» Marketing and Communication » Web Services » Using Cascade & How To's
After you have been given access to Cascade to edit a nwmissouri.edu website, this section covers the concepts of editing using Cascade CMS. Getting familiar with how it works will hopefully help make it all easier to manage.
Starting with introducing you to the templates available and the anatomy of Cascade, then you can dive into our guides for help with specific tasks like managing pages, assets and components of this content management system.
First we have templates (or page types). These are created by the web team and they are the design and layout of your public-facing site. These are unique to nwmissouri.edu.
It is the culmination of the content/imagery with the design/development to put all the pieces of a website together. You can think of this as the front-end or the final product presented to your website visitors.
A basic page and many "specialty" templates exist. Our templates are meant to fulfill most needs on nwmissouri.edu websites.
Check out some of the key components to our templates with this anatomy page including a screenshot reference guide.
The templates are responsive (mobile-friendly) so the presentation of a website changes depending on display size and device type.
Tip: Manually resize your browser to see how your a webpage looks on different display sizes.
Secondly, Cascade CMS. CMS stands for content management system. Cascade is the CMS Northwest uses. This software is used to build your website within the templates; think of this as the back-end or behind the scenes.
We HIGHLY recommend reviewing Cascade Basics from the Cascade CMS Knowledge Base along with some of the starter tips below.
The Cascade dashboard is the home area in the CMS containing widgets (tools) to help facilitate site management. Check out the dashboard with a screenshot reference guide.
Navigating Cascade is fairly straight forward but can take some getting used to. Check out Cascade navigation with some tips and a screenshot reference guide.
The workspace is where take actions on an asset. Check out the workspace views with a screenshot reference guide.
The page editor allows you to update content on an individual page, many of the same components apply to editing other assets as well. Check out the page editor with a screenshot reference guide.
Data Definitions are a collection of fields used to create content. Users can populate these data definitions in countless combinations to achieve the desired set up and structure for a webpage.
They are the "fill in the blanks" of a template that allows webpages to be build with consistent style, structure and navigation throughout.
Data Definitions allow users to enter content in a series of form fields to create structured pages without the need for additional formatting. There are 15 types of input including WYSIWYG rich-text fields, checkboxes, radio buttons, multi-select and drop-down lists, and page and file choosers that reference content managed in Cascade CMS.
WYSIWYG: Acronym for "what you see is what you get"; an open content area for text, images, media and more. WYSIWYG editors are common throughout our templates. More on WYSIWYG editors.
Now that you have some of the concepts down, we recommend browsing our how-to guides to help you with specific tasks.
