Editing Faculty Profiles

Getting Started

Most department administrators have been trained to use the content management system (CMS) and have access to your profiles. They can help with how to use the system or make edits for you.

Please use the Firefox browser when editing your profile. This is the College-recommended web browser and has been installed on all campus computers. If you are on your own computer, you may download the browser here: www.mozilla.org.

Activating Your Profile

New faculty

1. Log in at barnard.edu/user, using the username and password for Google Apps (gBear) and eBear.
2. Notify ecomm@barnard.edu that they have done so that we may set the profile to faculty.
3. Ecomm will set the profile to faculty to make it searchable and set the department so that it is visible within the department's website

Accessing a Profle

To log into the site, go to barnard.edu/user
There is a link to the log in page on the faculty portal page, barnard.edu/faculty.

Enter your gBear / eBear user id and password.

Once you are logged in, you will see your profile page with tabs just below your name.

Click edit to add to or edit your profile.

Notice that once you click edit, there are many more areas to enter information than may be currently used in your profile.

If any of these are not available to you to edit, or if Text format is set to "plain text", please contact ecomm@barnard.edu and we will reset the profile.

This provides a structured way to enter and edit your information for display within the site. Using these fields as they are intended is beneficial for the website because it makes it possible to selectively display a faculty member's first name, last name, title, photo, bio, etc.

Conversely, website news items associated with you are dynamically displayed (you don't have to add them, the system does) within your profile.

Any fields that you leave blank won't display on your profile, though we recommend you make use of as many as make sense for you since there are character limits for each field, and loading all of your information into one field could create problems.

First Steps

Enter first name, last name and title.

In the Title area, enter any roles you have with the College. Be sure to note an endowed chair. With your cursor in that line, go to the "Format" drop down box and select "Heading 2".

Upload your profile photo. Click Select media, go to the Upload tab, click in the box or the Browse button and navigate to your photo (from your desktop or a folder on your machine), select and upload. If it is larger than the sidebar area, it will be scaled to fit. If it is a very large file to begin with, it might help to first resize it smaller, e.g. 200 pixels wide, and save it with a new name.

Set your department(s). This enables the profile to appear within the department site as well as keeping it from inadvertently showing up in the wrong department.

Topics: Ignore these for now. Setting keywords on a piece of content enables dynamic display on another page set with one of the same keywords. If set, the linked profile would appear in the right sidebar of a news item, event or page for any keyword it matched.

Entering & Formatting Content

Areas where you can put in free-formatted content have windows with editing toolbars. The label above the editing window will display as a header for that content, except for Title, Bio, and Other.  To simulate a label, use "Heading 4".

If copying and pasting content from a Word document or Excel spreadsheet, use the paste from Word tool: .  This will clear Microsoft formatting, but keep bold, italics and paragraphs.

The Toolbar:

The first formatting options are fairly self-explanatory - bold, italic, left-justified, centered, right-justified, bulleted list and numbered list.

Add Link – highlight the text to be linked and click this icon to open the link interface.

Remove Link – put your cursor in linked text and click this to remove the link.

Image editor – select an image and click on this icon (or double click an image) to open this interface. Here you can resize an image.  Be sure to set text format (see below) to "Full HTML".

Blockquote – indents a paragraph on the left and right, and gives a little more space above and below. An option to simply indent has been added since.

Styles – this dropdown box is contextual, the options it shows depends on where you are. Right now, the only style options are to add icons for links as seen at left. Or, if an image is selected, the options are to place it to the left or right while text wraps around it. Set text format to "Full HTML".

Tables – Use this to add tables to your page. See Editing an Article for more on table properties.

Break – Inserts a break in your text. This is used for blog listings and display.

Text Format – This dropdown box below your editing window offers a few different choices. Whenever you are doing more than formatting text, like adding tables or images, switch it to Full HTML.

UPLOADING & ADDING IMAGES & FILES

To add images, files, or embedded video or audio to your page, select the media icon in the toolbar of the content area where it should appear, usually the Body area.  Leave your cursor in the location where you would like the image or linked file to appear.

Go to Uploading Media and Files for more in-depth guidance.

Images

If the original image is quite large, it may need to be resized and saved for use on the web. We recommend no larger than 1000 pixels wide.

Once inserted, you may go back to your image, click on it to select it, and continue formatting as needed. Use the styles to place it to the right or left of the text, the image editor to resize, or add a link. Set text format to "Full HTML".

Best Practices

Browsers

The ideal browser to use is Firefox.

There are quirky behaviors when using IE, Safari or Chrome.

Copying & Pasting Text

Ideally, we want to bring over the cleanest text possible and do all formatting within the site's editor. This prevents bringing over unwanted code or formatting and saves frustration when the editor is not able to format copy as expected. The paste-from-word tool is the best way to achieve this.

Editing Copy

Studies show that online readers tend to quickly scan web pages for vital pieces of information rather than read text completely from top to bottom.

In answer to this, web copy should be in short chunks separated by sub-headers. Bulleted and numbered lists are also very web-friendly. Upload a CV for those requiring more detailed information.

Avoid using the words "click here" for links within your text. Visually-impaired visitors using screen readers can selectively read links within a page. Instead, use descriptive text that will tell a visitor clearly where the link will take them. When linking to a document, make use of the icons to provide a visual distinction between links to a web page or site and links to download a document.