Conductor CMS // Conductor CMS

Easily Embed Videos on Your Conductor Site

2012-02-03T11:00:00-05:00

What is video embedding?
Creating a YouTube Channel for Your Site
Uploading Videos to Your Channel
Embedding a YouTube Video on Your Conductor Site

What is video embedding?

What does it mean to "embed" a video? Embedding a video in your webpage allows it to actually play within your page, rather than taking the user offsite to view the video when clicking a link. We recommend creating a YouTube account, since YouTube embeds are relatively simple, your videos will play on mobile devices, and you have control over several formatting options.

Create a YouTube account if you don't already have one. You will automatically get a channel with your new account. You will have to customize your channel - so follow the instructions below!

Creating a YouTube Channel for Your Site

Check out Notre Dame's YouTube channel for a great example of what a channel can look like and function as.

Before you add the video, make sure you choose the settings you want for comments by clicking the "Settings" button.

I'll take a video from NDdotEDU's Channel as an example, but you could also upload your own video and copy the link for that video by following the same instructions below.

Under the video you want to put on your channel, click "Share."
Before copying the URL, if you click "Options" first, you will have the option of starting the video at a later point, which will be useful if you only want to share part of the video. I like this idea, so I'm going to say I want the video to start after 4:00 minutes (because the first four minutes are irrelevant, for example). I also like to use the long link. After checking the options you want, copy the URL.
Going back to your Channel, enter the YouTube video URL you just copied.
Click "Post"
Now we can see the video we just posted to our channel!

I highly encourage our users to explore the YouTube Channel options available. Click around!

Uploading Videos to Your Channel

Embedding a YouTube Video on Your Conductor Site

First, copy the embed code for your video per the following instructions (applies for both textile and RTE users):

Find the video you want to embed on your site on YouTube. Hopefully you have your own YouTube channel and have already uploaded your video there rather than uploading it to a specific account, which is different from a channel. If you did not create the video, just find it like you would normally.
Click the "Share" button beneath the video
Click the "Embed" button that is revealed.
Note the checkboxes below the code that's generated and highlighted in blue. You have the option to get rid of those sometimes annoying suggested videos that pop up at the end of your own video. Simply uncheck that box.
Select a size for the video. You will have to consider the width of the content area of your page before making a selection - but it is usually safe to say anything under 450 pixels wide will work. If you enter that value in the "Custom" box, the proportional y-value will generate for you.
After customizing your embed code in steps 4 and 5, copy the text highlighted in blue.
This step differs for Textile vs. RTE Users:
- RTE Users Only: In Conductor, click the "Source" button in the page editor and find where you want the video to go. Paste the code there. When you click the "Source" button a second time (it will turn from blue to white) you should see a red outline where your video will be.
- Textile Users Only: In Conductor, in the page editor, click in the text box where you want to place the video and paste the text. Make sure there is exactly one line break below and one line break above the code that you paste.

Required System Maintenance

2012-01-25T10:00:00-05:00

On February 5th, 2012 at 8am, we will be performing server updates to Conductor. The nature of these updates may result in extended system downtime.

The expected down time is at least an hour, though we are hoping the maintance can be completed in less time.

So What's Going On?

Conductor is a custom Ruby on Rails application. Ruby is the programming language (like PHP, Java, or C), and Rails is the Ruby-based framework for web development. And it is time to update our version of Ruby.

Questions?

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us at webhelp@nd.edu.

Avoiding Unwanted Line Breaks

2011-11-29T09:00:00-05:00

Issue: If I want to start a new line by pressing the RETURN key, Conductor always inserts a blank line before the new line I type.

Solution: A little keyboard magic!

Difficulty Level: Beginner || Audience: RTE Users Only

So what's the key? (pun!)

If you want a single space, hold down the SHIFT key and hit RETURN key at the same time. This will give you the single line return you are looking for in these situations.

Conductor uses a double space by default because normally that's how you want spacing between paragraphs to appear for ease of scanning.

