Santa Clara University

Site Administrator Checklist

A checklist of items to evaluate when converting a Commonspot subsite to the new design:

1. Site Structure: Left-column navigation will be designed to work best with 5 to 7 categories, and one level of sub-categories. The SCU site statistics reports can be useful in determining the most active areas of a site, as well as sections requiring less prominence in the site navigation.
2. Content Layout: options for home, news, directory and other standard presentations will be available. In some cases, the existing site content may need to be reconstructed or newly developed to adapt to these options.
3. Template Settings: the site administrator can configure the site name, local search path, external search indexing, and page layout options by modifying template/page meta data. These options had previously been available via custom element parameters or subsite admin settings. There will be a standard set of options applied at the template level, with individual pages using custom settings where applicable.
4. Site-specific graphic elements – at minimum, a site will require a new title graphic to differentiate it from other Commonspot sites.
5. Subsite settings: in particular, review the page-title-prefix setting. In combination with effective page title text,this is an important attribute for search engine optimization.
6. Clean-up: this is a good opportunity to review a subsite’s contents and remove obsolete and inactive pages.

Updating a site name

1. Login to the site administration page: http://cms.scu.edu/[subsite]/admin.cfm
2. From here, click the Subsite Properties category, and then “Click here to configure this site’s subsite properties”.
3. A new page will display, with Subsite Property settings. Click the + sign next to “Site Name”. You’ll see a form that allows you to set the site description and “Display Name” – that’s the text that’s used in the breadcrumb trail and other places in Commonspot where subsites are listed by name.

Setting the Page Title Prefix

1. Login to the Subsite Administration page: http://cms.scu.edu/[subsite]/admin.cfm
2. Expand the Subsite Properties category and click “configure this site’s subsite properties”.
3. Expand the Additional Settings category
4. Update the text in the Page Title Prefix form field, and click OK.

Copying Subsite Properties

1. Login to your Subsite Administration page.
2. Expand the Subsite Properties category and click “copy this subsite’s properities to other subsite(s)”.
3. A window will open that lists all of the cms subsites (takes a minute to load). Find the appropriate subsites in the list, and select them (CTRL+click to select more than one). Click Next.
4. Uncheck all of the Subsite Properties except for “Page Title Prefix”, then click Finish.