Collage Tips and Tricks

Visit http://www.colum.edu/web_development/ to find out how to sign up for the Web Designers mailing list. This list will send email updates as changes are made to the CMS or to the Columbia College site

The staging (temporary testing) server is temp.colum.edu. Assets are pushed from the CMS to the staging server every 20-40 minutes. Assets are then pushed from the staging server to the live server every 20-40 minutes.

There is also a Collage guest login for sites that have not been "approved" yet -- please contact the CMS administrator for username and password details.

Compatible web browsers
Mac users: please use Firefox 1.5 (Firefox 2.0 has problems as of Jan. 2007).
Windows users: Firefox 1.5 or Internet Explorer 5.5 or 6

Popup blockers (Internet Explorer, Google Popup Blocker, Yahoo, etc.) need to be disabled in order to use Collage.

If Collage is unresponsive even after the ActiveX script has been installed, you may need to update your Java software. To download the most current Java, go to http://www.java.com/en/download/index.jsp.

Logout when you are finished so that the license you are using is freed for other users. We have a limited number of "seats" for Collage, and your seat will be occupied until you log out.

There is a link in the upper-right-hand corner of the Collage screen called "Logout" that will do the trick!

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.