CMS Template

This is a site wide navigation to all UAS campuses and departments. It has a search box on the right which can be filtered for a specific campus. This include also places the UAS logo to the right of the 'Banner'.

The Banner is generated automatically with the CMS configuration. It has

1. A background image for each department
2. A link back to the department home page
3. Shows the 'Display Name' matadata of the current page (for some few departments it shows the t'title' metadata).

Breadcrumbs automatically show which level of the department site the current page is located. Each folder deeper into the site a user navigates adds another link to the breadcrumbs bar.

Each folder level deeper adds another link to the Breadcrumbs.

On the right side of the Breadcrumb bar (except in IE6) there are links to

• show a text only version of the site
• Decrease the text size of the content area
• Increase the text size of the content area
• Bookmark the page to social network site
• Popup a version of the page for printing which only shows the content area. (This by default does not show images, but it can be changed on a page or a site to include the content images for printing.

There are 4 regions areas. Region Nav2-A is reserved for the left hand navigation. This is generated automatically from the CMS. To make a page that is included in the left navigation it must

1. Check the box Include in Navigation
2. Check the box to include in indexing
3. Have a meta-date Display Name

The other left column regions may contain other site-wide content.

The Left Nav section for a list of their 'social links' . This is a block that is linked into the lower left nav regio

The Right Nav: Notices - generated  from  a notice form/page

The Right Nav: Department Address - generated from the Address form/page

Footer is an 'include' file which are added automatically in the template and provide site-wide navigation.

Content blocks include the 'Default' region is the area that you provide your content. This area would include text, pictures, tables of data...etc. Note that some pages have content automatically generated for the default region, such as an events listing shown above. If you click edit and you see no content to edit you can click the configuration tab and see what blocks of content are being injected into the 'Default' region.

There area also 3 areas above and below the default region that you may inject content into by linking to a block.

 

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Extra Notes

Why we do what we did in the template design for the current UAS site:

Top Navigation

• A user is role based first and location based 2nd (more interested that it is a student, faculty or alumni than from a particular campus)
• Quick links to most used/needed sites
• Click to bring second navigation to accommodate mobile devises which have no 'hover' action
• Put the bar above the banner so that the drop down does not obscure content
• Search box with options to filter search to campuses

UAS logo

Set by Public and Media Relations Department constraints

Banner 

• branding for a department site with a background image
• Link to home page of the department
• Display Name for the current page

Breadcrumbs

Each new folder depth creates a new link in the breadcrumb list

Repurpose

• text only, resize text in content area, and print content area buttons.
• some pages have the "Add this" link list for sharing the page. We took it off as a default setting because it can slow down the page render

3 columns in main area:

• Former UAS templates at 776 px width had 2 columns - a left hand navigation at 200 px wide and a content area at 565 px wide. To transition to the new template we kept close to those dimensions and added a 3rd column when we expanded the overall width to 980px (this normal width of a laptop view) industry standard.
• The new template can easily change a page to one or two columns with the addition of a few lines of CSS which hides a column and shows other columns larger.
• A fluid design was rejected because content input is not regulated. However if a larger piece of content is inserted in the default content area it will show running over the right column, thus encouraging the user to change to a 2 column display for such a page.

Left Column - Secondary Navigation

• Shows links to each page in current folder that is marked to be included in navigation, external links as needed, and a link to the index page of any sub folder that is marked to be included in navigation.
• Note: this new system of only showing one folder at a time ties in with the breadcrumbs above which allow a user to link back to previous folders.
• Site map link (optional in root department folder) shows either the site in an outline structure or an alphabetical list of the pages of the site based on the Display name

Center Column - Default Content (center column)

there are up to 6 extra regions in addition to the default region

Right Column - sidebar content

contact information, notices, useful links

Footer

UAS standard site-wide include