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How To Use The Content Manager For Products

Go to http://www.sonlight.com/cgi-local/am-main/exec/admin.cgi

The following information is stored here for each Sonlight product:

  • Title
  • Subtitle
  • Sku Number
  • Author
  • Read Aloud Range
  • Read Alone Range
  • Newbery Award/Honor (Year)
  • Item Alert
  • Title Icons
  • Descriptive Icons
  • Meta Keywords
  • Meta Description
  • Customer Quote
  • Product Sample Filename
  • Related Forum Links
  • Related Article Links
  • Short Description
  • Long Description
  • Product/Category Relationships
  • Product Thumbnail, Medium and Large Images

Log in with your userid/password. (See Ken if you do not have one.)

Editing Product Information

  • Click on "Article Editor" in the gray navigation bar at the top of the Product Manager. (Not the window.)
  • Use the Category drop-down box to select "All Products." This is the ONLY category where we maintain product information. (Other categories are for product/category relationships.)
  • Set the "PerPage" to the desired number of items to display per page.
  • Click on the "Search" button.
    • The results will be listed in Sku Number order, even though you will only see the titles.
    • You can use the "Keyword" box to find a specific product by typing in any part of the product title.
    • (Hopefully future releases of Article Manager will enable us to search on the other fields too, such as SKU #.)
  • Locate the product you want to update and click on the "modify" link to the right of the product.
    • TRY VERY HARD *NOT* TO CLICK ON THE "ERASE" LINK UNLESS YOU REALLY WANT TO DELETE A PRODUCT!
  • If you are adding a new product then click on the gray "Create New" button at the top or bottom of the screen.
  • This should put you in the product editing screen.
    • SOME of the fields below require you to know SOME HTML. Please avoid those fields until you have taken the HTML courses at http://www.pageresource.com/.

Title

  • The title is located near the top of the page, under the Date/Time stamps.
  • This is the title that will appear on the web page and in the category indexes.
  • The title should not contain any "information" other than the name of the product. That other type of information can go in the subtitle.

Category

  • Make sure it is "All Products"

Status

  • Make sure it is "visible."
  • If you set it to pending or "hidden", nothing will happen now, but I will probably change it in the future so that it would cause the information to be taken off of the web site.

Filename

  • Type in the sku number of the item here, in caps.
  • You don't need to fill this in if your Article Type is Summary, Internet URL or Uploaded File.

Article Type

  • Always use "Full Article" when you are adding product information.
  • Use "Summary Only" when you are creating category index page text. There can be one, and only one, summary article per category.
  • Use "Internet URL" when you are creating a product/category relationship. In this case, other than the title, the only fields you would fill in are the filename and SKU number with the item's SKU number in all caps.
  • Use "Uploaded File" to create a link on a page to it's product sample or something like that. (I have to implement this because I just got the idea while I was typing right now. --Ken)

Catalog / SKU Number

  • Type in the SKU number of the item in all caps.
  • I know this is a repeat of exactly what is in "Filename" but that's just what we have to do for now.

Subtitle

  • Type in any appropriate subtitle for this item. It can be the information that we use to put in the product title.
  • The Subtitle will be displayed on the product grid. It will also be displayed on the product drill-down page.

Author

  • Type the author's complete name if it is appropriate, such as "E.B. White" or "Mark Twain."
  • Obviously not all of our products will have author's names.

Read-Alone Range Level

  • Type in the read-alone range exactly as it should appear on the web site.
  • If you type something like "3 - Adult" it means the book is appropriate for anyone from 3rd Grade to Adult level to read by themselves.
  • Spell out Preschool, Kindergarten and Adult. You can just use numbers for 1st - 12th grades.
  • Use a dash between the beginning and ending levels and put spaces around it. For example, "1 - 4."

Read-Aloud Range Level

  • Type in the read-aloud range exactly as it should appear on the web site.
  • If you type something like "3 - Adult" it means the book is appropriate to read out loud to anyone from 3rd Grade to Adult level.
  • Spell out Preschool, Kindergarten and Adult. You can just use numbers for 1st - 12th grades.
  • Use a dash between the beginning and ending levels and put spaces around it. For example, "1 - 4."

