Content
The content module of epic allows users to add to any of our web sites themselves. Everything on the web site that isn’t controlled by a specific module of epic is contained in the content systems.
Getting started
From the content menu you have 5 options across the top of the page. Add, Edit, Copy, View and Delete.
Adding and Editing Content
The only difference between adding and editing is that to edit you must first select the article you wish to edit. Selecting can be sorted alphabetically but it is sorted chronologically by the last edited article at first.
Once you’re editing the article content you’ll have only a few fields in your view, this is to keep the interface as simple as possible. The first of those is the title. When entering a title, please keep in mind that others will use this title to find and link to your page so it should be something as descriptive as possible. For example: Congress – Main Page unequivocally tells you what that article is. The first time you save the content item, the title you have entered will be used to create the permalink which is the file portion of the web site address. For our example the permalink would be created as /congress-main-page automatically and this content item could be accessed by using any of our domains in front of it: http://www.horrtades.com/congress-main-page
The brief summary field is something that exists to be used to replace the brief summary for the News and Events modules because the content system was initially going to replace all of those (and it will one day, but other priorities exist first). This field now populates the description meta tag of the page and is searchable when people search the web sites.
The keywords field originally was going to be used for search terms but it became relatively unused immediately so now it serves to create addresses. For example; to create the web site: www.horttrades.com/pizza I would just have to put pizza as my keyword. The last edited document with the keyword is the one that will function. So if someone already had created a page with the keyword pizza and you just created a new one, your page will now be visible instead of theirs when someone goes to www.horttrades.com/pizza or www.landscapeontario.com/pizza. It is for that reason that you should check to make sure you’re not stepping on someone else’s toes. The permalink will never change but the keywords can be overridden by newer documents with the same keywords.
Then there’s the content box but we’ll get to that in a moment.
By specifying the override URL field, the page will be skipped over. This is useful for example if I want to make it so that when someone goes to www.horttrades.com/pizza it skips over our web site and goes directly to www.pizzapizza.ca. I would put in http://www.pizzapizza.ca to make that happen. more about URLs.
New wysiwyg Content Editor
(What You See Is What You Get)
This development came to epic as we got more and more content flowing through the system, we needed to be able to have anyone on staff able to edit the content on the web site. We expanded our old content builder’s functionality, made every article upgradable to the new format and created a web editor which was still friendly for those of us on staff who were comfortable with HTML.
This system is designed to be used with the latest version of Mozilla Firefox, any other browsers may not support all features or function correctly.
To edit content with the new editor it’s as simple as typing text and using the control buttons above the content menu to manipulate the text entered and add links, images and even paste in embed code from third-party sites like YouTube.
To use any of these options, place your cursor where you would like to have the code generated or select the text you’d like to apply a style to and then use the button to make the change happen.
To create a link to another page, simply type in the words you want the user to click, (avoid using the term “click here” completely) highlight the text and then click the link button which resembles a chain.
To insert an image or a link to a document of any kind (PDF, powerpoint, Word file, etc.) use the insert image button. A dialog will pop up when you click on it and you’ll be prompted to either enter the URL of an image or select from images that are already in the system. You can upload a new image using the button at the bottom of the dialog box. Fill in a title and possibly a caption which will help others find your image in the future should they require it. You can search the files which are already on the system by using the search box in the top right corner of the image selection dialog, click the question mark to refresh the image list. Once you’ve picked the one you want, click on it and you’ll be prompted to select a size for the image to be embedded. You can re-size the image after it’s placed in your content item but be careful that you don’t scale a full sized image which will cause people to download your huge image before it’s show to them on their screen. Use one of the presets if possible. From that dialog you can also choose whether to make your image aligned or cling to a character position and also select any amount of pixel padding. I suggest 15 pixels but you be the judge.
To insert a table click the table button, choose how many rows and columns you desire when prompted and your table will be created.
Make your text bold by selecting the text you’d like to make bold and then pressing the B button.
Make your text italicized by selecting the text you’d like to make italic and
then pressing the I button.
Make your text underlined by selecting the text you’d like to make underlined and
then pressing the U button.
Place your cursor in the paragraph or highlight the text you’d like to modify and click the left align button to align the text to the left.
Place your cursor in the paragraph or highlight the text you’d like to
modify and click the centre align button to align the text to the centre.
Place your cursor in the paragraph or highlight the text you’d like to
modify and click the right align button to align the text to the right.
Highlight the text you’d like to turn into a numbered list and click the button to make the numbers appear. Each new line in your selected text will be assigned a number automatically and you can add more text later on anywhere in the sequence. The numbers will increment without any interaction.
Highlight the text you’d like to turn into an unordered list and click the button to make the bullets appear. Each new line in your selected text will be indented and have a bullet placed next to it.
To undent an intended paragraph select this button with your cursor in the paragraph or highlighting a selection.
To indent a paragraph select this button with your cursor
in the paragraph or highlighting a selection.
Use the insert HTML button to place in any code you like at the cursor position. This option exists so that you can easily copy and paste HTML code provided from sources like YouTube or an advertiser’s banner ad code.
You can apply styles by highlighting the text you’d like to change and then putting your mouse over the style selection button and then clicking on the style you’d like to select. At this time, you cannot click on the style button because it will change your cursor selection and the style won’t be applied correctly. The coolest part about this style button is that the styles come from the page that you’re going to use them on. So the same article will appear correctly no matter which one of the web sites you view it on.
Copying Content
You can copy content items using the copy button. Just enter the new title and the content item will be copied to a new item. This is extremely useful when you’re taking content designed for one province and modifying it for another or if you’re using another document as a template for a new one.
View Content
To view your content, open another tab and go to http://www.horttrades.com/your-permalink-here If you want to view your page in the Green for Life style go to http://www.landscapeontario.com/your-permalink-here To view the file without any styles applied (to preview for an email, for example) go to http://www.horttrades.com/nostyleyour-permalink-here
The view button simply creates these links for you.
Shorten URL
When sharing addresses on the web, especially with services like Twitter where brevity is key, a short URL is important. To address that concern and maintain our own image when doing so, we’ve set up http://gfl.me as our short domain and you can easy take any article in the content builder and link to it with whatever site image you chose. Click on Shorten URL, select your article and the desired site you want that content item to appear on and you’ll be presented with the shortened URL for you to copy/paste into your tweet or email.
Emailing Content
You can now use the content builder to send out perfectly crafted email campaigns to any list of contacts/companies you’d like to through epic.
- From the main content page, click on Email at the bottom.
- Select your content item or search for it if it’s older.
- Enter the Subject for your message.
- Select the domain name for any relative links. (If it’s a trade campaign use horttrades.com or a consumer campaign use landscapeontario.com)
- Enter a lower-case, one word keyword for analytics purposes. For example use “toronto” for the Toronto Chapter eNews. This way we can filter clicks by keyword to see the effectiveness of your campaign.
Once you submit the form, the program will process your content item and email it into the email campaigns system where you can pick it up and send it out. Always send yourself a test message before you send it to multiple contacts.
Menus and Profile Images
Specifically created for the Green for Life sites, by attaching an article to a menu item it will not only know where it’s supposed to appear on the site, it will also be available for users to search (otherwise it will remain hidden) and will display the brief description in the search results.
By supplying a profile image, the article will appear in the GfL site in the selected menus with all of the generated graphics required based on that image. The order of appearance is based on the last edited article in the menu category.
