The web templates for institutional units are customized and uploaded for units upon request to the university webmaster. What follows is description of what is included and basic use of the templates using Macromedia Dreamweaver. While the templates can be used with other programs, they are most easily used with Dreamweaver as you will only have to use the New File from Template procedure in order to create new pages. Also, if there are are minor modifications needed to the template itself, Dreamweaver will automatically update all pages which use it.
Included Files
The following folders and files have been uploaded to your site with the template:
- css
- UTC5.css
- Resources
- Include
- dept-navleft.inc
- Include
- Templates
- main.dwt.php
- unitid.dwt.php
Note the unitid refers to unit equivalent of a UTCID for a person. If this is an older unit, it would have been the same as the account login on cecasun and now MocsNet, for unit email. For example, University Relations unit id would be univrel, so the filename in our template would be univrel.dwt.php.
Updating navigation menu
This file is included automatically with all your pages, so you can edit one copy in one place and effects all your pages.
The sample navigation menu is a copy of the current University Relations menu and needs to be updated to match your primary level pages. Open the file /Resources/Include/dept-navleft.inc and edit as needed. Note, this is not a full HTML document, so be careful in editing it. It should only include the list for your menu and your departmental location & phone. The display when editing will not conform to the actual look when displayed in your site due to it being a partial HTML file. When finished, be sure to save the file with the same name and location.
All URLs should be full URLs, not relative as is usually recommended—this is due to the fact the menu is called by multiple pages, possibly from different directories and this would break a relative URL.
To add a new line item, place your cursor at the end of the line of the previous item and press Enter. You will have a new line with a new bullet for your entry. After typing the text content of the entry, highlight and enter destination Link URL as usual in Dreamweaver using Properties box.
To delete an unneeded item, highlight and delete as usual. After deleting the text, you will have to press Backspace to remove the bullet.
When you edit the paragraph your department name is in, you can use Shift-Enter to get a new line, without starting a new paragraph, so the lines will be close to each other. This is the same way Microsoft Word works.
The last two items in the list of links should be your departmental home page and the university home page. There is a special class (navgroup) set on the link for the departmental name to make sure there is extra space left in the left menu to separate it from the rest of the links. If you need to add it back if lost, or wish to use it for grouping other sets of links, set the class by placing your cursor in the link to be set, look to the bottom edge of the editing window and find the HTML code in the narrow border. Right-click on the rightmost <li> tag, and select edit tag... You will have to type in:
class="navgroup"
So the entire entry looks like:
<li class="navgroup">
Using the templates
Once you have downloaded the files into your Dreamweaver site, creating a new page is as simple as going to the menu and choosing File => New, or typing Ctrl-N on the keyboard to bring up the New Document dialog box. In the box, select the Templates tab at the top, then in the left side box labeled Templates for: select the site you are working on.In the middle of the dialog box select your unit template: unitid. Once you have done this the first time, it will remember what you used last for convenience.
On the right side there is a checkbox that should already be checked: Update page when template changes. Click Create and you have your new blank page. You should immediately save it with the appropriate name for the page you are creating. Note, Dreamweaver will automatically add the file type ending, which is now .php. Remember no spaces in file names! We recommend only using letters, numbers, and a hyphen (-) or underscore (_) to create names. Mixed case is OK, just remember to use the browsing method of creating links so you get the correct case! Our web server is case-sensitive for file names.
Validate All Pages
Once uploaded, you should validate them with the W3C's HTML Validator. This will show you anything you might have missed when cleaning the pages. Load the web page in your browser first, then copy and paste the URL from that window in to a new window at the W3C site using the Validate by URL option, and click check. All pages should validate 100% as XHTL 1.1 Compliant. This is important, since new web browsers are sensitive to pages that do not validate correctly. Validation simply means the pages comply to certain fairly strict rules in regards to the proper use of HTML. Many people have old web pages that were originally designed in the days of Netscape 4 and do not work with today's web standards. If you cannot figure out from the results how to fix the pages, contact University Relations and we would be glad to assist.
