Basic guide to Plone.

Plone for Never-Evers & Beginners

Document created by: Jerri Puralewski
IT Services
jpuralewski@western.edu or (970) 943-3123

Logging In

·         Go to www.western.edu OR the webpage that you are trying to edit, scroll to the bottom of the page and look for “Admin Login” click on that and type in your normal WSC username/password

Organization within Plone

·         You must have been given access to an area on the website before you can edit anything.  Depending on what department you are in and what you need access to will determine who can give you this access. 

·         Almost everything is stored in “Folders”

·         Within “Folders” are things like “Pages,” “Files,” “Images,” “Surveys,” etc.

·         More than likely you will want your information stored in a folder that way everything will be stored together.

Creating a Folder

·         A folder is a place where you can store things like pictures, pages, files

·         It is recommended that you create a folder for everything you will be editing.  That way these are all the things that you have access to and can separate it from others’ files.

1)      Login at the bottom of the screen under “Admin Login”

2)      Go to an area that you have access to editing (you can tell if you have access to edit the page if you have a green bar at the top of the page)

3)      Click on “Add new…” which is on the green bar

4)      You will want to add a new “Folder” (Unless you have a very large amount of items you will be using you will not want to use “Large Folder”)

5)      You will now be taken to another screen where you have to type in a title.  This will show up as the name of the folder (in things such as the Navigation bar, at the top of the Folder, on the list on the top of the screen)

6)      You can type in a description if you want

Creating a Page

·         Pages are where the actual content is within your folder, this is what people will see

1)      Once you are in the folder you’ve created click on “Add new…” which is on the green bar

2)      You will want to add a new “Page”

3)      You will now be taken to another screen where you have to type in a title.  This will show up on the top of the actual visible page.

4)      You can type in a description if you want, this will show up in bold text under the title and before the text you type in below.

Adding a Picture to the Folder

*You must upload a picture before you can add it to your page.  If you try to copy/paste a picture from another location it probably will not show up when you are logged out of the website.  This means that others who go to your page will probably not be able to see your pictures.

1)      Go into your folder and click on “Contents” on the top of the screen, you should see a list of anything you have in the folder

2)      Click on “Add new…” and then click on “Image”

3)      Add a title to the picture, this will show up when you have your mouse over the picture when it is uploaded.

4)      You will need to have the picture already downloaded somewhere on your computer or on a thumb drive or somewhere that you can upload it from

5)      Click on the picture that you want uploaded then click on Save.

6)      Now your picture is in your folder, however at this point it will not automatically show up in your page you will need to add it to the page. 

Adding a Picture to the Page

1)      Go back to the page that you want to add the picture to

2)      Click on the page then click on Edit

3)      You will then click on the blue/green tree, this is the icon that you will use to choose your picture for this page.

4)      If the picture is in the folder that you just created it will probably just show up automatically.  However you can also search for it throughout the website if you are taking a picture from somewhere else.

5)      Click on the circle next to the particular picture you will be using.

a.       Left will put your picture on the left of any text

b.      Inline will put your picture in the middle of your text

c.       Right will put your picture on the right of any text

6)      Sometimes you can change the size of your picture successfully here however it is best not to have too big or too small of a file for your picture

Adding a Link

*This will add a link within your page to another page within the WSC site or to an external link

INTERNAL LINK

1)  Open the page you want to add the link onto

2)  Type in whatever text you want to show up (ex. Click here or the Department or page name)

3)  Highlight the text then click on the white link icon, if you move your mouse over it, there is text that says “insert internal link”

4)  You will now have to choose an internal link that you want this text to go to, if the page is somewhere else in the website you can either search for it or try to navigate to where the page is located

5)  Click Okay and then your text should turn blue and there should be a line under it.

EXTERNAL LINK

1)  Open the page you want to add the link onto

2)  Type in whatever text you want to show up (ex. Click here or the Department or page name)

3)  Highlight the text then click on the globe icon, if you move your mouse over it, there is text that says “insert external link”

4)  You will be prompted to type in the web address.  You can click on Preview to see what the page will look like.