With additional questions or comments, ask a question or email webhelp@nd.edu.

Conductor Changes - November 13, 2011

2011-11-13T09:30:00-05:00

Below is a quick summary of the changes for Conductor this week.

Updated CKEditor from 3.6.1 to 3.6.2

Conductor's Rich Text Editor, CKEditor, is also under continuous development. There is a formatting issue with pasting plain text into the Rich Text Editor. The problem is that if you copy several chunks of plain text then paste that into the Rich Text Editor of Conductor, the resulting HTML was strange and unexpected.

We were hoping this would be resolved in 3.6.2, alas it was not. So we needed to find a work-around. Enter the return of Paste as Plain Text.

Added "Paste as Plain Text"

Since the CKEditor didn't handle the pasting as plain text as we wanted it to, we've brought back two buttons into the menu: Paste as Plain Text and Paste from Word. In the case of Paste from Word, the Rich Text Editor is already configured to detect that you are pasting from Word and handle that quietly and gracefully. The Paste as Plain Text should be used if you are copying plain non-HTML text into Conductor.

My advice is don't worry about the Paste from Word button, Conductor will take care of you.

Why the confusion, I just want to copy and paste?

I wish it were simpler, but the reality is the Rich Text Editor supports two modes: HTML source and the rendered HTML, often times referred to as What You See Is What You Get (i.e. WYSIWYG). The Rich Text Editor does it's best to determine what has been pasted into the editor and handle it accordingly. Content copied from Word, Google Docs, Libre Office, Pages, and Wordpad all may look the same on the computer monitor, but what is copied and to be pasted is very veryt different.

The Rich Text Editor must ultimately interpret the pasted information and translate it according to the developers best understanding of the content. In other words, how many translations of Dante's "Inferno" exist? Or "The Art of War" by Sun Tzu? There-in lies the challenge of translating from one language (i.e. Word) to another (i.e. HTML). Both languages are evolving in their lexicon but also our understanding of that lexicon is changing and growing.

Custom Navigation is available at the top-level

A month ago, we added the ability to enable Custom Navigation for a Conductor site. We have now added, for sites with Custom Navigation enabled, the ability to add custom navigation items at the top-level.

Conductor Custom Database updates

Conductor has the ability to store and maintain custom datasets. This feature has been a somewhat "silent feature" in that we haven't added it to the feature list. The Custom Databases do, however, provide a means for allowing administrators of a site to manage data for pages in a more relational manner (i.e. A course is taught by one faculty member, but a faculty member teaches many courses).

Having Trouble Logging In? Try These Steps to Solve the Most Common Login Problems

2011-10-31T11:00:00-04:00

Issue: You are unable to login to edit or update your Conductor site, or you can't see the site's pages themselves online.

Solution: Learn the common snags people run into (read this post!)

Difficulty Level: Beginner || Audience: All Conductor Users

If you are new to managing your own web content in an online CMS like Conductor, the task can seem daunting. And nothing makes this feeling worse than being unable to log-in to start editing and maintaining your new site.

Peruse these tips and it's likely you'll find the solution to your login issue here.

Terminology:

The Dashboard: The page you land on in the admin area once you successfully login.
Live pages: Published pages on your site, whether launched or unlaunched. These are the pages you would consider a part of your website.
Launched Site (aka a "live site"): A site that appears to have a normal web address (no ".conductor" portion).
Unlaunched Site (aka a "site in development"): A site that stil has a ".conductor" portion in their site's web address.
- Example: eastasian.conductor.nd.edu is an unlaunched site. Eastasian.nd.edu is a launched site.

