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Hi, I'm Emily from Tech Services in the University of Michigan Division of Student Affairs. Today
I am going to show you how to create an article in Awesome Tools, the Drupal 7 template for
DSA units at U of M. We're going to use the Student Affairs website as our example today,
but the process will be the same on any website running Awesome Tools. So, starting on the
homepage, the first thing we'll need to do is ensure that we are connected to the site
using https. ĘThis will give us a secure connection to the website and access to our
site permissions. Here's how to tell if you're using https. ĘLook up at the address bar
at the top of your browser. ĘThe beginning of your web address will usually read http://.
ĘSome browsers, like Chrome, may not include http at all. ĘUnless your address bar reads
https://, you'll need to add that to your address. After you add https and reload the
page--which you can do by pressing enter or clicking the reload icon on your browser--you
will be directed to the University of Michigan login page where you will login with your
unique name and your Kerboros password. Once you're in, you should see an additional toolbar
or two at the top of the page. ĘThis is an easy way to determine if you're logged in
or not. The gray bar is your shortcuts bar. ĘIf you don't see it, toggle the triangle
in the upper right corner of your window and it will appear. Once we have our shortcuts
bar visible, let's click on the Add Content shortcut. ĘThis will take us to the Add Content
page, where we will select the type of content we would like to add. Although you may have
several options depending on your site set-up, probably 90% of the time you are going to
be creating an article, so we will click on that link. ĘAdding other types of content
will be covered in future video tutorials, so for now we'll just focus on creating an
article. And here we go... let's begin creating our content. We're going to start off by adding
a title for our article. ĘSomething that describes our central message. Then, we'll
need to select a topic. ĘThis is a required field, so you'll have to select at least one
topic to which the content your creating applies. ĘYou can select more than one, if your content
belongs to more than one category. As you may notice, the topics listed here correspond
to the topic hubs visible on your site's left-hand navigation. All we need to do is check the
appropriate box. Next, let's add some tags to our article. ĘTags are key words or phrases
that describe the content you're creating. ĘYou can add as many as you like, as long
as they are relevant. You'll notice that words or phrases that have already been used on
your site will auto-populate. ĘThis ensures that keywords are uniform and that relevant
content will properly linked by these particular terms. Moving on... an important thing to
note is that if the content you're creating is what would be called "evergreen" content...
information that will be useful over time... you will want to consider adding your article
to the "On this topic" menu. This is a menu that will show up on the right hand side of
topic hub pages on your sites. It provides easy access to information that users are
likely to be looking for more often. If you choose to add your article to this menu, just
click this box. Now it's time to start writing our article. And we'll do that in the Body
field. Once your main content is written, you'll want to identify a summary. ĘThe summary
is the few sentences that will appear in the trimmed version of your article. You may have
noticed that all of the articles that show up on the homepage and topic hubs on your
site are trimmed versions... the summary you create here and a thumbnail of your image
is all that will appear on these pages, so you'll want to write something that entices
the user to click through and read your entire article. If you don't add a summary, Drupal
will pull the first paragraph or so of your article and use that as your summary. ĘWhich
sometimes works well, and sometimes not so well. So in order to ensure a consistent and
properly formatted look to your site, we advise that you always make the summary selection
yourself instead of relying on Drupal. Now you'll notice that you have a lot of formatting
options in the editor. ĘMost of these should be pretty self-explanitory.ĘOr at the very
least, you can play around and see what everything does. You do have the option to select a different
input style, if you like.ĘFor most users, Filtered HTML is going to be your best bet.
If you are familiar with HTML, you can also try the Full HTML or plain text setting, but
I would not advise novices to use that option. Now that
we are done writing our article, let's add an image. Towards the bottom of the page,
you will see the Image tab on the left-hand side. Let's select that. And then click on
Choose File to find our image. Then, we'll click Upload. Now, perhaps the most important
thing you'll need to do when adding an image to your article is to include alternative
text. This provides a description of the image to users who are using adaptive technologies,
such as screen readers, to access your site. In order to provide a comparable web experience
to these users, adding alternative text to images is REQUIRED. So don't forget! You also
have space in the Title field to add photo credits--something important to include if
you're using creative commons content--or a description of the photo. Once we've finished
adding our content and our image, we're going to navigate to Publishing Options.ĘHere we
are going to select "Published" from the dropdown menu, so that our content goes live as soon
as we click Save. If you don't have a Published option in your dropdown menu, it is likely
because you have a site manager that is going to review all site content before it goes
live. In this case, you will select Needs Review. Remember, this is a critical step.ĘIf
you do not select Published, your article will be saved in draft form and will not be
live on your site. Finally, let's take a look at a Preview of our work. Up top, you'll see
the trimmed version... what shows up in the homepage and topic hubs.ĘAnd below that,
you'll see the full-length. Everything looks pretty good, so let's click Save and publish
our article. So here is our published article. ĘNow let's see how it looks on the homepage.
And here it is. If you find that you still need assistance with adding articles to your
site, please don't hesitate to contact us at techservices@umich.edu.ĘWe'll be happy
to help. Next up in our video tutorial series for Awesome Tools is How to add images and
videos to your website.... stay tuned.