Just a few tips learned the hard way...
Documents
- When uploading files, keep the file names short and omit special characters and extra dots.
- Give documents consistent plain English names. DocMan will insert the filename as the document title by default, so bulletin11152011.pdf will display a link as "bulletin11152011", which makes no sense to anyone. Rather, change the title to "Tuesday, Nov. 15, 2011" or similar and use the same naming convention for each successive document in a category.
- As a courtesy to your visitors, don't post .docs. Convert them first to PDF. See Tech Resources for free or low-cost options for creating PDFs.
| Good | Bad |
| honor_roll.pdf |
Fall semester list of honor roll students.pdf |
| schoolbucks.pdf |
school$.pdf |
| homecoming_court.pdf |
homecoming.court.pdf |
Articles
- Create individual articles for each distinct topic, event or announcement. Don't try to cram all of your home page news into a single article. Keeping them separate lets you expire time-sensitive items independently and keeps the site tidy and looking up-to-date. There is a limit to how much text is allowed in a single article; don't test it.
- Be judicious in your copying and pasting formatted text from a Word document into an article. MS Word text introduces hidden HTML code that can break the editor.
- Never, ever try to copy an image from any source and paste it into an article. The editor will convert it to text, overrun the database record size and break the page and/or entire web site. Upload the web-ready image using the image uploader built into the editor.
- Resize images with image editing software (GIMP on FITTs, PhotoShop if you have an Adobe site license, or the software that came with your digital camera) BEFORE uploading the image.