Introduction

As illustrated below, the Ohio University home page and the Bicentennial subsite are already being served from the newer CommonSpot Front Door server ("www.ohio.edu"). Any attempt to get any of those pages from the older VMS Front Door server ("www.ohiou.edu") results in an HTTP protocol "redirect," telling the browser to ask for that page from the CommonSpot Front Door server, instead. The VMS Front Door server continues to serve many subsites, including (at the time the graphic was drawn) the Policy and Procedure Manual and the Athens Campus Map and Tour. Any attempt to get any of those pages from the CommonSpot Front Door server results in a redirect, telling the browser to ask for that page from the VMS Front Door server, instead.

The diagram shown above is simplified; in fact, the CommonSpot Front Door involves three separate servers: the authoring server, "author.admsrv.ohio.edu," the read-only public server, "www.ohio.edu" (sometimes referred to as the "ROPS"), both of which are shown in the diagram, and also their shared "back-end" database server, which is not shown. Pages viewed from the two CommonSpot servers will be identical, except that redirection happens for the public server, but not for the authoring server.

You work on pages in your subsite in CommonSpot by accessing those pages with URLs that look like:

http://author.admsrv.ohio.edu/subsite/

Once you are satisfied with a new page, or with a change to an existing page, you will instruct CommonSpot to "publish" that update, and it will be visible immediately from the authoring server. A separate process updates the public server, typically within a few minutes. When the update flow from the authoring server to the public server is obstructed, it is obstructed for every page author, and it requires manual intervention by systems staff to revive it, so the sooner we know about it the better. After submitting your changes for publication, always confirm that your updates are visible to the public. If not, wait ten minutes and re-load the page. If still not right, contact the OIT Service Desk immediately, at 593-1222, to report the problem.

Terminology

Many terms will be introduced as they are used, but there are a few that should be presented right away (some of which we have already been using). We will try to be consistent throughout this seminar in using these words as described here:

• site  refers to the entire collection of pages found on a single server; for example, the older, VMS Front Door site is all those pages whose URLs start with "http://www.ohiou.edu/" and the new, CommonSpot Front Door site is all those pages whose URLs start with "http://www.ohio.edu/".

• subsite  refers to all those pages that share a first-level URL within a site; for example, the first subsite to be published from the CommonSpot server was the bicentennial subsite, all of the pages whose URLs start with "http://www.ohio.edu/bicentennial/".

• sub-subsite  refers to a group of pages within a subsite whose URLs all match through at least one more "extra" slash (a sub-subsite is achieved on most servers by placing those files into their own folder or subdirectory); for example,
  http://www.ohiou.edu/pagemasters/memo85/chap1.html

  and

  http://www.ohiou.edu/pagemasters/memo85/chap2.html

  are both part of the "memo85" sub-subsite of the "pagemasters" subsite. Subsite pagemasters are responsible for creating sub-subsites. Some CommonSpot screens refer to sub-subsites as "child subsites."

• page element  refers to an item within a page that has its own access controls, identifying the people and groups who are allowed to create, read, revise, or remove that item. This may be a single graphic image, a paragraph, or the entire main section of a page. Page elements can be shared among more than one page, with updates done once and being reflected immediately on all pages where the shared element appears.

• content contributors  are people who are responsible for one or more parts of a subsite. Their responsibility may extend to one or more entire pages, or may be restricted to a single page element that appears on one page.

• subsite pagemasters  are people who are responsible, as individuals or as a group, for an entire subsite. Often the "subsite" prefix will be left off, and "pagemaster" by itself will be used with this meaning. Some of the CommonSpot screens and documentation use the phrase "subsite administrator" with this meaning. Subsite pagemasters can do everything that a content contributor can do, and more besides. In addition to creating sub-subsites, subsite pagemasters are also responsible for controlling membership in the groups of users who are pagemasters or content contributors for their subsite.

• templates  are the starting point for constructing pages in CommonSpot. The two types of templates are "base templates" (which are hand-coded by programming staff) and "derived templates" (which any CommonSpot subsite pagemaster or content contributor can create by adding elements to an existing base template or derived template). Unlike some other Web publishing tools, CommonSpot templates include only items that will be identical on all pages derived from that template; they also include content-free placeholders where page-specific content will be built.

