CommonSpot: Standards and Guidelines

Before you begin

• The preferred browser for editing web pages is the latest Firefox ESR (extended support release). Internet Explorer and Google Chrome are not recommended. 
• Follow the UWRF style policies and guidelines which are determined by University Communications.
• Be familiar with Layout Standards.

Do not duplicate information that is already posted on other pages

• Academic information in the catalog, policy information, and information "owned" by a department should not be copied and pasted to your subsite. Duplicated information that was copy/pasted may result in two different versions of the content if the original gets updated but the copy does not.
• Instead, simply provide a link to the information.
• Check for existing content by using the Google "Search UWRF" field.
• Use XML Reader Element to embed content from one page into another page. Contact DoTS for more information.

Images and content

• Images may be viewable in authoring but not in the regular published view of the page.This happens because the image size is not defined. It was most likely to occur previously in the image cycle but now may be an issue with images inside table cells. Information about images.
• Images in the large container should not exceed 825 pixels wide.
• Images in the medium container should not exceed 460 pixels wide.
• Images in the small container should not exceed 220 pixels wide.
• If containers on the authoring side are unused, they become hidden from page visitors.

Links are broken

• If a page was moved from one subsite to another subsite, the links may appear broken. The remedy.
• XML readers on pages that were moved into a child site may not contain the correct URL. Remedy: Add the child site to the URL data.

To avoid other problems

• Use a text editor to copy/paste and only paste plain text into the CMS.
• Use shortcut keys: Control-C for Copy, Control-V for paste. Right-click to copy/paste may or may not work.
• Images should be sized in a photo editor before uploading them.
• Use the tabular layout element for columns rather than a text element with a table inside.
• While submitting a change, choose the view pages as published option to ensure that content is properly saved to the page.
• If a newly added element is not visible on the page, submit the change. The new element should appear after the page reloads and will be ready to be populated with content.

Make your processes easier

• Convert existing Word or Excel forms into fillable PDFs.

Contact DoTS with questions.