5)  If you are linking to an external link you must have a note that says “Links on these pages to non-college sites do not represent endorsement by Western State College of Colorado”  HOWEVER please try not to do this too often.  Western could lose our “.edu” status if we use external links too much.

6)  Click Okay and then your text should turn blue and there should be a line under it.

Adding an e-mail address

1)  Open the page you want to add the link onto

2)  Type in whatever text you want to show up (ex. Click here or the Department or page name)

3)  Highlight the text then click on the globe icon, if you move your mouse over it, there is text that says “insert external link”

4)  You will be prompted to type in a web address.  At this point you will delete http:// and type in “mailto: (e-mail address)”

Embed You Tube Video

1)      Go to the You Tube Video and click on “Embed”

2)      Copy the HTML

3)      Go to the Plone page that you want to embed the video and click on Edit

4)      Click on HTML and paste the HTML code

Making a Page Externally Visible

·         This will make it so your page is visible to the world, otherwise you can’t see it if just browsing the website.

1)      On the page itself you can click on State: Internal Draft and go to Submit for Publication, it will change to “Pending Review” and will be orange

2)      Click on Pending Review and then click on Publish Externally

OR

1)      Go to the Folder level by clicking on the folder and go to Contents

2)      Click on the box(es) next to the item(s) then click on Change State

3)      At the bottom of the page click on Submit for Publication then Save

4)      The items will change to orange in color

5)      Click on the box(es) again next to the item(s) and click on Change State one more time

6)      At the bottom of the page click on “Publish externally”

How to add a link to a text document/PDF

1)      In a folder that you have created or have access to go to Contents

2)      Click on “Add new…” and then click on File, you will have to add a title

3)      Click on Browse to add your file

4)      Click on Save

In a page you’ve created you can link to that document or just leave it in the Navigation Bar on the left.   To add the text document/PDF to a page you’ve created follow the steps below:

1)      Go into the page that you want to add the text to and click on Edit

2)      Type in some text then go to the link icon (insert an internal link), if you do not type in text it will appear as the title that you gave the document.

3)      Choose the document/PDF file you want to link to and it will be added.  

4)      Click on Okay and you will have a link to your document/PDF

Adding a Slideshow in Plone

Slideshows are a great way to view many pictures.  However there are a few things to note with slideshows.  There are some hints below to be aware of, please read this entire document before beginning.  Feel free to contact me with any questions.

Jerri Puralewski
IT Services - Customer Support
(970) 943-3123

1)      Add a new folder

2)      Under “Actions” click on “Make Slideshow”

3)      An orange bar will show up saying “You must add images within this folder for them to show up in this slideshow”

4)      Add a new image (Click on “Add new…” then “Image”)

5)      Go back to your folder and continue

6)      Repeat steps 4 and 5 until all your pictures have been added to the folder

*You will need to wait for about an hour for the slideshow to begin working properly

*When you go back to the slideshow and you are logged in, typically only one picture will repeatedly show up and seem to loop in the slideshow.  However when you are logged out (and have made the slideshow external) it will appear properly.

*If you add pictures before you make the folder a slideshow it will not work properly

7)   Click on “Slideshow Settings” to change the size of images, timing, order etc.

*When you have finished making your slideshow you will have to link it to another page

*Please note that pictures should be approximately the same size as they are added into the slideshow. 

*It is best to work with jpeg format images 

*Remember to make the folder externally visible when you are done

Adding a Table of Contents

1)       Click on Edit

2)      Go to Settings (Default, Categorization, Dates, Ownership, Settings)

3)      Click on Table of Contents and click Save

Note:  The items that will show up in your Table of Contents are any item that is a Heading

Excluding from Navigation

1)      Click on the page or folder you want to “hide” from the navigation bar.

2)      Click on Edit

3)      Click on Settings (located right above the Title section: Default, Categorization, Dates, Ownership, Settings)

4)      Click on Exclude from navigation

5)      Click on Save