• render options  refers to one of CommonSpot's mechanisms for choosing among the standardized design variations that have been explicitly coded into a base template. For example, the "official_pages0" base template (on which the "official_pages1" derived template is built) is coded to permit the page author to choose (by the render options mechanism) whether or not to display the "Sitewide Navigation Bar" immediately below the header.

Jumping In

Explore your CommonSpot Demo Site

1. Go to http://author.admsrv.ohio.edu/secure.cfm.

2. In class, enter your demo OAK login ID and Password (not your own personal OAK login ID or password). When working on your real subsite, you will use your own personal OAK login ID and password.

3. Observe the "Pending Actions" dialog box. It will be displayed every time you login, listing any pages on which you have work-in-progress, any of your pages on which CommonSpot is aware of broken links, any pages that have been submitted for publication by others that require your approval, and any pages that have been changed recently that you asked CommonSpot to tell you about. For now, close the "Pending Actions" dialog box; you can bring it back up later.

4. Navigate to your demo subsite's home page and observe the three tool ("shortcut") icons at the top center. In the next section we will begin our exploration of the tools available through these icons for modifying this page or creating a new one.

5. If, during your session, your authentication expires (most likely as a result of what appears to CommonSpot to be inactivity), then the shortcut icons will disappear and their tools will not be available. If you then attempt to access
   http://author.admsrv.ohio.edu/demoX/admin.cfm

   or the equivalent page in your real subsite or sub-subsite, your browser will automatically re-submit your password on your behalf, and when you return to the page you were working on, the shortcut icons will be re-displayed.




Investigate the Shortcut Icons  

Observe the shortcut icons at the top center of the page. Clicking on each of these icons brings up a menu of choices that depend upon the context. To take a choice, move the mouse (keeping it within the menu box) until it is over that choice, then click as usual. If you move the mouse outside of the gray menu box, that menu will collapse with no choice being made.

1. The "Knowledge Maps" icon contains primarily features that assist users in locating content within the site. The choices that are available will depend on whether you are in "Read," "Author," or "Edit" mode. The "Document Information," "Image Gallery," "Referring Pages," and "Validate Links" choices are of more general use.

2. The "View Modes" icon contains options for users to toggle between "Read", "Author", "Edit", and "Preview" modes. Users can also view previous versions of a page. The choices that are available will depend on whether you are in "Read," "Author," or "Edit" mode. Because of the way Ohio University's installation of CommonSpot uses OAK login ID and password for authentication, the "Logout..." choice will accomplish nothing. When you are done using CommonSpot, close all browser windows.

3. The "Page & Template Management" icon contains options for creating new pages and templates, and for setting content expiration. The choices that are available will depend on whether you are in "Read," "Author," or "Edit" mode. The "My Pages..." and "Page Properties..." choices are of particular use.




Modify Your Demo Homepage

While you are modifying a page, CommonSpot will routinely create one or more windows to function as dialog boxes and forms to obtain your input. Often it will initially create these windows off-screen, and then when they are complete, re-position them onto the visible part of the display. If the final repositioning fails to occur, you can right-click on the taskbar segment for that window and choose "maximize" to get it visible.

1. Return to your demo subsite's home page, if you are not still there. In "Read" mode you are seeing only those changes that have been completed and published.

2. Click on the "View Modes" icon and in class select "Author" from the menu. In "Author" mode, you will see the completed and published version that was visible in "Read" mode, as modified by any changes that are your own work-in-progress. In "Edit" mode, you will be able to see and work with not only your own work-in-progress, but also work-in-progress by all other CommonSpot pagemasters or content contributors who have been authorized to work on that page.

3. After the page has been re-drawn in "Author" mode, observe that your page now includes various small CommonSpot tool icons, in addition to the three primary tool icons at the top center. Clicking on these icons will bring out menus of various actions. Each CommonSpot element will have at least one tool icon above it.

4. Examine the lower left of the page, just above the gray footer bar. You will see a block of "boilerplate" identifying the person who most recently modified the page, and immediately above the boilerplate, on the left margin, four CommonSpot tool icons. Click on the name of the person in the boilerplate.

5. This will bring up the Rich Text Editor ("RTE"); we will return for a more detailed exploration of the RTE later. For now, change the name to your own, and change the date to the current date.

6. Click on the "Finish" button when you have made those two changes.

7. Observe that the changed boilerplate now has five CommonSpot tool icons; the new one is a yellow "work-in-progress" icon, which should look similar to one of the following:

   , , or .