Steps to follow when logging in to edit your website (launched or unlaunched)

Identify your website URL (your site address)
- Your website URL will be yoursite.conductor.nd.edu prior to launch, and yoursite.nd.edu post-launch.
Add "/admin" to your site's URL.
- To access the login page for your site's administrator section, you will need to add /admin to the end of whichever URL is active for your site (either the .conductor version OR the live version). A common problem people have is that they fail to realize that they are trying to login to the .conductor/unlaunched version once their site is launched/live. The .conductor address will no longer gain you access to your site once your site launches.
Make sure you are a user on the site.
- You must be added as a user on the site before you wil be able to log in. Try to get in touch with someone who has been working on the site, and see if they have access to the "User" link in the "Settings" menu, visible on the Dashboard.

Steps to follow when trying to preview pages in your unlaunched site

If your site is live, you can view the pages like you would on any other website.
If the page is "published" and is a "navigation item":
1. you should be able to find it in your site's "menu of pages" or what we call the site navigation.
2. Simply navigate to it from your homepage (e.g. yoursite.conductor.nd.edu).
If the page is either "published" and not a "navigation item" or is not "published,"
1. you will have to use the "Preview" link that appears in the upper-right hand menu on the screen that shows up after you save a page you've just edited.
2. To preview this unpublished or non-nav-item page, you can click that "Preview" link.
3. You will see the page exactly as it would appear were it a live page.
If you aren't logged in to the admin and just want to look around your in-development site,
1. you should navigate to your site's URL yoursite.conductor.nd.edu.
2. You will be prompted to enter a username and password.

Contact webhelp@nd.edu if you are an existing client and have not recieved the username and password to preview pages for unlaunched/development sites.

Solutions to common log in problems:

The page where you enter your netid and password to gain access to the Dashboard is located at http://yoursite.nd.edu/admin OR http://yoursite.conductor.nd.edu/admin.
Do not append your site's URL with /admin/login - this is a deprecated feature.
Remember, regardless of whether your site is unlaunched (and thus still has .conductor in the URL), or if you have a live site that exists at the URL you requested for it (without the .conductor in the middle) all you have to do to get to the Dashboard is append the url with /admin
If you used to be able to login, but you can't anymore:
- Most likely, your website has launched. Prior to launch you were getting access to your site at yoursite.conductor.nd.edu/admin. The reason you can't gain access to your site is because the URL changed once the site launched. Instead of yoursite.conductor.nd.edu, your site now "lives" at yoursite.nd.edu. Accordinglly, the admin end, where you will be able to continue to make changes and edit your website, is located at yoursite.nd.edu/admin.
- You might have been removed as a user. This rarely happens, but it's worth checking with the other people who edit the site to see if they might have deleted you from the "Users" section of the admin.

Need more information? Visit our Online Conductor User Guide's Login Instructions.

Conductor Changes - October 16, 2011

2011-10-17T22:20:00-04:00

User Notification

In listening to the various Conductor users, we heard that new users may not know the Conductor resources available to them. To help with this, we've decided that each time a user is added to a site, Conductor will send them an email outlining some helpful information.

Changes to Username and Password for Viewing Sites That Are Not Live

You may now use your NetID and NetID password to view a Conductor site that is under development. Traditionally, you were required to use "conductor" for the username and "preview" for the password. But what we've found is that this created tremendous confusion. Only NetIDs associated with that particular site will work. You can still use "conductor" and "preview".

Keyword Searches in Conductor

The good people at Notre Dame Philosophical Review asked that their search function allow them to search only on Author, Reviewer, or Title. With the help of the Google Search Appliance team at the Hesburgh Library, we have been able to deliver this functionality for the Notre Dame Philosophical Review search page.

If this is something that you wish added to your site, please contact us to discuss the particulars of your search needs.

Adjustment to Pasting Content Into the Rich Text Editor

We have configured the Rich Text Editor to remove some of the surprises of pasting content. What we have done is removed any inline styles that may be pasted into the Rich Text Editor. The reason we are removing them is that they can create unexpected output when those inline styles are mixed with your site's existing styles.

Technical Aside

Below is the Javascript regular expression that checks for any inline declarations that are likely to cause problems:

Having Trouble Formatting Content After Pasting Content Into Conductor?

