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McNeese Website Documentation

Managing Content

Managing Content

Using My Workbench

The workbench provides a central location for managing content. The workbench page can be navigated to by clicking on the My Workbench link in the utility navigation. The workbench page has the following menu tabs (some may not be visible due to access control restrictions):

  • my content
  • create content
  • my menus
  • my sections
  • my drafts
  • needs review
My workbench page screenshot
Managing Content - Image 1

The My Content tab is the primary workbench tab and main page for the My Workbench. This tab supplies to sub-tabs for filtering between My Edits and All Recent Content. The Create Content tab will display a page for created new content and adding new media. The Media List tab provides a listing of all media found on the website. The My Groups tab will present a page that lists all groups you are currently associated with. Users who are authorized to manage the menus for their associated groups will see the My Menus tab. Read more about the menus in the Menu System documentation. The next tabs are: Drafts, Needs Review, and Needs Work. These three tabs provide a list of content associated with a given workflow state (see Using & Managing Workflow).

In the content body of the my content page, there are two tables:

  1. My Edits
  2. All Recent Content

The my edits table provides a list of all content you have either edited in some manner. The all recent content table shows all content (in groups you are associated with) that has been recently updated. Both of these tables have a link called view all on the bottom right of the table. Selecting this link will bring you to a page dedicated to providing the content listing appropriate to the table the link is associated with.

Each of the content listing tables provide an actions column that is usually found on the far right side of the table. The actions column may contain links to allow a person edit, moderate, and view accessibility information for some content.

Understanding Groups

Groups are the skeleton of the website. They determine how content relates to other content, who is allowed to view or manage content, and where that content gets stored on the system.

Browser URL path screenshot
Managing Content - Image 2

Most groups have what is called a URL path. The URL path designates how and where content should belong. As an example, this documentation is expected to be found on at the path: This documentation is expected to be in the website group. The website group has a relative URL path of /documentation/website. When this documentation gets assigned to the website group, its URL path should expected to become: /documentation/website/managing-content. The last part of the URL path is derived from the title of the content. Pay attention to how the title Managing Content gets changed to managing-content. This happens because there are limitations as to what is and is not allowed to be used in a URL path. Almost all users never have to care about the limitation because all of the work translating the title into a URL path is doing automatically.

Creating & Editing Content

Adding content types page screenshot
Managing Content - Image 3

Adding content may be done by selecting the Create Content tab from the My Workbench page. This page provides a list of all content types available to a given user. This page also provides a link for uploading media to the website.

While each content type provides different fields, there are a few basic fields shared amongst the different content types.
  • Title Field
    The title is simply the name of the page. This field is used to generate part of the URL path. The title field is required by all content types. There is a hidden short title field that is autopopulated from this title. This short title has a maximum of 48 characters long.
  • Body Field
    Otherwise known as content body, or just body, the body field is the content that is placed in the content body region. Normally this field contains an editor that allows the user to type in and see what they type in is supposed to look like.
  • Workflow Vertical Tab
    The workflow vertical tab contains fields associated with the group in which a particular content belongs. Most users will see the following fields inside this vertical tab:
    • Group Field
      The group field is a select list that allows a user to select which group the content in question belongs. When typing the group in, it should autocomplete and provide a selection of available groups. The group field requires the tid (Term ID), which is a number uniquely identifying and individual group.

There are more fields available than those listed above. Fields may become visible based on the content type and the user's privileges. If you can see more fields than those listed above, be sure to read the inline documentation that is often placed directly below that field.

Writing an HTML Page

Each content type has a body field and that body field is where you will write your (HTML) page. The most important thing to understand when writing a page is that one must think in terms of the context and not how something looks. This is one of the biggest and most common mistakes users make when writing a page. It can be assumed that most users think in terms of this is what I want the page to look like, but unfortunately, that is not how the web works. You must keep in mind that with the web language, what you see is not what you get. Instead, what you see is a guideline for what you get. Think of what you see as an approximation where most viewers will see content in the same way that you do, but others will see content completely differently.

So how do you think in terms of content instead of presentation when building a webpage? Lets use some basic word processor terminology:

  • bold
  • italic
  • underline
Thinking in terms of presentation, that is how text looks and feels, using bold, italic, or underlined to just make text easier to read or more aesthetically pleasing. Thinking in terms of context would be using bold, italic, and underline only if something should be strong, emphasized, or a URL link.
To think on terms of context, one should think in a way similar to: If I make this bold, does this communicate something important that should stand out?. See how that question inside the previous sentence is emphasized (italicized)? This is important to users who have screen readers and they do not see the page, but instead hear the page. The screen reader would use a different voice that tells the listener that the said question is emphasized. Emphasizing text to make the visual presentation look better would only make the audio presentation confusing if the emphasis is out of context.
There are many different ways in which the page is presented that one can never assume that anything will be displayed as they perceive it. It is even possible to convert a page into braille text to be printed onto paper.

