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Webpage Content Management
Updating your Webpages in Cascade
Introduction
Our college website serves as an online window to our institution, playing a crucial role in shaping prospective students' first impressions. It provides essential information about academic programs, campus life, admissions processes, and much more, making it the primary resource for current and potential students - as well as faculty and staff.
With over 240 pages, how do we sustain this endeavor? The answer is, with your help! Here at Coastline College we subscribe to Cascade, a content management system designed to let departments maintain their respective pages with accurate and current content, without the need to know coding.
The process is quite simple. Each department designates a department webpage editor. That person is granted access to make changes to their department's pages. Within Cascade they will be able to add/delete and update copy, headers, images and videos. After making their changes, they will review them by clicking on the Preview Draft button. If they are happy with the results, they will submit their page by clicking on the Submit button and emailing the IT Applications Developer and content strategist. The IT Applications Developer or Web Content Strategist will review the changes and Publish the page. This might sound a bit daunting, but rest assured their is no danger of breaking your web pages. Without the ability to publish, you can explore and try new things in a safe environment. Let's get started!
Steps to Get Started
Step 1
Decide within your department who is best suited to be the webpage editor. No technical background is needed but it helps to have a sense of design and basic document layout plus a keen eye for detail.
Step 2
Email our IT Applications Developer to be granted access to department pages and have a training folder setup. (Remember to bookmark the Cascade Login page!)
Step 3
Watch: Cascade Beginner Training Video and practice making changes in your training folder environment.
Step 4
After completing the training, email the Web Content Strategist (Melissa Thompson) and cc: the IT Applications Developer (Sazeda Sultana) for an additional 1-1 training via Zoom. That's when you will get access to your department pages.
Step 5
You are now ready to make changes to your pages! Edit then preview the draft. If you are satisfied with the results, hit Submit. This saves your work - it does not alert Marketing of your edits.
Step 6
Email the IT Applications Developer and cc: the Web Content Strategist with the subject line, "PUBLISH: [page name]" and include the following in the body of the email:
- Link to page on coastline.edu (unless it's a hidden page, then share the cascade link).
- What module you updated.
- Quick note about what kind of edits you made.
Tips / Reminders
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Be sure to bookmark the pages you are responsible for by clicking on the star in the top right corner. Click on My Content to access that list.
Regularly review your pages. Set reminders in your calendar.
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- Prepare your copy in a word processing program - this will help with spelling and grammar.
- Once complete, copy & paste into Windows Notepad or Mac TextEdit. This will strip the HTML formatting.
- After that, you can copy & paste into Cascade.
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Consistency with the formatting of content - both on your webpage and across the entire website - is very important to the brand image and reputation of the college. Being mindful of these details helps to build trust and credibility with our audience, establishes a strong brand identity, and can drive both engagement and loyalty over time.
Guidelines
Avoid walls of text. We want our content to be easily consumamble. Keep it simple; keep it concise.
Avoid "10 dollar words" - again, keep it simple.
Follow header structure (H2, H3, H4) within page.
Use bold to highlight a word or two within a sentence. (Never use in place of a header tag.)
Use italics to highlight an entire sentence.
The word "free" can be written "FREE" (all caps) but this is the exception.
Within page components, phone numbers should be written as (xxx) xxx-xxxx and hyperlinked. (Formatting will appear differently in left-hand column Contact area.)
Degrees are written as AA, AS, AA-T, and AS-T (without periods). Try not to use AD-T as that tends to add confusion.
Name titles are written with punctuation, as in Ph.D. and Ed.D. and followed by a comma before role at Coastline (ie. Jane Thomas, Ed.D., Student Coordinator)
Headers should never have colons (they are implied).
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Remeber that our site is dynamic, so page format changes as a page window or device screen is increased or decreased. It can also appear differently on multiple browsers.
After making significant changes to your page, be sure to check how it appears in mobile view and adjust accordingly.
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Want to add or change photos / graphics on your page? We have a subscription with Shutterstock - search there and when you find an image you like, email its URL to the Web Content Strategist for assistance downloading, resizing, optimizing, and uploading to Cascade.
If you have complex content for which an infographic may be warranted, email marketing@coastline.edu so one of our Graphic Designers can be assigned. Note: the making of infographics can take 3-4 weeks so please plan ahead!
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Generally speaking, a webpage should only have one Call To Action (CTA), and our Action Button component can be very effective in communicating that. Try to label these with a short and specific action, like "Login: Cascade".
Flex Buttons can be implemented as 1, 2, or 3 across a desktop full screen. These are used at the top of every Program page and throughout the site in different capacities (sometimes used as jump links down the page, other times used as external links, etc.)
Icons are another type of button. These are used in three ways:
- At the top of a page, showing page content, and anchor linked down the page.
- At the top of a page, showing what is part of that microsite, linked to internal pages. Icons should not be used to link to external sites.
- In middle or bottom of page linking to social media.
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The highlight module functions differently on the site, so you will not be able to edit within it on your page. Email the Web Content Strategist for assistance.