2011-10-15T11:00:00-04:00

Issue: Nothing looks right on the live page after I paste content into Conductor...

Solution: Be aware of the tools Conductor offers to prevent unwanted formatting, and play it safe by using certain practices when creating content for your website.

Difficulty Level: Beginner || Audience: RTE Users Only
Also covered in the Online Conductor User Guide: Pasting Content Into Conductor

Hidden Styles That Cramp Your Style: Drafting or Copying Content in 3rd Party Applications

Some users come to me asking why the formatting (bold, italic, etc.) that they apply to their content while using a third party application sometimes isn't preserved when they paste it into Conductor.

If you paste content into Conductor from applications such as Microsoft Word, or even other websites, you might be making extra work for yourself. These external applications add cumbersome - and hidden - background styles to your website's content.

You should never rely on Conductor to preserve the formatting that another application applied to your content.

This could be the source of the problems listed below, and more:

Text you add in Conductor looks different than text you pasted in from another program like Word.
Extra spaces/line breaks exist.
Your links don't work
When editing the content with the Conductor toolbar, none of the tools seem to be doing their jobs correctly (e.g. when you click "Update Page" and preview the page, your changes don't stick).

The real issue is the disruptive background styles.

Enough about the problem, what's the solution?

Do not format and create content in Word or any other 3rd party application expecting it to cleanly paste into Conductor. There aren't any Content Management Systems that have the ability to clean up formatting perfectly, and Conductor is no exception.
- Instead, draft and format your Conductor-bound content directly in Conductor.
If you must format and create content in 3rd party applications, you need to make sure you remove extraneous background styles by doing what we call "scrubbing the content" with the "Remove Format" tool (left) in the Conductor toolbar.

Scrubbing Content: Use our friendly, "Remove Format" tool (left) to remove any clunky and damaging 3rd party background styles. RTE users can find it in the page editing toolbar just above the editing area, 2nd button from the right on the top row.

After pasting in your content, select it all.
Click on the "Remove Format" tool.
Now, only Conductor-friendly styles remain, returning control over formatting back to you, the user, so you can freely format your content using the toolbar.

Caution! You might lose some of your formatting and have to redo it. But using the remove format tool is a much better alternative to having hundreds of bits of unnecessary background styles conflicting with your ability to edit your own webpage, as well as slowing down the time the page takes to load.

My Personal Suggestion

If you want to be sure not to lose any formatting, draft your content in a plain text editor like TextEdit (Mac) or NotePad (Windows) or in Conductor itself. The Rich Text Editor in Conductor provides a friendly, familiar array of tools for formatting content.

Remember, you can save a page as a draft (invisible to the public) by un-checking the "publish" box, right above the "update page" button. This continuously saves your changes and gives you the ability to return and edit it anytime before publishing your page.

Get more help:

Online Conductor User Guide

Conductor Navigation Changes

2011-10-12T13:25:00-04:00

This past month, we added the ability to better manage a site's navigation. Prior to the update, all News for a given site lived at http://my-conductor-site.nd.edu/news/ and all Events lived at http://my-conductor-site.nd.edu/events/. As of Conductor 2.0.0, this need not be the case.

You can now have your News module at any location. Maybe you want a page called "News and Events", and want the News as a subpage of the "News and Events." So your News module could be at http://my-conductor-site.nd.edu/news-and-events/news.

Why Is This Important?

We were dissatisfied with the way that News and Events were treated as second class citizens in regard to navigation. We firmly believe that an administrator of a site should be able to look at the admin side of their site and see the navigation.

What Do I Need To Do?

If you are happy with your current site and it's navigation, you don't need to do anything.

If you would like your News module named Blogs, or would like to have greater control on the navigation, then you need to contact us to make changes to your template.

Why Does My Template Need Changing?

