As per the all-campus e-mail that went out on Friday, our CMS server received an upgrade yesterday. We previewed the coming changes on our Webspinners page over the last few weeks, and now the changes are in place. CMS has been upgraded to version 5.0, and the changes are significant. Please share this e-mail and information with anyone in your office who actively works on your CMS webpages!

Information Sessions

The Office of Communications is offering two information sessions to help users further become familiar with the new look and feel of CMS 5.0. Wednesday 1/9 at 10am in Davis Auditorium, we will be hosting a presentation along with questions and answers. You will have received an invitation to this session in an e-mail from Liz Katzman dated 1/3. The session will be repeated Tuesday 1/29 at 1pm in Davis Auditorium. It is strongly suggested that all users attend one or both overview sessions.

New Authoring Server

There are a few critical points about how to access your pages for authorship. First and most important, the new address for creating, editing and authoring CMS pages is http://cmsauthor.skidmore.edu. Our new authoring server allows us to keep the actions and server workload of viewing and editing separated, so that our creative processes will never interfere with users’ ability to view the Skidmore College websites. Your changes are visible upon publication as normal, but the server workload is split, and you can only make changes at http://cmsauthor.skidmore.edu.

Web Browsers and CMS 5.0

CMS 5.0 does not support access using IE6. If you use Internet Explorer to access the internet, you will need to verify your version, and upgrade to 7.0 if necessary. First, open your browser. At the top of your web page there may be an option for Help. Under the Help option, look at About Internet Explorer. If you are running a version lower than 7.0, please visit http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/ to download and install IE7. If you have problems with this process, please contact IT for assistance.

Once you have IE7 installed (if that is your preferred browser), you will need to instruct it to accept popups from the server http://cmsauthor.skidmore.edu. In IE7, look under Tools for Popup Blocker, and select Popup Blocker Settings. Add the address cmsauthor.skidmore.edu, and then close that window. You will also have to adjust your IE7 settings to allow for other popup windows that the CMS uses. Detailed instructions for this are found in the Web Developers Blog. Until you make this adjustment, you will not be able to create or edit tables in IE7.

CMS 5.0 is compatible with the latest version of Firefox, if that is your preferred browser. Please note that you will have to add cmsauthor.skidmore.edu to the list of allowed sites under the popup blocker options of Firefox (Tools -- Options -- Content -- Block Pop Up Windows -- Exceptions). If your preferred browser is a program other than Firefox or IE7, please contact us to find out what versions are supported.

The Office of Communications is very excited about the upgrades to our server and software, and we look forward to sharing information with everyone at our training and information sessions!

Additional Information About Popup Blocking and Cache Clearing  1/9/08

You will always want to allow popups from both the cms.skidmore.edu and the cmsauthor.skidmore.edu servers.  Even when you have popups enabled, information stored in your web browser cache files can prevent you from accessing popup menus for the CMS, or interfere in other ways with your web browsing.  If you suspect that to be the case, you will want to clear out your cache files.

But first, make sure that you are logging into the server at http://cmsauthor.skidmore.edu, and trying to do all of your edits on that same server.  If your web address says http://cms.skidmore.edu, you've slipped into the read-only server and will have to relocate.

IE 7 (Remember, CMS 5.0 requires IE 7 or higher)

Allowing Popups
Look under Tools for Pop Up Blocker, and choose Pop Up Blocker Settings.  Type or paste in the address cms.skidmore.edu and click Add.  Repeat for cmsauthor.skidmore.edu.

Clearing the Cache
Look under Tools for Internet Options.  Under the section titled Browsing History, click the Delete button.  In the window that pops up, choose to delete both Temporary Internet Files and Cookies.  Close your browser, restart your computer, and reopen your browser.

Table Fix for IE7
Some people update their browser to IE 7 and find they can no longer edit tables. To get tables back you need to enable scriplet support in your browser.

Firefox

Allowing Popups
Look under Tools for Options, and select the Content Tab.  Click the Exceptions button next to Block Popup Windows.  Type or paste in the address cms.skidmore.edu and click Add.  Repeat for cmsauthor.skidmore.edu.

Clearing the Cache
Look under Tools for Options, select Clear Private Data.  Close your browser, restart your computer, and reopen your browser.

Table Fix
There is no table bug under Firefox