Linking to Other Pages

There are some complications that need to be sorted out and understood when linking to other content or websites. This first thing that should be understood is that this website is dynamic. What is in one particular place today may be somewhere completely different tomorrow. To ensure that your links always point to the correct location, you will need to link to other pages on this site using the pages Node ID as describe in the Basic Usage documentation.

Linking to content from other websites is straightforward. Use the absolute URL of the page, such as Keep in mind that websites and their respective pages are not part of this website and therefore cannot have their links auto-corrected. If the other website changes its paths, then there is nothing that can be done on this website short of you manually correcting the link.

Adding & Using Media

Uploading or Selecting Media Screenshot
Managing Content - Image 4

To add media to the website, it needs to first be uploaded. There are two ways to upload media to the website. The first is to to select the Create Content menu tab on the My Workbench page and then click the Upload Media link. The second is through the WYSIWYG by selecting Add Media button.

The first method is simply for adding the media to the system. The second method is for adding media to a content type and has additional options as seen in Image 4.

These options are:
  • Upload
    • Allows for the immediate addition of new files.
  • My Files
    • Allows for selecting media from a list of files uploaded by you.
  • Library
    • Allows for selecting media from the system (any media).

Media on this website functions differently from what most users are accustomed to. The actual filenames do not matter, but instead, media may be accessed via their unique path (a checksums) or their ID path. Each media has a checksum of 8 digits and characters that can almost uniquely identify that exact media. No other media may have the same checksum. Everytime media is uploaded to the website, it is assigned an identifier. This identifier uniquely identifies that specific upload and is referred to as the ID path of the media. The ID associated with the ID path is referred to as the Media ID.

Media Management PageScreenshot
Managing Content - Image 5

For the unique path, each media may have both a short URL and a long URL. The short URL begins with /f/c/ and is following by an 8 digits/letters. The long URL is the short URL with the filename added to the end.

Lets say there is some media called
, with a node id of
The short URL to media would be:
The long URL to the media would be:
This is useful for mailing lists where the link should be short and easy to click on.
To send these URLs as links, do not forget to prepend
That is, using a link such as
is friendlier than using something like:
Both links point to the same media, always.

The ID path does not uniquely point to a given media, but instead points to a particular upload of a media. Like the unique path, this has both a short and a long URL. The short URL begins with /f/f/ and is following by some digits. The long URL is the short URL with the filename added to the end.

Media may be replaced. When media is replaced, the unique path of the old media will still point to the old media, but the ID path of the replaced media will now point to the replacement. The replacement will have its own, separate, unique path.

Lets say there is some media called
, with a node id of
The (short) unique path to the media would be:
The (short) ID path to the media would be:
Lets say there is a new version of
and you replace
with it.
The (short) unique path to the replacement would be:
The (short) ID path to the replacement would be:
Because the ID path does not change, all content that points to the ID path will automatically be pointing to the replacement.
All content that points to the unique path will be pointing to the original (replaced) media.


Alternate Text
This alternate text is a short description of the image. While it is required to be short, this must contain 3 or more words.
Child Group
See Nested Group.
Checksum is a sequence of digits and letters (usually 0-9 and a-f) that can be used to represent data, almost uniquely. The primary purpose for checksums are to identify whether or not there are errors in data. On this website, the checksums in use are sufficient to represent files uniquely with only 8 digits and letters.
Content is a general term designating some collection of text, images, and media. In general, content can be consired a page but it usually refers to the body region of a given page. See the Basic Usage website documentation for details about what the body region is. Another name for content is node.
The term field refers an area on a page where the user is allowed to select or add input too. Fields provide the user with a way to send information to the website. Examples are: select lists, radio buttons, and text boxes.
The term group refers to a classification or category in which users and their content belong to. Groups are often categories by colleges, universities, and departments but are categorized by their purpose or their URL path. How and where content is placed on the website is directly dependent on the group in which some content belongs.
The term media refers to a classification or category of different types of files. The different types of media are: document, image, audio, and video. For example, a PDF is a type of document. For example, a PNG is a type of image.
Nested Group
The term nested group is a group that belongs to another group or has one or more groups that belong to itself. A group that is nested inside of another group is referred to as a child group of the group or groups in which it belongs to. A group that has one or more groups nested inside of itself is called a parent group. A child group is allowed to be a parent group for other groups, but cannot be a parent group of its own parent group. See also Group.
Parent Group
See Nested Group.
See Group.
URL Path
The URL path is the address that represents a website or a specific page or file at a given website. There are two types of URL paths, relative and absolute. The relative URL path and absolute URL path may also be called relative path and absolute path, respectively. An absolute URL path has the website name along with the path to the page or file. A relative URL only contains the path to the page or file. For example, lets say you wanted the path to this documentation as it is expected to be found on The absolute path is and the relative path is /documentation/website/managing-content.
Vertical Tab
A vertical tab is a special type of field used to group multiple fields together. Only one vertical tab may be open at a given time and as such only the fields attached to a vertical tab will be visible when that vertical tab is selected. Vertical tabs are used to provide multiple options while reducing the amount of scrolling a user might have to do to get to a given field.