It doesn't need to be changed unless you want to take advantage of the Custom Navigation. However, if you want the Custom Navigation, there are adjustments that need to be made that we are not comfortable applying without your approval. Unfortunately, this wasn't something we could easily migrate as each template has traditionally been custom made for your site.

What Else Do I Need To Know?

You do not need to name your News module "News". Perhaps you'd prefer "Blog" or "What Is Happening". Take a look at the recently launched Vocation's Blog as an example. The Vocation's blog uses the standard Conductor News module, but has named the News module "Blog".

You can have your primary news at one location and have a news category located somewhere else. For example, I have installed the News module at http://my-conductor-site.nd.edu/news-and-events/news. In the News module, I have defined the Category "Lectures". I could then create a News Category page for "Lectures" located at http://my-conductor-site.nd.edu/faculty/lectures/.

Results! Conductor Survey 2011

2011-09-20T10:00:00-04:00

The winner of our 2011 Conductor Survey drawing was Marissa Runkle from the College of Science. She received a $50 Notre Dame Food Services gift card. Thank you to everyone who participated in the survey.

The yearly survey is a good chance to listen to Conductor users about what’s working, what’s not, and where we should invest our CMS time. We feel it’s important to share the results of these surveys so you can see that we take them seriously and to help hold us accountable as we integrate your feedback into our planning and project roadmap.

Approval rating (73%) is OK, but can be better.

Conductor received a 73% approval rating (that's better than Congress!). Compared to other CMSs in higher education, though, it’s just above average (70%). While there’s no such thing as 100% satisfaction, we know Conductor can get better. One notable insight is that other CMSs don’t get tremendously better results, so switching systems (something we examine regularly) won’t necessarily provide major gains.

Users don’t know about all of the features.

A lot of comments asked for password protection, databases, photo galleries, and other things that Conductor already does. I mean, we have plenty of sites with these features and for new sites, we regularly use them. But our other site owners don't always know that. We want to make sure people know about the tools and how to get them implemented on their sites (quickly and inexpensively).

People don’t always get training and support after a site launches.

Recently, a content manager took a new position elsewhere on campus. The replacement content manager eagerly jumped into Conductor. But we had no idea this happened – and she didn’t even know we offered training. We quickly got her the information she needed, but we’ve begun to create ways to help introduce new users after a site has launched. And we can do more to educate people about Conductor well after their site has launched.

Web design options are perceived as CMS problems.

One of the comments seen in CMS surveys in higher ed (and Conductor is no exception) is the tension between the content managers and the design of the site. Content owners want more control over the appearance of the page, fonts and colors, alignment, etc. The problem isn’t the CMS – it's the template. Often, sites are designed and set according to a project that may take a year and has been vetted, approved, and nit-picked by the appropriate stakeholders. Sometimes these decisions relate to university brand guidelines or college style rules.

This would be true with Conductor or any other CMS we implemented. Simply put, the goal of the CMS is to make it possible to manage content, not design. If the design isn’t meeting the needs of the content (needing special styling or layout), we encourage users to work with their communications directors or our support staff to add the appropriate styles.

Top feature requests are all about regular use.

Most of the work done in Conductor is in pages, news, and events. Thus, people who spend a lot of time in Conductor feel the friction of any bugs, quirks, or design issues. It’s frustrating. There are a lot of quirks with the rich text editor (RTE) and some people are still using Textile but would be better served with the RTE. Adding uploads (pictures or documents) has gotten better, but there are a few areas where it gets sticky. Users shouldn’t need to jump into the source code to do regular tasks – so we’re looking at a few ideas on how to improve this. One of the biggest feature requests deals with page editing – saving drafts, previewing your content without having to save it, etc. These would make a significant difference to most users, which means it’s a top priority for us.

Conductor Survey Wrap-up

The two biggest reasons we do these surveys are to take stock of where we are (73% – not bad, but we can do better) and to guide our future efforts. It’s clear from your feedback that the biggest areas of need are the editing environment and communication about Conductor’s features and training options. We are generating ideas on how to best accomplish these and you should see the initial progress shortly.