   Such changed or new material is visible only when in "Author", "Edit", or "Preview" mode (and to those who are part of the formal approval process for that change, if there is one). "Preview" mode displays the page as your audience would see it if all work-in-progress items were submitted for publication in their current state. "Edit" mode permits you to see, to further revise, and to discard or to submit for publication, work in progress that was initiated by someone else. Other people's work in progress is not visible to you when you are in "Author" mode.

8. Click on the yellow work-in-progress icon and select "Submit entire page for publication..."; be very careful to avoid selecting "Discard Change," which is adjacent on the menu!

   If you had multiple page elements with changes that were still work-in-progress, you could choose to submit any one element's changes for publication at any time, by clicking on the appropriate yellow work-in-progress icon, and choosing "Submit Change for Publication..." from the menu. That will leave the other elements' changes still as work-in-progress, visible only while in "Author" or "Edit" mode. If you have only one change to submit, the system is likely to be quicker in responding to the "Submit Change..." choice than it can be for the "Submit entire page..." choice. If CommonSpot has gotten confused about some aspect of the page, it is more likely to recover during a "Submit entire page..." procedure than during a "Submit Change..." procedure.

   While you are first building your subsite, it is appropriate to activate new pages, and to publish changes in revised pages, as you go along. Once your subsite is in production, however, you may well choose to get a new page entirely ready before activating it, or choose to complete an entire set of revisions to the content of an existing page before publishing them all together.

9. In the resulting publication dialog box, you will find the opportunity to provide comments. Please make a habit of doing so -- they will prove quite useful when you need to use the Version History feature, among other times. Do consider that the times when you need to use Version History are times when the world is already seeing something that is wrong, so any help that will speed your selection of the correct prior version is a very good thing!

10. In the publication dialog box you will also find a check-box, immediately after the comment section, to display the page in "Read" mode after publishing the changes. Often it is best to check that box.

11. In class, be sure to wait your turn to click on the "OK" button.

12. Observe that the page is displayed in "Read" mode, and that your changes have taken effect.

13. Click on the "View Modes" icon and select "Author" from the menu.

14. Direct your attention just above the boilerplate section. Near the left margin you will see a collection of four CommonSpot tool icons (the fifth, yellow work-in-progress icon will be gone). Above them, you will see a short, wide box, inside of which is a "phantom" or "ghost" link, saying, "Click here to define the layout."

15. Click there to define the layout. You will see a dialog window that provides control of all the usual HTML table attributes. We will return to explore this dialog later.

16. Click on the "OK" button to accept the defaults, creating a one-column by one-row table, with no borders or cell padding.

17. Observe the yellow work-in-progress icon and the new "Click to insert new element" choice.

18. Click on the "Click to insert new element" just above the boilerplate's tool icons, and observe the Element Gallery.

19. Click on the boldface header, "Text Elements" (or the orange triangle to its right), to expand that part of the list.

20. Click on the boldface header, "Simple Text Block (without header)." We will cover the Simple Text Block element in more detail later.

21. Observe the new item, "Click here to define the text block." Click on it to bring up the dialog box for data entry.

22. Type something "short and sweet" in the text block. By definition a "Simple Text Block" has no special formatting. We will presently explore also the "Formatted Text Block" element, using the "Rich Text Editor."

23. Click on Finish.

24. Observe that the new material is flagged with a yellow "work-in-progress" icon.

25. Click on either yellow work-in-progress icon and select "Submit entire page for publication..."; be very careful to avoid selecting "Discard Change," which is adjacent on the menu!

26. Provide comments.

27. In class, check the box to display the page in "Read" mode after publishing the changes.

28. In class, be sure to wait your turn to click on the "OK" button.

29. If you didn't check the box, then manually change back to "Read" mode.

30. In class, click on the "View Modes" icon and then select "Version History" from the menu. You can see your comments and any previous comments.

The key things to remember about changing a CommonSpot page are that you should go to the page in question, scroll up to the top, and select "Author" or "Edit" mode, and then either

• add something, by clicking on "Click to insert new element" or

• change something that is already there, by clicking on it.

Dick Piccard revised this file (http://www.ohiou.edu/pagemasters/commonspot/pageint/intro.html) on December 5, 2007.

Please E-Mail comments or suggestions to "webteam@ohio.edu".