of the new site file (for example, the Webmaster.site) must have its colorScheme property changed. In addition, the page must be a Primary Page (found under "Metadata").
Here are the steps:
- Switch to Content -> Deploy Folders view
- Select "Properties" from the triangular drop-down menu for the file (in this case it's /WebSite/Administrative_offices/webmaster/index.xml )
- Check out the file using the button at the top of the properties window
- Change the colorScheme at the bottom of the page to the appropriate hexidecimal value (see the list below).
Check the file in, and the pages that are below that index.xml file in the site tree will have the the new color scheme.
Available color schemes:
About Columbia: F26531
Admissions: EC008C
Academics: c4d2dF
Student Life: dbca21
News: 95a9cc
Events: 8db881
Giving to Columbia: 9a5107
Administrative Offices: 6a747c
Please note: Only use the appropriate color scheme for your section of the web site.
Protect your PHP
Embedded PHP can be stripped from the source of a file if you edit the file using the graphical mode ("Edit") instead of the source view ("Source"). When you add PHP script to the source view of a page for the first time wrap it in <cmignore> tags like this:
<cmignore><?php echo 'test'; ?></cmignore>
Formatting may still get messed up, but your code will remain intact. Code on multiple lines may be re-flowed so that it's all on one line, which means that comments within the PHP should use
/* this notation style */
/* of comments */
instead of
// this notation style
// which will break your PHP
// when these four lines are pushed
// into one line.
Get rid of old bold or italics - Clear Formatting
Clear Formatting is a link located on the bottom right-hand corner of the editing screen. The Clear Formatting link is especially useful in removing Styles from your body copy.
Page Names
Use alphanumeric characters when naming a page. Avoid punctuation like commas, apostrophes, etc. Punctuation or foreign characters like "?" or "&" will cause the CMS to malfunction.
Bad stuff includes characters like æ * # & @, etc.
Right column "arrow" bullets
When you add text to the right-hand column you can format it using an unordered list to display a list with arrow bullets.
Select the text you want to format,
Then click on the List button.
Select Unordered from the dropdown list.
Thumbnail images
To see thumbnails of images, you can click on the icon within the image browser window. You may need to scroll to the right to see this icon.
Approving changes
Don't forget to approve your changes - that goes for new pages, edited pages, new graphics, and changes to site structures.
Site structures can seem hidden; you'll have to switch to "Deploy" view, then navigate to Website -> Site Files -> site structures, and then approve the changes to your site.
Add your page to the site structure.
Each web page may only be added to the site structure once.
When a new page is created, it has not yet been placed within the Site Structure, so no navigation will be displayed -- add each new page to your site structure and don't forget to approve your changes!