Since we launched our first website in Conductor in 2007, this system has come a long way. Today, there are over 275 websites in Conductor and more being added all the time. We have big plans and they all lead to better user experiences and more effective websites for you.

Minor Conductor Update

2011-08-21T09:00:00-04:00

This Sunday, I've updated Conductor to include a few minor tweaks, most of which are under the hood. However, we have updated Conductor's footer image to use the new Notre Dame brand standards. For more information about the new Notre Dame brand standards, take a look at OnMessage.ND.edu.

Updating the Conductor Pages Admin

2011-07-07T15:19:00-04:00

The Conductor Pages admin screen is getting a refresh. We are removing some of the visual busyness of the interface.

Most noteably the height of each row is expanding. In doing so we are…

Moving the Edit and Add Subpage links to the second row.
Merge the last updated information into a single
Revealing additional secondary information on hover.
1. Edit link
2. Add Subpage link
3. The page's template

Updates to the Admin

2011-06-07T11:19:00-04:00

Over the past month, I've been working at unifying some of the underlying modules. The idea being that each module should have a consistent interface to the rest of Conductor. That way, if I'm working with News, Events, Pages, etc. I can expect them to behave similarly. From the outside this is nothing exciting, but it is a fundamental building block for further developments.

In addition to this, I've added the ability in the Conductor admin to search your News articles by title. Nothing fancy, but someone pointed out it was painful to find really old articles in the admin. Hopefully this will help.

Behind-the-scenes Conductor upgrade

2011-05-08T09:05:00-04:00

Today's deploy is all about a behind the scenes update. We have updated the underlying framework on which Conductor is built.

What does this mean for me?

On Sunday or Monday you should look through your site and make sure things are still working properly. We have done extensive testing and don't anticipate any issues, but there are about 250 sites and over 15,000 pages to check… so we appreciate your help.

What if something is broken?

We'll be monitoring things next week and fixing any issues we discover. Feel free to email us at webhelp@nd.edu, call 574-631-4243, or you can use the Request Help button in the Conductor admin area (top right).

Why this Update?

Conductor is built on the Ruby on Rails framework, an actively developed web application framework. To provide the best options going forward, we want to keep up to date with the framework's developments.

Adding Custom Database(s)

2011-04-24T09:00:00-04:00

One item on Conductor's roadmap is the Custom Database, which allows the creation of custom data sets that can be stored and shared.

What Is It?

The custom database is available to manage custom datasets that have various fields: date, time, URL, image, text, and number. A database can also have related data (i.e. an Author can have many Books).

Why?

Because a Conductor site might need:

A list of Staff Members
A list of Courses
A list of Faculty and their recent papers
A collection of Books and Authors, where a Book might have more than one author and an Author may have more than one book.
A list of tee times and hole information for a golf course

And it comes with an API

Maybe you'll want a JSON object of AgencyND's staff or an XML document of AgencyND's Staff. One never knows how your data could be useful to others, but we believe in making publicly available information truly available.

We also provide a means of updating individual records via the Conductor admin. We also provide a means of populating and updating the database via a CSV upload.

The Catch?

This feature is in a "beta" period as we work to polish the edges.

How Do I Get One?

If you are interested, please contact us. We want to understand the specifics of your custom data to help setup the database for you.

Inline Preview

2011-03-13T11:10:00-04:00

This week's deploy includes an Inline Preview for Pages. Now, after saving changes to your page, click the Inline Preview tab and see what the page looks like.

One caveat: This inline preview is rendered via an Iframe, not Applies latest product for construction, but an HTML element for rendering content from another source.

