"How to ..." for Detroit Mercy websites

Cascade Training Videos

1: Intro to websites & Cascade

2: Navigating Cascade

3 - Editing Basics

4 - Page Layout Options

Cascade Contributor Responsibilities:

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  • Linking to the catalog

    A common mistake is to link to a particular year's catalog (which means that within a year, the link will be outdated). Instead, use special “evergreen” course links that will always point to the most-recently-published version of the catalogs. These evergreen links replace part of a catalog URL as follows:

    • For the undergraduate catalog:
      /catalog/ugcatalog/ 
      replaces /academics/catalog/undergraduateYEAR-YEAR/

    • For the graduate catalog:
      /catalog/gradcatalog/
      replaces /academics/catalog/graduateYEAR-YEAR/

    Example link

    DON’T USE:
    https://udmercy.edu/academics/catalog/undergraduate2023-2024/colleges/cba/5yr-acct-mba.php

    DO USE:
    https://udmercy.edu/catalog/ugcatalog/colleges/cba/5yr-acct-mba.php

    The latter will always link to the last-published catalog year.

    And yes, this kind of evergreen linking does require manual editing of links to the catalog. The advantage, once done, is that the link will work for years to come and always be up-to-date. This avoids the serious issue of sending people to outdated descriptions of University offerings.

  • Telephone number links

    Many of our website visitors view the site on their phone, so it makes sense to provide active telephone links that they can use to initiate a phone call.  Here's how:

    1. In Cascade, edit the page in question.
    2. Add or find the phone number in the page text and select it.
    3. Click the Add/Edit Link button (shown below).
    4. Set the Link Type as "External"
    5. Set the Link Source as follows:
      tel:+13139930000
      "tel:" indicates a phone number link;
      "+1" should precede any phone number;
      "3139930000" is the area code and phone number, which of course should be changed to the phone number you want.
    6. Set the Text to display as the phone number in our correct University style, with dashes only (no spaces, no parentheses), like:
      313-993-0000

    See the example screenshot below, labeled with the steps above:

    Screen shot showing steps to edit a phone number link in Cascade CMS.

  • Printing / saving webpages

    Printing webpages can be helpful, for instance to share a hard copy of page content for pre-publish review, to mark up content for revisions, or to save a relatively clean version of webpage content (such as in a PDF or other file format) for your off-site use.

    Webpage printing, unfortunately, can often result in a garbled mess, commonly a result of the webpage headers, footers and navigation elements intruding on the main body content. Here are a couple ways to better print pages from the main udmercy.edu websites.

    Simple method for printing webpages

    Most webpages on the udmercy.edu sites have a 'printer-friendly' link near the bottom of the page. It looks like this:

    Illustration of printer-friendly link

    On the webpage you want, click on the printer-friendly link for a more printable version.

    However, if your needs are very specific, and/or the page is full of lots of special graphics and layout features, this simple method may not be enough. If that's the case, move on to (or add) the advanced method.

    Advanced method for printing webpages

    A powerful way to print webpage content is to use a browser plug-in that gives you near total control of what you include in printing. With this method, you can remove unneeded page elements to get a cleaner printed version of the content you want. Please note that neither MarCom nor ITS provide support for this method; these instructions are provided only as a possible option for you to try.

    This method assumes use of the desktop version of Firefox browser (or Chrome). Both browsers are available as trusted, free downloads if you don't already have them installed. Note: you can combine the simple method with this one by first clicking the 'Printer-friendly' link, then using the browser plug-in on the result.

    1. Install the in Firefox. (Apparently the same extension is available for Chrome, but as of this writing we haven't tested Chrome.)
    2. Go to the webpage you want to print.
      (Cascade users can print pages directly from Cascade, even if the page has not been published to the website.  Go to the page in Cascade, then use the “… More” link in the upper-right corner and select “Full Screen Preview” – this will display the page in a new browser window without the Cascade interface elements.)
    3. Make sure to expand all the accordion sections on the page.
    4. While viewing the page you want to print, click the Print Edit WE button in browser toolbar – the icon looks like a blue pencil on a printer.
    5. Hover your mouse within the body content area of the webpage, so that a red outline encloses all the body content (and not just a single heading or paragraph). You'll often find this hover spot somewhere between the page title and the next line. The idea is to get the red outline only around the entire body content, while excluding the page header (especially) as well as the page footer and navigation elements.
    6. With the body area outlined, click to select it. The selected area will be highlighted in red. You can scroll the page to make sure all the body content is selected. (You can also select smaller, particular parts of a page if you want. These instructions assume you want to print all the body content of a webpage.)
    7. Next, on the Print Edit WE toolbar at top of browser window, click the “Hide Except” button. This will hide all the webpage elements except what you have selected. (With our page design, this may leave a white space gap at top and bottom of page, where header and footer were.)
    8. Now, on the Print Edit WE toolbar, click the “Tools” button and select “Fix Page Breaks – All”
    9. Then click the “Preview” button on the Print Edit WE toolbar. This will bring up the Print dialogue to use as you typically would. Often in this dialogue, you also have the option to save the cleaned-up page as a PDF. Note, when printing/saving, you may wish to omit the last page if it’s blank (from that white footer gap).
    10. Print and/or save your webpage content in all its cleaned-up glory!