Mass.GovCMS Training

Introductions

• Instructor– Andrew Larrimore – Mass.Gov, Project Analyst

• Assistant– Youssef Riahi– Mass.Gov

• Your Turn– Name– Agency & work location– What you do at your agency

Today’s Schedule

• Morning– General Concepts & Best Practices– Navigating the CMS– Finding existing content within CMS– Page analysis– Begin to build content

• Lunch break• Afternoon

– Continue building content– Assembling Pages– How to workflow your work to Publishing– Editing existing content

Classroom Logistics and Rules

• Restrooms• No Food or Drink in Training Room• Cellphones – off or on silent• PLEASE - No Checking of email during class –

do it on breaks and during lunch only• Cafeteria located in basement of building– Food and beverages served until 2:30 PM

General Concepts

• What is a CMS and how they work• Overview of Mass.Gov CMS and how it works– Sites– Communities– Roles– Workflows– Content Types and Page Types– Publishing

Roles

• You have at least two sets of permissions– Community (controls where you can do things)– User role (controls what you can do in your

community)• There are currently five (5) user roles– Contributor– Contributor Plus– Power User– Power User Plus– Site Admin

Workflow States

• Draft• Pending Publication of Changes• Public• Edit Public Content• Recycle Bin• Archived

Some of Mass.Gov Content Types

• Brief• Document• Image• Link

– Internal (within CMS)– External

• List Container• Video (Youtube only)• Multi-Column Row• Organization (license

related)

• Custom HTML• Slideshow

– Links– Images

• Welcome– Only one use– Also uses an image type

• Pages• Navons & NavTree Items

How Content Type Elements are Built

• Use of a “form” to capture information• Some “forms” have a WYSIWYG editor (Ephox)

within some fields• Required fields must be completed• Validation of some fields

Page Types (templates)

• Generic• Press Release• Category• Article• License (only one use)

• Home• Other custom pages for specific uses (alert,

community, etc.)

2 Column Layout1 Column Layout

Examples of Generic Pages

Example Press Release Page

Category Pages

Anatomy of a CMS Page

How Navigation is built

• Folders in CMS correspond to the navigation• Site Tabs are the top level folders– Exceptions (docs, images etc. and other

suppressed folders)• Left navigation are the subfolders– Can be expanded to see next level below (less

clicks)• Mega Drop Down items are managed

differently by Site Admins

Slots

• A place holder on the page which you can put content items into

• Many different slots on any page type• You can reuse the same content item on many

pages in various different slots• You can use content from other sites• You can display that content in various ways

using something called snippets

Snippets

• Various ways a piece of content can be displayed• Examples:– Linked Title– Linked Title with description– Title with description– Description only

• The various slots on a page determine what snippet can go within it

• Let’s look at some examples

Page Layouts that are possible

Using the various components of the system – slots, snippets, multi-column rows,and content items

What is a Tetris Row

• Allows for a center page column to be broken into up to three additional columns

• Done with use of a Multi-Column Row content type

• Use for layout instead of tables (use of tables causes accessibility problems)

Things to remember about Images

• Must be sized before you upload– No way to resize within the CMS

• Best practice is to use a system name with image size included to help later on– Example: statehouseoutside-462x300

• Size images in 2:1 ratio for slideshows• Don’t grab from internet unless they are for

public use (copyright laws can get you in trouble)

How Your Content is Published

CMS IncrementalPublishing

PublishedPages

State Firewall

Runs about every20-30 minutes

John Q Public

Sync Script

Mass.Gov Web Servers