Simple Refinements

2011-02-28T22:00:00-05:00

Search Refinement

While working on another application, the good people at University of Notre Dame Press pointed out that searches for "Garces" and "Garcés" were returning different results. From a "technical" stand-point this is understandable; The é is a different character than the e. However, not everyone will know that María Antonia Garcés has two diacritic marks in her name. After a bit of communication with Tom Lehman at the Hesburgh Library, Tom was able to point me to the entqr parameter. In layman's terms (pun intended), the entqr=3 option means that each letter with a diacritic is treated the same as it's "base" letter; So e, ê, é, and ë are treated as e (e.g. "Gårcés", "Garces", and "Garcés" will all return the same results). Needless to say, this was also applied to Conductor.

Improved Data Portability

In our ongoing effort to provide greater data portability, I've went ahead and added JSONP support for pages, news, and events. This will allow you to fetch data out of conductor via JSON and make use of it in your own javascript application. Simply request the page with a callback=variable_name parameter, like so http://conductor.nd.edu/home.js?callback=variable_name.

Change in Request Routing

When Conductor receives a request to a URL, it goes through a list of options on what to do. In some cases there are URLs (e.g. /admin/login, /news) that are not dynamically determined. In other cases, Conductor looks at various components to determine what to show, looking at pages, uploads, specific events, and lists redirects. All fairly common stuff for a content management system. This update brings a modification to this routing scheme.

Prior to the change we had the following order of execution (there is more going on but for the example's sake, we'll use these 4):

Static URLs (e.g. /admin/login)
URLs that match a specific pattern (e.g. /news/1234-article would render news article 1234)
URLs that match a redirect (e.g. redirect /from/here --> /to/there)
URLs that match a page's URL (e.g. the Contact Us page is at /contact-us)

After the change, the order of execution is:

URLs that match a redirect
Static URLs
URLs that match a specific pattern
URLs that match a page's URL

But Why?

Why make the change? Quite simply, we want to allow greater customization for URLs, and this can most easily be done by pushing the Redirect check to the front of the line.

Navigation Caching

Prior to this update, the administrative navigation was dynamically generated with each request, when in reality, the left navigation information changed so very little. So I have added some functionality to cache each user's left navigation (i.e. the Pages, Uploads buttons). This cache is cleared whenever anyone on the site updates anything in the admin; After all if you are granted new permissions by someone else, you should see them when you refresh the page.

But Why?

This is part of my ongoing effort to address potential latency issues. By itself this update may not help all that much, but each little improvement helps.

A Little Bit of Follow-Up

2011-02-16T14:40:00-05:00

After my last blog post concerning the Conductor update, I received the following email:

You can’t just put a “teaser” in your blog and not expect questions. Can you share any details? Functionality, basic design premise? I know of some departments who want to purchase and link and external db to their website. If this is what I’m thinking it would save them time and money.

My response:

The short of it is that each site will be able to define multiple tables (I.e. Professor and Course). Each table can have custom fields (first name, last name, course name, professor). Conductor will store that information and allow it to be retrieved and rendered within a Conductor page, a general table listing or by way of the databse API (JSON or XML, CSV).

The custom database will also provide:

Rudimentary search
Simple relationships (i.e. the records in the assignments table belong to a record in the class table)
CSV import with the option to "start over", "add & update", and "add & ignore."

Routine Maintenance

2011-02-03T22:00:00-05:00

I'm busy working on a major feature for Conductor (custom data storage), but wanted to make sure to push a couple of updates this week.

Fixed a problem when determining Upload references. Prior to fix, only first upload in the content was referenced. Now all uploads are referenced.
Updated listing page for Uploads to include a link to "Show" the upload. Thank you Linnie Caye for the suggestion.
Updated the Atom feeds for events to include location, start and end dates. Thank you Christian Moevs for the suggestion.

Tis the Season of Sharing

2010-12-16T22:00:00-05:00

Sharing

Conductor is expanding it's Import News feature. Prior to this update, any Conductor site with a News module could import news articles from Notre Dame News. With this update:

Both News and Events can be imported into your site
Any Conductor site can opt-in to share their News and Events
Any Conductor site can select which sites they want to use as Import Sources (by default everyone gets Notre Dame News)

Setting up Sharing

For those of you with administrative rights to the site, you can click on the Settings > Configuration link in the left navigation.

