Systems Science Web Standards: For Use With SAGA CMS

Purpose

This document describes the standards for the Systems Science Web site. While some of these standards (e.g. the template for dissertation pages, or the organization of the courses) should be used regardless of what tool is being used to manage the site, many of these standards are specifically to cope with issues surrounding the SAGA Content Management System (CMS), and may not be needed if the site is managed under a different tool.

There is no "enforcement" of these standards; they are voluntary and the SAGA software will not prevent a person from deviating from these standards. The standards are however developed for two reasons which will hopefully make them worth following:

1. To encourage site consistency: In an ideal situation, the CMS would enable templates for specific kinds of pages to be built; for example, there would be a template for Faculty pages, and the site maintainer would be able to just "fill in the blanks" on the template. In SAGA however, each page is created independently, more like individual, free-form documents in Word. Therefore to help maintain site consistency, the "templates" for certain specific kinds of pages are defined in this standards document.

2. To make use of the CMS easier: SAGA is not designed for large, complex sites such as the SYSC site, and it can quickly become confusing to use. For example, pages are not listed hierarchically from their navigation topics, but are displayed alphabetically in one long list; finding the page you want to edit among a list of over 200 pages can be time consuming. Therefore there are some standard naming conventions which, if followed, can help make it much easier to find what page you want to edit quickly.

This document is not intended to be the "final word" on site standards; it should be updated to reflect current needs.

Site-Wide Standards

These standards apply to the whole site, not just to a specific menu topic or page.

Page Naming Conventions

Page Title Metadata Convention

The "Browse Pages" tool, which enables the user to edit pages in SAGA, lists all pages in a flat list in alphabetical order. With over 200 pages, it can be extremely difficult to find the page one wants to edit. Furthermore, the pages are listed by the metadata "title" which is NOT the same as the title heading in the body of the page. The following rules will help to make pages easier to find on the "Browse Pages" tool.

Start the title with the menu topic (usually the main menu topic like "Program", but possibly a secondary menu topic like "FAQs"). Then type a colon and a space. Then type a short title for the page that uniquely identifies it.

In the title metadata field: Parent Menu Topic: Page Title
Example: Program: Systems Science PhD Program
Example: Faculty: Martin Zwick
Example: Research: Artificial Life
Example: Resources: Systems Science Links

Doing this will sort all of the pages alphabetically under their main menu topic. So if you know if you're making an update to, for example, a page linked to on the Resources menu, you will find that page listed alphabetically under "Resources" on the "Browse Pages" tool.

Note: You can match the page in the browser with the page on the "Browse Pages" list by matching the text in your browser's title bar with the text on the "Browse Pages" list.

Page File Name Convention

When connecting a page with a navigation item, you will need to provide a file name for the page, which will be some_name_you_make_up.html. It is important to name pages something that you will find easy to remember, and that has some connection to the content of the page itself.

Page names cannot include white space! To separate words in a name, use the underscore ( _ ).

The web is case sensitive: Page names should always be done all in lower case! The reason for this is because it can be annoying to have to remember what the case is on a page name--if you always make everything lowercase, then you don't have to remember anything about case at all, which makes it much easier to maintain the site.

The first part of each page name should be its parent menu topic, and the second part of each page name should be some text that is unique to that page. The second part of the name should be kept as short as possible, without being cryptic. Think about using a word or words that are easy to remember. Note: some areas of the site have additional specific naming conventions which will be discussed later in this document.

In the "page name" field when editing or adding a navigation item: parentmenutopic_pagetopic.html.
Example: program_phd.html
Example: faculty_zwick.html
Example: research_alife.html
Example: resources_links.html
+ underscore instead of spaces
+ lowercase only

File Management

What Files to Store in SAGA

SAGA provides a "Media Library" for storage of Microsoft Office documents, PDF files, images, and a few other types of files. The "Media Library" is good in the sense that it's the file storage area for the CMS, so there are no worries about files "disappearing" long term, or links being broken because someone forgets to track changes on another server; also, no technical skills are necessary for uploading files beyond the ability to use a typical file upload form in the web browser. The "Media Library" is bad in the sense that it's extremely difficult to find files, only one file can be uploaded at a time, and there is a severe limit on what file types can be stored there. Because of the limitations of the Media Library, not all files should be stored on it.

Only images used on the site and critical files should be stored in the media library. Images used on the site are just that--for example, the faculty thumbnail images. To decide if a file is "critical," ask the question, "if this file suddenly became unavailable, how much of a problem would that be?" The answer with respect to an assignment for a class that was given 3 years ago would be, "not a huge problem at all," whereas the answer with respect to an application form to the program would be, "a huge problem, since we could lose a potential student."

