Month: February 2010

Matt Bundrick discovered a bug in our Cascade Server version that will cause an asset (page, file, folder, etc) to un-publish when deleted even if you don’t have the ‘Un-publish Content’ option selected in the delete window. It may also attempt to unpublish from servers which are not selected on that screen.

What action should you take to work around this bug?

Chose the ‘My Settings’ link in the top-right menu bar (or go to the System Menu/Preferences/User Preferences) and un-check the box labeled ‘Un-publish on Delete/Un-publish checked by default on entity delete screen.’ After doing this, the ‘un-publish content’ option should work as intended when deleting an asset.

Hannon Hill (the vendor for Cascade Server) has been notified of this bug and is working to resolve this in future software releases.

You’ve used Cascade enough now to build some really great pages and you want to share them with the world. You can see your pages in Cascade, but how can you get them on the Web? Publishing out your pages in Cascade is very simple. If you have publish rights (sorry a Contributors, but you won’t even see a Publish option) then you too can share your incredible, stunning Web site with the world. How? Here’s how:

1. First, make sure your user preferences (System/Preferences/User OR My Settings link on menu bar) are set so that you go to publish status page when you publish. That way you can see where your pages are in the queue compared to everyone else’s pages that are in the queue at the same time and you will know when your pages are live and can be viewed in your Web browser.
2. Select your site folder from the asset tree.
3. The list of assets in the folder will be displayed in the Content View window.
4. Choose the Publish tab.
5. The list of available destinations (the Web servers where your pages are saved) will be displayed in the Publish window.
6. Choose your preferred destinations.
   1. The Clemson/HTML/Development server is where you publish to test your pages before showing them to the world. You can find your pages at http://wwwdev.clemson.edu/your-site (replace your-site with the name of YOUR site). You will have to log in with your Clemson employee userid and password to view the pages. Review every page on your Web site here first and fix anything that isn’t working right. You want your site to be PERFECT before you share it with the world.
   2. The Clemson/HTML/Production server is where you publish your perfect site for the world to see.
   3. The Clemson/HTML/Production Backup server is where you publish to create a backup of your perfect site. You should always publish to the Backup server when you publish to the Production server. That way if the Production server fails, an identical copy of your site can be restored from the Backup server.
7. Generate a publish report message if you want Cascade to send you a report on the success of your publish job. You can check the message from your dashboard’s Message window.
8. Make sure your Publish Mode is set to Publish.
9. Choose the Submit button.
10. Look for your pages in the Publish queue window and when they have made it all the way through the publish queue, view them in your Web browser.

Now do the happy dance – you just shared your incredible, stunning Web site with the whole world!

Creating a page in Cascade now is pretty much the same as before except for a couple of things. There is no longer an Author field. The Author is now called the Owner. The Owner information is now controlled by an Owner include file that is automatically applied to every page you create. If the Owner changes, you only have to edit one file instead of having to change the Author on every page in your site.

Cool, huh?

So what else is different in the page creation process? Two fields, Keywords and Descriptions, have been added so page rankings by search engines like Google and Bing are higher.

Pages are smarter too. How? Well in the old page creation process, there was a checkbox on the System tab that you selected if you wanted your page to be indexed – meaning it showed up in the left navigation. But if the page’s parent folder was set to NOT index, then the page could not be indexed. Now, with Smart Folders and Smart Pages, you have the flexibility to not index the folder asset and still choose to index a page within the folder. One thing to know about this feature though – all folders in your site must be Smart folders and all pages must be Smart pages. How can you tell? Well when you create a new Clemson Brand 2009 folder or page, it is automatically a Smart folder or Smart page.

What does the new page creation wizard look like?

• Display Name – Like the folder asset, the page asset’s Display Name is listed in the left navigation.
• Title – Underlined heading at the top of the page. Browser window title.
• Keywords – Used by search engines. Keywords are short descriptions of the page content.
• Description – Used by search engines. Descriptions are longer descriptions of the page content that are displayed in the results of a Web search.
• Include in Left Navigation – Page’s Display Name listed in the left navigation even if it lives in a folder that is not indexed.

Just like before, once you fill in all the fields you go into the content region and add your content. Don’t forget to go to the System tab and give your page a Web-friendly name and then Submit your page into Cascade.

Are you wondering how the new Clemson brand is going to affect how you use Cascade? Don’t be worried! The new brand elements have been built right into Clemson’s instance of Cascade so you can create your Web pages just like before. While there are a few new things you can do to enhance your Web pages, the way Cascade looks to you is still the same. This blog will help keep you informed of the changes you will see in Cascade, and show you how you can customize your Web pages with the new brand styles.

Guarding the Brand