From this page you can

Share Content with Other Conductor Sites: By doing so, your site is now available for other sites to use as a source for News and Events. Simply check the Share Content option.
Select Content Source Sites: Click on the select region to choose from a list of sites that have presently enabled the Share Content feature. These sites will be your source sites from which you can import News and Events articles.

Using Sharing

Within the News and Events module there is a link for "Import News" and "Import Events" respectively. From each of those links you can import any Events or published News articles from your selected source sites. Click "Import" to copy the article into your site.

If the source article changes, you will be notified, via email that changes were made.

Fix

Over the past week, there were a handful of reports concerning incorrect homepage displays. We have fixed that error.

Request Help from within Conductor

2010-11-28T09:00:00-05:00

We've secretly replaced the "Report a Bug" button with a new "Request Help" button. Let's see if they notice? (Rest assured we did not replace your coffee).

The new "Request Help" feature is there to provide a quick way for you to submit an issue to us. When you click on the feature a form will slide down and ask you to describe your issue. Fill it out, and click send.

One of the challenges we have in providing support is that we inevitably need information

Regarding your browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Chrome, Opera, or any number of the esoteric browsers that are out there)
Version of Flash
What page you are having the problem on
Your screen resolution
Your browser window size

Each of those pieces help us diagnose your problem. And Conductor can easily determine that. We simply ask that you describe your issue.

Conductor CMS // Conductor CMS

Easily Embed Videos on Your Conductor Site

What is video embedding?

Creating a YouTube Channel for Your Site

Uploading Videos to Your Channel

Embedding a YouTube Video on Your Conductor Site

Required System Maintenance

So What's Going On?

Questions?

Avoiding Unwanted Line Breaks

So what's the key? (pun!)

Conductor Changes - November 13, 2011

Updated CKEditor from 3.6.1 to 3.6.2

Added "Paste as Plain Text"

Why the confusion, I just want to copy and paste?

Custom Navigation is available at the top-level

Conductor Custom Database updates

Having Trouble Logging In? Try These Steps to Solve the Most Common Login Problems

Terminology:

Steps to follow when logging in to edit your website (launched or unlaunched)

Steps to follow when trying to preview pages in your unlaunched site

Solutions to common log in problems:

Conductor Changes - October 16, 2011

User Notification

Changes to Username and Password for Viewing Sites That Are Not Live

Keyword Searches in Conductor

Adjustment to Pasting Content Into the Rich Text Editor

Technical Aside

Having Trouble Formatting Content After Pasting Content Into Conductor?

Hidden Styles That Cramp Your Style: Drafting or Copying Content in 3rd Party Applications

Enough about the problem, what's the solution?

My Personal Suggestion

Related topics:

Get more help:

Conductor Navigation Changes

Why Is This Important?

What Do I Need To Do?

Why Does My Template Need Changing?

What Else Do I Need To Know?

Results! Conductor Survey 2011

Approval rating (73%) is OK, but can be better.

Users don’t know about all of the features.

People don’t always get training and support after a site launches.

Web design options are perceived as CMS problems.

Top feature requests are all about regular use.

Conductor Survey Wrap-up

Minor Conductor Update

Updating the Conductor Pages Admin

Updates to the Admin

Behind-the-scenes Conductor upgrade

What does this mean for me?

What if something is broken?

Why this Update?

Adding Custom Database(s)

What Is It?

Why?

And it comes with an API

The Catch?

How Do I Get One?

Inline Preview

Simple Refinements

Search Refinement

Improved Data Portability

Change in Request Routing

But Why?

Navigation Caching

But Why?

A Little Bit of Follow-Up

Routine Maintenance

Tis the Season of Sharing

Sharing

Setting up Sharing

Fix

Request Help from within Conductor