All other files should be stored as before on the old odin directory of www.sysc.pdx.edu; existing files on the old odin directory should not be moved from their current location. Because of the difficulty with files in the Media Library, publication files, class-related files, and research-related files will be remaining on the old site until a CMS capable of managing them sanely is put into production.

Upload to the Media Library: images used on site; mission-critical files in approved formats.
Upload to the old site: all other files.

Media Library File Naming Conventions

SAGA stores its files in the Media Library under a directory with the first letter of the file name, and a subdirectory with the second letter of the file name. For example, a file named "my_file.pdf" would be stored as /m/y/my_file.pdf in the Media Library. In order to prevent "losing" files in the Media Library directories, and to maintain consistency so it's always easy to find any files that are used on the Systems Science web site, all files uploaded to the Media Library should be prefixed with "sysc_".

The rules for using underscores instead of spaces and using only lowercase letters apply to these files as well as to the page files.

File name field when uploading to the Media Library: sysc_name.ext.
Example: sysc_supplimentalrules.pdf
Example: sysc_zwick_thumb.jpg
Example: sysc_program_application.pdf
+ underscore instead of spaces
+ lowercase only

Menu Topic Specific Standards

These standards apply to specific menu topics and pages on the site.

Courses Standards

Structure and Names

These standards are derived from how the courses were structured on the old site, but they were never used consistently. This is an attempt to document the structure so that it can be used consistently for future terms.

The main courses page consists of a drop-down where a user selects which term they want to view the courses for. Below the form is a list of all courses routinely offered by the department. Links from the drop-down go to that term's course listing, file name courses_termyyyy.html. Links from general course listings go to the general (not term-specific) page for each course, named courses_coursenumber.html.

For 510/610 courses, where there may be more than one course with the same number, the naming convention is courses_coursenumbershortname[_suffix].html. For example, courses_610sis.html (for Systems Ideas and Sustainability), or courses_610dmm.html (for DMM II).

Every new term, the main courses page must be edited to add the new term to the drop-down. Instructions for how to do this are given in the Basic Instructions for Using Saga document. The name of the term's page must be identical to the page name entered into the new entry in the drop down, otherwise the link will not work.

Once the user has clicked into a specific term's courses, they get a table with the course listing for that term. The term course page includes a link to the "one page flyer" at the top of the page. Then under the heading "Systems Science Core Courses" is a table of courses with columns for course number, title, time, location, and instructor. The course names are linked to either the general course description if there is no course page for that specific term, or the course page for that specific term. Courses from different departments are in a separate table at the bottom of the page, under the heading "Cross Listed Courses in Participating Departments." Cross listed courses are not linked.

The "one page flyer" is a short description of the courses offered, each separated by a horizontal rule. After each short course description, before the rule, is a "For more information: " followed by a link to the more detailed course information on the appropriate courses_coursenumber.html page. The flyer is named courses_flyer_termyyyy.html.

Any course pages that are specific for the term are named courses_coursenumber_termyyyy.html.

The main title for the pages are in Header 1. Subsequent headers are in Header 2.

This structure for the way pages are set up and linked just described and some examples are shown graphically in Figure 1 and Figure 2.

Students Dissertation Standards

The "Past Systems Science Dissertations" page has a list, organized by year with the most recent first, of all Systems Science PhD dissertations. The format for adding names to this list is: LastName, FirstInitial., yyyy (line break) Full Title of Dissertation. The full title of the dissertation is in italics. It is linked to the dissertation abstract. An example of this format is shown in Figure 3.

There is a separate dissertation abstract page created for each dissertation. The naming convention for dissertation abstracts is dissertation_abstract_ilast.html, where the "i" is the first initial of the first name, and the "last" is the full last name. The title for the dissertation abstract pages should be "Students: Dissertation: FirstName LastName," to assist in keeping the dissertation pages organized together on SAGA's page list.

Each dissertation abstract page has the same format. The title shown on the page is the full title of the dissertation, formatted as Heading 1. The author's full name is then given next, formatted as Heading 2. This is followed by the word "ABSTRACT" after which follows the text of the abstract. At the bottom of the page is given, separated by single line breaks, the full date of the dissertation, "DISSERTATION COMMITTEE," and the list of each person who sat on the committee. This is the format generally given in dissertation abstracts at the time when the new site was first created. See an example by clicking on any of the dissertation web pages.

Naming convention for dissertations: dissertation_abstract_ilast.html.
Example: dissertation_abstract_dostberg.html
Example: dissertation_abstract_jfletcher.html
Example: dissertation_abstract_sshervais.html

Additional Special Note

On the old www.sysc.pdx.edu site is a file redirect_courselists.php.

THIS FILE IS NECESSARY FOR THE COURSE TERM SELECTION FORM TO BE FUNCTIONAL AND SHOULD NOT BE MOVED, RENAMED, OR OTHERWISE MODIFIED UNLESS YOU UNDERSTAND THE IMPLICATIONS.