Best practices for content creators

If you are an author of content and/or pages, this will show you how to have the best possible experience with OrchestraCMS. We hope it will help you with page uniformity, ease of use, and a minimization of steps.

Remember to save

Before you close a page or piece of content in OrchestraCMS, remember to click Save. If you don't, other users may encounter locking issues when they open that page or piece of content for editing.

When you exit your browser or OrchestraCMS, use the Save button on each page or piece of content and close them. If you don't, content and pages will remain locked. Other users will not be able to edit those pages or content without intervention from an OrchestraCMS Administrator.

Use master pages

For repetitive content that will appear on several pages, create a Master Page.

If you have multiple pages using the same content (for example, Menu, footer, header, logo) you can place all the items on a master page.  Then, when you create a standard page, you can apply that master page to it, and those items will automatically appear.

Use naming conventions

A naming convention adopted by all users of OrchestraCMS will make it easier to locate pages and content within the OrchestraCMS application.

These are some examples.

Site Navigation Based

• [Main Menu] - [SubMenu] - [Page]
• About Us - Executive Bios
• About Us - Our Culture - Clean Living

Regional Naming

• [Region]-[ContentType]-[Summary]
• NA-Article-FluShots
• EU-TextBlock-WelcomeMsg
• APAC-Menu-LeftNav

Role-Based Naming

[Department]-[Function]

• HR-LandingPage
• HR-Documents
• IT-Tools
• IT-Scheduling
• IT-FAQs

Product-Based Naming

[Type]-[Brand]-[ProdCode]

• Radio-Samsung-E320
• TV-LG-500S
• Appliance-Kenmore-HT605

Additional naming practices

• Each page/content name should be meaningful and concise. It should immediately convey the context of the page to the user. This is also important because the site search results displays the page name and the page description.

• Keep the name reasonably short. Don't use any special characters (such as '&', '%' or '+') in your page or content names. You can use “-” (hyphen) and “_” (underscores) to separate words, however.

• Ideally, all page URLs are lowercase. (We do provide an option to have case-sensitive URLs as well.)

• Move key words to the beginning of the name. Remove "joiner" words such as "a", "the", "and", "for"..

• If a page or content is time-specific, set start and end dates, and name it to indicate its time frame. (For example, Christmas Sales 2016, 2017 scheduled holidays).

Tags

Use tagging conventions for pages and content with the OrchestraCMS Public and Private Tags feature.

OrchestraCMS supports the use of free-form tags with Public and Private Tags (not the same as Taxonomy). If this option is enabled by the OrchestraCMS Administrator in OrchestraCMS Setup | Tags, users can assign tags to content and pages that can be used to filter the content and page views of OrchestraCMS, allowing users another option to locate pages. Some examples include:

• Author Names
• Department
• Project
• Key Subject Matter

Title field

One of the properties of an OrchestraCMS page is the Title field. The Title field appears in the browser tab or window title bar text. Any information entered in this field appears at the top of a visitor’s browser when they are looking at that page.

The value of this field is also searchable on your website through the OrchestraCMS Basic Search.

Populate the Description field

One of the properties of an OrchestraCMS page is the Description field. This is the blurb returned when the page is searched for and returned in a list of search results. The value of this field is also searchable through OrchestraCMS Basic Search.

• Add the names of any files, linked to or used within the content, to the Description field on the content's properties.  
  • This allows you to use the search feature on the Manage Content tab when you want to find all content that references a particular media library file. It's helpful if you need to update the links or files used within those content items. It also allows the page to be returned by anyone searching for that file on your website.

Assign concise and appropriate keywords to be used by search engines when indexing the page

• One of the properties of an OrchestraCMS page is the Keywords field. This field is used by search engines when indexing your pages for relevance to assign the page. Misuse of keywords can lead to lower search rankings by search engines.

Don't modify the cache refresh interval

• Another of the properties of an OrchestraCMS page is the Cache Refresh Interval field. We recommend you do not modify this value from its default setting of 10 minutes.  This value is currently only functional in HTTP connections not HTTPS.  This value controls the maximum length of time caching servers should store a copy of this page.  Increasing the value may cause a delay in changes you publish to the page showing up for visitors to your live website.  Decreasing the value will increase the hit rate on your server and may lead to limit exceeded messages on your site.

When to use a new revision versus a new version

Once published, OrchestraCMS content cannot be edited without creating a new version or a new revision. New Revision is provided as an option when a version of content has been identified as needing to start on a future date, but the content, already active, needs to be modified. For example:

• Version 1 is currently published but has a spelling mistake
• Version 2 is published but set to start next week
• Version 1 can be opened and revision 1.1 made using New Revision
• Revision 1.1 can have the spelling mistake corrected and be published without interfering with the start date of version 2

Establish a versioned library or libraries

You can add a new Salesforce or Amazon library that automatically becomes a versioned library.

• In OrchestraCMS Setup, under Utilities, click Manage Libraries.
• Click Add Library.
• Choose the relevant repository from the Repository drop-down menu. This automatically enables a versioned library.
• Optionally, click Edit on your default (non-versioned) Salesforce or Amazon library.
• Click Convert. This will enable the non-versioned Salesforce library to become versioned.

OrchestraCMS does not provide editing for images

• You should do any cropping or resizing of images before you upload them to the OrchestraCMS media library. They can't be edited once they have been uploaded.

Published content and pages cannot be deleted

• In order to maintain the integrity of the Time Travel feature of OrchestraCMS, the application does not allow published content or pages to be deleted.
  • This statement impacts Production Salesforce Organizations only.
  • You can, however, expire content and pages.
  • Expiring prevents that content or page from being visible to visitors on your site.

When updating content on a page without making a new version of the page, you can use the Refresh Cache option of the Actions menu on the page to avoid delays in having the updated content appear on the live website.

Content pasted into the rich text editor may not be properly represented on your website. The rich text editor is supposed to be WYSIWYG (What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get).

• This can change depending on certain criteria.
  • When pasting content from any other application, try using "Paste From Word" to remove application-specific formatting characters.
  • You can use "Paste As Plaintext" to clear all formatting and manually provide the formatting you prefer.
  • Your site styling rules may impact the final view on your live website when the content is published. This would need to be resolved with your development team.

Populate the Alternative Text field

• Alternative Text is used by screen reading software to describe the image.