MU Knowledge Base

Adding Wimba Content from Pre-existing Live Classroom
 
1.      Log In to MUOnline
2.      Enter Course that contains Wimba Live Classroom
3.      Select the “Build Tab”
4.      Click on “Add Content Link”
5.      Click on “Wimba Live Classroom”
6.      Click on “Create Wimba Live Classroom”
7.      Enter your desired “Title” for the instance of Live Classroom
8.      Click “Continue”
9.      Select “Link to Existing Room”
10.  Choose the appropriate instance of Live Classroom that you are trying to recover from the Drop-Down menu to the right.
11.  Click “Continue”

This will create a new instance of Live Classroom and will import all of the content and archives from the pre-existing room.
 
 

If you create a Pronto account and do not like the Pronto ID you used to setup the account, the only way you can change this is to delete the account and recreate it using the Pronto ID that you want. Below are the steps to delete and recreate your Pronto Account. Keep in mind that deleting your Pronto account is permanent.  When you delete your Pronto account, your Pronto ID, account information, contacts, and profile information are lost and cannot be recovered. Once you recreate your account you will have to add your contacts and profile information back to your account.

Solution:

1. On the Pronto Settings page, click the Support link located in the footer of the page.
2. A new page will open, at the bottom of the new page you will see the delete my account… link. The Delete your account page opens.
3. Select a reason for deleting your Pronto Account from the drop-down menu.
4. Add any additional comments that would like to leave in the Comments box.
5. Click the Continue button. The Confirm Delete page opens.
6. Type your Pronto password in the Password field.
7. Click the Delete this account button. Your account is deleted.
8. Once you have deleted the account, wait approximately 10 minutes for the deletion process to complete then log in to MUOnline and setup your new Pronto account.

Overview

In certain situations, it’s useful to be able to find out who is responsible for the content on a Marshall University website, as well as how to contact that person to report a problem or error.

Details

Each website on the Marshall University web server requires that a faculty or staff member agree to serve as overseer for that site.    Being a site overseer means that you have agreed to be responsible for the content of the site, and to serve as point of contact if problems with your site are encountered.

There are two easy methods for determining the overseer of a site on the Marshall web server.   Sites using the Marshall University template and shared footer will display a small green envelope icon in the bottom right hand corner of the pages on the site.   See image below:

Clicking on this envelope will take you to the Overseer detail page for that particular site.   On the overseer detail page, you’ll be given the name and email address of the faculty or staff member responsible for site content.   An example overseer detail report is displayed in the image below:

If the site isn’t using the shared footer, you can visit the Overseer lookup page directly, and enter the site name in the form on the page to obtain the same information.

Marshall University is providing content developers with photographic resources for use in the web content being developed for the University.    Photographs that are available for your use are located at http://muphotos.marshall.edu.

MU Photos is a site run by “SmugMug”, and online photo storage site similar to Flickr or Photobucket.   Uploading photos to MU Photo makes it possible to provide simple galleries to users, where photos can be downloaded and saved locally.

Some content stored on MU Photos is intended for internal use only.   If you see galleries that have a “lock” thumbnail image on them, this means that they require a login in order to access contents, and generally are not available for public use.   A good rule of thumb is that anything you’re able to see/download you are ok to use.

If you have questions about how to use the MU Photos site, please open a ticket with the Marshall University Help Desk requesting assistance.

Part of providing an infrastructure for web publishing at Marshall University is opening up the ability to create web content to users who might not have the technical skill required to build a website from scratch. One of the ways that we do this is through the use of a content management solution that allows users to create basic web content in a familiar “what you see is what you get” interface.

Some users may question whether this approach is right for their group or department. This short overview of the pros and cons of using a content management system will help you make the right decision based on your specific needs.

Pros of Using a Content Management Solution for your web content

• Content is relatively simple to create, using a familiar word processor style interface
• Existing content can be easily edited and maintained as textual changes are required
• The University template will be applied to your site, helping maintain the look and feel present in top level content
• No technical skill, HTML knowledge, or understanding of the underlying framework is required in order to create a page
• Content creation can be distributed among many users, with granular user control
• Authentication to your content management based site can be controlled using your existing security framework
• A rich plugin architecture allows you to simply and quickly expand the functionality of your site

Cons of Using a Content Management solution for your web content

• Highly customized or intricate designs will be difficult to create and maintain
• Site specific custom widgets (flash animations, custom menuing, DHTML and AJAX scripting) are more difficult to apply
• Styling beyond changing the design of the content within the page is not supported

In short, if you need to maintain a site with many users whose primary job responsibility doesn’t include the management of web content, a CMS solution will help you simplify this content creation, and will allow you to easily bring your site design in line with top level University content.

If you are a skilled technical user, comfortable with the creation of HTML pages, CSS, flash animations, etc. and want a highly customized look and feel for your site, you would be better off using a standard HTML/ASP approach to site design.

If you have additional questions, or want to find out more about our content management offerings, please open a ticket with the Marshall University Help Desk requesting more information.

One way to easily edit web sites on the Marshall University web server is by using Microsoft Sharepoint Designer.

This is the tool that has evolved out of what used to be Frontpage,  so users familiar with past versions of the Frontpage application should feel at home using Sharepoint Designer.

