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Computing and Information Services

Version: 6 July 2006

  • New HTML editor
  • Changes to content review messages
  • Several changes to staff lists
  • Site map content type improvements
  • News system display improvements
  • Email address validation for noticeboards
  • Publications changes
  • Image galleries can now include customisable additional information
  • Changes to editing permissions
  • Resources and images improvements
  • More Seminar display options
  • Remote page fragment inclusion content type

New text content editor

We have replaced the editor used for text content with a different one. This one is generally much easier to use, has more features, and allows (using the appropriate button) direct copying and pasting from Microsoft Word. The quality of the generated code is also significantly improved.

There have been some minor changes to the appearance of the editor inevitably resulting from this - please see the updated screenshots in Guide 180 if you need help with the new interface.

Changes to content review messages

Content review messages have been changed. Previously, you would get one message for each content item that needed reviewing, which for administrators of large sites could get unmanageable. You will now receive only one email for each site or sub-site that you maintain, that will direct you to a page in the CMS, also accessible via 'My Pages', that displays all content needing review.

We currently plan to send these messages weekly on Monday mornings.

Several changes to staff lists

Several changes and additions have been made to staff lists:

  1. Staff lists can now be displayed as a single alphabetical list without headings, and with optional A-Z links at the top. This matches the order of the existing tabular formats. Use one of the "Staff list ordered by name, no categories" layout options when editing the staff list content item to see this.
  2. Staff can now completely hide their email address (including removing the link to the contact form) when editing their staff profile by selecting 'No email contact' from the 'Email contact methods' drop-down box. Please note that this option does not work on the old staff list content type - if you haven't done so already, could Site Administrators please switch to using the "Staff/postgraduate list (improved)" content type for your staff lists.
  3. Qualifications can now be listed on the staff list - use the checkbox in the "extra information" section.
  4. The staff list will now use a unique numeric id rather than a CIS username to link to staff profiles. This stops people's profile pages changing URL if their username changes.
  5. Teaching group memberships and teaching commitments are now displayed separately on staff profiles (displayed by either the staff profile or staff list content types). This change requires action from Site Administrators - when you next edit an existing staff list or staff profile content item, make sure that you set the display positions for teaching group membership and teaching commitments separately. If you do not, then both pieces of information will be hidden, and you will have to redisplay them later.

Site map content type improvements

  1. Site maps can now be set to display just a small part of a site. For example, if you have a site with three main sections, you could display only one of those sections in a (sub)site map.
  2. You can also choose to include hidden pages in a site map (though this is generally not recommended - usually it's a sign that the page should not be hidden at all if you want to do this).
  3. You can remove a page from display on all site maps by using the "Hide this page in site maps?" checkbox in the page properties. It's a good idea to do this for the site map page itself. Doing this on a site home page is possible but may have unwanted side-effects - contact the web team if you think you need to do this.

News system display improvements

The news system now lets you choose whether to display the category name when restricting display to a specific category, and lets you display news headlines for each category on the News Categories Display content item.

Email address validation for noticeboards

A noticeboard can now be set to require that users leave an email address when submitting notices. Optionally, you can require this to be a Durham University email address.

Publications changes

Publications can now be given numbers to control their display on staff profiles. Publications are normally ordered by type of publication, and then within that ordered most recent first. This order is not necessarily always appropriate, so it is now possible (via the "Select Publications for display and/or RAE" page in the staff profile editor) to explicitly number publications for display. You are strongly advised to number either all publications or none of them.

Additionally, the 'refereed' field has changed. This is now set to one of "Refereed", "Not refereed" and "Not set", defaulting to "Not set". Because the previous default was "Refereed" and this appears to have been left as-is for many publications which clearly are not refereed, all publications are being reset to "Not set". You will need to set this field appropriately manually for each publication.

Image galleries can now include customisable additional information

You can now set up your own additional information fields for image galleries, and choose how these fields are displayed, and whether the information in them is searchable using the University search.

See the updated Guide 180 for further information about this feature, which allows you to have full control over how your images are catalogued.

Changes to editing permissions

There have been a few minor changes made to editing permissions in the CMS.

  1. Permissions can now be assigned using Durham email addresses as well as CIS usernames (this matches the method used in the Profile system). You will also receive a warning if the system cannot find the email address or CIS username.
  2. It is now possible to 'cancel' permissions for a page or set of pages using the new 'No permissions' permission. This allows you to give someone (for example) Page Administrator permissions over your entire site except the postgraduate section, should you want to. We recommend that you do not test this feature on your own permissions, as you will not, having removed your own permissions, have enough permissions to be able to reverse the change.
  3. A few bugs related to editing permissions for news, events, etc. have been fixed.

Resources and images improvements

A few improvements have been made to the resource (PDF, etc.) and image management systems in the CMS.

  1. Resources attached to content items are now included in the University search engine. The content of the resources is not indexed, but the description you enter will be. This change means that resource list pages will be visible for user searches.
  2. Images displayed with content items via the 'add image to content' function can now have captions associated with them.
  3. Resource categories should now be a little more logical.

More Seminar display options

There are now more seminar display options - you can select what information to display on the seminar lists about each seminar, whether to display summary information about seminar series, and select some date ranges to display seminars from.

Remote page fragment inclusion content type

A specialist content type has been added to allow CMS pages to include content fragments from non-CMS URLs. This content type is unlikely to be necessary for the vast majority of CMS users - please contact the web team for further information if you think it will be useful.