Newbery Award/Honor Winner

  • If the item has won a Newbery Award then type in "Award (Year)."
  • If the item has won a Newbery Honor then type in "Honor (Year)."
  • Put the year that it won it's award or honor in the parenthesis.

Item Alert

  • You must know HTML to complete this information.
  • If there is something VERY important that we ABSOLUTELY MUST tell the customer before they buy this item, then we can put that information in this box. Use if VERY sparingly.
  • Whatever you put in this box will be "popped up" on the customer's screen whenever they put this item into their cart.

Title Icons

  • There are six title icons that you can choose to associate with a product:
    1. This product is used in the First Trimester.
    2. This product is used in the Second Trimester.
    3. This product is used in the Third Trimester.
    4. This product is used for more than three weeks.
    5. This product is new to our listing.
    6. This product is Cross Cultural.
  • You can associate from 0 to 6 title icons by typing in the appropriate numbers separated by commas.
  • If you type in "3,6" it means the item is used in the Third Trimester and is Cross Cultural.

Descriptive Icons

  • There are five descriptive icons that you can choose to associate with a product:
    1. Content
    2. Inspiring
    3. Must Buy
    4. Exceptional Presentation
    5. Fun
  • You can associate from 0 to 5 descriptive icons by typing in the appropriate numbers separated by commas.
  • If you type in "3,5" it means this is a Fun, Must Buy item.

Meta Keywords

  • You must understand how search engines work before you use this field.
  • Type in appropriate keywords that relate to this particular product. These should be words or phrases that, if you were to type them in a search engine, you would expect this product to be in the results.
  • Use commas to separate the words and phrases.

Meta Description

  • This is like a summary that you only want search engines to see. It is written in paragraph form (human readable).
  • It is only displayed to search engines, not on the screen for people to see.
  • If you can't think of anything to write here, then cut-and-paste whatever the short description field contains.

Customer Quote

  • If a customer has given us a quote that would be perfect for a particular product, it goes here.

Product Sample Filename

  • You must know HTML to use this.
  • If we have an electronic sample of this product, perhaps we've scanned it's table of contents into a JPG file, or we've created a PDF of the first three weeks of an instructor's guide, then the HTML with the link to that sample download goes here.
  • I may replace this by using the "Uploaded File" article type instead in the future.

Related Forums Links

  • You must know HTML to use this.
  • Since we have curriculum specific forums, we will be linking the complete basic packages to their respective forums by coding the HTML links here.

Related Articles Links

  • You must know HTML to use this.
  • If we have a really good "article" or web page on our site, in the About Us section for instance, that we feel anyone who is considering a particular product should read, then we can relate that web page by putting the HTML with the link to that page here.

Short Description

  • You don't have to know HTML to use this, but it can help.
  • Usually you will leave the formatting set to "Auto" so that each time you press the "Enter" key, it will insert the HTML line break command (<br>). You won't see that code because it is done behind the scenes.
  • This should contain a brief summary of what this product is.
  • This summary appears on the product grid whenever you display the products in a certain category or when you display products in the product grid in search results.

Long Description

  • You don't have to know HTML to use this, but it can help.
  • Usually you will leave the formatting set to "Auto" so that each time you press the "Enter" key, it will insert the HTML line break command (<br>).
  • You won't see that code because it is done behind the scenes.
  • If you have a really complicated HTML table, or you just know what you're doing and really want to completely control every aspect of the formatting of the description, then you can uncheck this feature.
  • That means that it will not replace your line breaks with <br> when it is published on our web site...so be very careful or you will have something that all runs together.
  • This should contain the complete sales and marketing copy for the product. After reading this long description there should be no question left unanswered and the customer should not be able to say, "So what?"
  • This long description only appears on the final product drill-down page. The content is used in searches, but not displayed in the results.