Sharepoint designer is available as part of the Microsoft Office 2007 Suite available for Faculy/Staff machines, and It may already be on your system (Start>All Programs>Microsoft Office>Microsoft Office Sharepoint Designer) but if not, the UCS Help Desk should be able to install it for you.

Once you have Sharepoint Designer installed, follow  these steps to edit your site:

1. Map a network drive to your web directory on the Marshall University web server.
a.     You do this by going to  [Start>Computer]  and
b.     clicking “Map Network Drive” in the upper right hand corner.
c.      Select an appropriate drive letter (any open drive is fine)
d.     In the “Folder” box, type \\marshall.edu\www\{your directory}
e.     If you’re not using a public computer, you may want to check the “Reconnect at logon” box
f.      Click “Finish”
g.       You will be asked for your username and password – enter these   as “MARSHALL\username” and “password” where indicated.
h.      If all goes well, you should now have a new drive letter in Windows Explorer showing the content of your web directory.

2. Next, Launch Sharepoint Designer [Start>All Programs>Microsoft Office>Microsoft Office Sharepoint Designer]
a.      From the Sharepoint Designer Menu, select “File>Import>Import Site Wizard”
b.     This should bring up the “Import Website” Wizard.
c.      In the Import Website Wizard, beneath the “How do you want to get the files?” question, Select the “HTTP” radio button
d.     In the “Website Location” input box, after the ‘http://’, type: www.marshall.edu/{your directory}
e.     Click next, and wait a moment as Sharepoint Designer communicates with the server.
f.      Next, you’ll be asked to specify a location for a local copy of your website.   Uncheck the “Add to current website” check box if it’s selected, and type “C:\Local Copy of Web Directory” in the “Local Copy Location” input box.   This will tell Sharepoint to create a new directory on the C: drive of your computer, name it “Local Copy of Web Directory”, and copy all of the files from your web server directory to this new directory on your computer.   (Note that you can name your local directory whatever you’d like).
g.      Click next, and on the “Set Import Limits” page, make sure that none of the check boxes are selected, so that Sharepoint knows to get all of the data.   Click next again, and then click Finish.    You should get a notification that the site you are importing was created in Front Page – click “Yes” when you see this notice.    It may take some time for the site to import.   Once the import is complete, you will see all the files from your webserver on your local computer.
h.     At the bottom of the list of files in the “Web Site” pane, you’ll see the words “Remote Web Site” – click those words.   This will take you to the “Remote Web Site” view.   At the top of this view is a “Remote Web Site Properties” link.   Click this button.
i.        In the “Remote Web Site Properties” wizard, under “Remote Web server type”, select the “File System” radio button,  and type in or browse to the drive letter that you used for the mapped directory in step 1.  Click “Ok”.
j.       You should now see both a local and remote view of the files.   The first time you do this, all files will show as “out of sync” because Sharepoint hasn’t compared them.   You’ll know they’re showing as out of sync, because they will have a “?” beside the file name.   Select the “Synchronize” button at the bottom, and then click “Publish Web site”.

3. From here on, whenever you make a change to a file in your “Local Web Site” pane, it will show as out of sync with the server.  When you’re done making changes, selecting “Synchronize” and then clicking “Publish Web site” will publish your changes.

Introduction
At one time or another everyone has run into problems with broken images or links. Normally these are easy to fix but to the inexperienced user they can turn into a nightmare. In this tutorial we’ll discuss some techniques for fixing these types of problems.

Check The Address
The first thing to look at when troubleshooting a broken image or link is to check where the link or image is pointing. To do this for a link simply pass the cursor over top of the link. You’ll see the address for the link appear in the lower left-hand corner of the browser. For an image, you’ll need to pass your cursor over the broken image icon, right click with the mouse and choose Properties from the pop-up menu. The address for the image will be listed on the properties window.

In both of these cases you want to look for obvious problems with the address. This includes misspellings or putting in the wrong information. One common problem with addresses are ones that begin with file:///. Any address beginning with file:/// is going to attempt to load an image or follow a link on the user’s hard drive. This usually happens whenever a page is designed in MS Word or other HTML editor. Sometimes these editors will include the full address to a file on the developer’s machine rather than creating a web address.

If you don’t see any obvious problems, next start with the address and check that it is pointing to the right location. For example, let’s examine the following address:

http://www.marshall.edu/somedepartment/images/picture.jpg

The first thing we check is which server the address is pointing to. In the above example, the server is www.marshall.edu. Next we check the first subdirectory of the address. In our example, the first subdirectory is somedepartments. Then we check the next subdirectory which in our example is images. After we have looked at all the directories we check the filename. In our example the filename is picture.jpg. So if we were troubleshooting the example we would want to go back and verify that all the server, directories, and filename were all correct.

Check That The Address Physically Exists

If you are linking to one of your own images or files, you should check to make sure that the file actually exists on the server. On www.marshall.edu or users.marshall.edu you can do this by going directly to your web directory and verifying that the file exists and is in the right directory. On webpages.marshall.edu you’ll need to use an FTP program to verify the file.

Conclusion

In this lesson we have looked at a few of the general guidelines to use when checking broken images and links. Although it may seem overwhelming at first, it is a skill that is well worth the effort to learn.