McNeese Website Documentation

Basic Usage

Website Regions

The website is broken up into different regions. Each of these regions will be referred to by unique name defined in this section. As shown in Basic Usage - Image 1, there are three primary regions.

Header

The header region is the top portion of the screen. Generally, this is where most navigation information is found.
Content

The content region is in the center of the page. This region resides between the header and the footer regions. This is generally the largest part of any page and contains most of the relevant information. Most of the work users do will only be in this region.
Footer

The footer region is the bottom portion of the screen. If there is anything in this region at all, then it more than likely contains contact information.

Header Region

The McNeese website uses this region to provide site-wide navigation. For users who are logged in, this will also contain additional controls for managing content. The header region is broken up into the following menus and sub-regions (see: Basic Usage - Image 2 and Basic Usage - Image 3).

Utility Panel
The utility panel is located at the topmost portion of the screen and is only shown to users who are logged in. This panel has two parts:
1. Utility Navigation
  
  Te utility navigation provides administrative links for most operations available to system users. This is always visible on the utility panel and is the topmost part of the utility panel. Most users will only care about the My Workbench link.
2. Utility Bar
  
  The utility bar may also be referred to as the shortcut bar. This is a user-custimizable menu in which the user may add their most often used locations to. Use the edit shortcuts link on the far right side of the utility bar to customize this menu.
McNeese Logo

The McNeese logo is a link that may be clicked on at any time to bring a user to the front page. This logo is location on the top-left portion of the screen, just below the utility panel.
Search Region

The search region contains a few links and a search box. This region is on the top-right portion of the screen, just below the utility panel.
Primary Navigation

The primary navigation is simply a menu containing the primary website links. This region is below both the McNeese logo and the search region and is generally found on the right side of the page.
Secondary Navigation

The secondary navigation is simply a menu containing the secondary website links. This region is below the primary navigation and usually spans the entire page.

Header regions screenshot — Basic Usage - Image 3

Content Region

The content region is the most used region of the screen. What and how this region is presented is largely dependent on the particular page being viewed. Generally, the content region is in the center of the page below the secondary navigation. There are a few sub-regions that may be found on all or most of these different pages. The most common of these layouts are the:

Menu

The menu region contains the user-created and controlled navigation menu. This region is only made visible if a group-specific menu actually exists, otherwise this region is hidden. While editing content, this region is hidden to preserve space The menu region, when visible, is located on the left side of the content region with no other content sub-region above or below it. All other content sub-regions are to the right of this region.
Page Title

This is simply the page title. All pages have titles. This region is located at the top of the
Menu Tabs

The menu tabs region contains additional content management functionality not provided by the utility panel. The tab links provided here are generally specific to the management of the current page being viewed and no other. This is only show for logged in users. Whether or not a given tab is visible is directly dependent on the access control allotted to the user. When there are menu tabs available, this region is located just below the page title region.
Breadcrumb
Breadcrumbs give a path-based history of how to get to your current location based on the McNeese front page or a given groups top page. They should be used to go up a path/directory when navigating the website. Each group on the system has a top page referred to as
```
<top>
```
. The very first breadcrumb link for any given group page is always that groups
```
&t;top>
```
page. The breadcrumb region is located below the menu tabs or title region.
Node ID
A node id is a unique identifier given to every piece of content on the website. This number is important to know because all internal links on this website should point to an objects node id and not their actual path.
Lets say we have some page called
```
My Page
```
, with a node id of
```
2
```
, and a url path of
```
www.mcneese.edu/example/page
```
. Links to the node id must be:
```
/node/2
```
. Links to the node id must neither be
```
www.mcneese.edu/node/2
```
nor
```
www.mcneese.edu/example/page
```
. If there exist some page at
```
www.mcneese.edu/example/page
```
and that pages node id is
```
2
```
, then a link to that page should be to:
```
/node/2
```
.
The node id exists to the immediate right of the breadcrumb region and usually exists on the same line as the breadrumb region.
Action Links

The action links are a set of additional tabs specific to a given menu tab. Consider these links sub-menu tab links. These are very uncommon and are shown only while logged into the system. When available, the action links are found to the left of the page, just below the breadcrumb region.
Content Body

The page itself is stored inside of the content body region. This is the region where the forms, interfaces, and content are stored. This region is below all other regions, except the menu region.

Footer Region

The footer region is an out of the way area to contain additional links and notes. These links are generally non-critical, but useful, such as a directory index. This region is not shown while editing content on the website.

Logging into the Website

In order to do any work on the website, you must login. Logging in is easy, so long as you know where to go. The easiest way to login is to go to https://www.mcneese.edu/login. Notice how the url starts with https://. This is required to be prefixed to www.mcneese.edu in order to ensure security while logging in. This protects your password from eavesdroppers and the system will not allow you to login unless you add the https:// to your url. Once logged in, you should always use urls that start with https://.

Terminology

Address

See url.

Content

Content is a general term designating some collection of text, images, and media. In general, content can be consired a page but it usually refers to the body region of a given page. Another name for content is node.

Node

The term node is often used in conjunction with some number to uniquely refer to some collection of text, images, and media. See also Content.

Region

A region is an area or block of a screen or page.

Url

This address, or url for short, is the name of a website. The McNeese website, for example, has a url of

www.mcneese.edu

. Each and every page and file on a website has some url. To find out what a particular page or files url is, simply look at the url bar while viewing the page or file.

Url Bar

The url bar is the part of your webbrowser where you type in the address of some particular website.