Uploaded Images

  • In a perfect world, every one of our products will have three images associated with it: a small or thumbnail image, a medium image and a large image.
  • When we do create these images for a product we store them at M:/Sonlight F2B Files/Products.
  • To associate the proper images with a product:
    • If you see "image1" listed, etc., then this product already has images.
    • You can click on the "view" link to see if it is still the right one.
    • Click on the "Upload Images" button if there are not already three images listed.
    • A screen will appear with 25 places to specify images for this product:
      • Image 1 must be the small image
      • Image 2 must be the medium image
      • Image 3 must be the large image
    • Next to Image 1, click on the browse button:
      • Navigate to M:/Sonlight F2B Files/Products
      • Find the SKU#s.jpg file and click on that if it exists.
      • (There might be nothing, or there might be both a .gif and a .jpg, pick the .jpg if that is the case.)*** click on the "Open" button
    • Next to Image 2, click on the browser button:
      • if it exists, find the SKU#m.jpg file and click on that
    • Next to Image 3, click on the browser button:
      • if it exists, find the SKU#l.jpg file and click on that
    • Scroll to the bottom of the page and click on the "Save" button.
    • The next screen will show you all three of the images you just chose:
      • Make sure that the image scanned is actually the current representation for the product
      • Don't worry if the medium and large images look the same size on this screen, it does that so it fits.
      • Don't type in any captions for the images
      • If everything looks OK, scroll to the bottom of the page and click on the "Save" button.
  • If you happen to be the one creating these images:
    • The small image should be 60 pixels high by however many pixels wide it takes to keep perspective.
    • The medium image should be 140 pixels high by however wide.
    • The large image should typically be no more than 475 pixels high by however wide.
    • (It is OK for a large image to be larger or smaller than this.)
    • All images should be optimized for the web in Adobe Photoshop.
    • Images are scanned and placed in M:/Sonlight F2B Files/COVERSTP.
    • Those scans are then processed in PhotoShop and placed in the Products folder.
    • Once a scan is used, it is copied to the Products folder as just SKU.jpg.

Save Your Work

  • The "Preview Without Publishing" button *might* give you a little bit of an idea what your final product page will look like, but it will be lacking much of the navigation. It won't help you with your category text or product/category relations.
  • When you have completely filled out all of the information above, click on the "Save" button at the top or bottom of the Article Editor page.
  • You can modify a product at any time.
  • It should be part of the procedure whenever a product changes to double-check all of it's information in the Product Manager to be sure it is still accurate.
  • Whenever we get a new product, it should be in the procedures to create a new entry for it here and to create the proper category relationships for it.

What if a lot of products all have to have the same information changed? Can we do a global search and replace?

  • No and Yes.
  • No, you cannot use the Article Manager to find and replace a string in all articles.
  • Yes, we can edit the raw database files if we ever need to. We would just need to make sure that nobody uses the Product Manager while this process is going on.
  • It is an advanced procedure with a lot of potential for causing failures, so it isn't documented here (yet).

Creating Text For A Category Index Page

  • You should know HTML and Marketing (and more) before you attempt to create/modify one of these.
  • Each category can have one, and only one, summary article associated with it in the Product Manager.
  • MAKE SURE YOU CHECK FOR AN EXISTING SUMMARY ARTICLE BEFORE CREATING A NEW ONE FOR ANY CATEGORY.
  • That summary article will become the text that is displayed on the category drill-down page before all of the products in that category are listed and after all of the subcategories are listed.
  • Create or Modify it like any other article in the Product Manager.
  • The title doesn't matter because it will not be used in the publishing. I like to put "Category Name Category Text" as the title. This lets me find it easily for updating it.
  • The category should be set to the category you are entering text for.
  • Status should be visible
  • Filename should be left blank.
  • Article type must be set to "Summary."
  • Catalog/Sku number should be set to "0000." This makes it appear before all of the other products in the category.
  • Subtitle should be used to make the appropriate title at the top of the page when it is published. The actual title of the page will still come from how we set it up when we created the category.
  • You can enter any customer quote that is desired for this category.
  • All other fields besides the Short Description should be left blank.
  • Type the appropriate text into the short description:
    • There is no need to make links to subcategories because Assist/WebStore will do that.
    • There is no need to make links to products because Assist/WebStore will do that.
    • You can highlight any subcategory or product if you want to, if you know how to do the HTML.
    • Make it however you feel it should be. Tell our customers what they need to know about this category.
  • You can put HTML into the category text, and you probably will, but if you have "auto" turned on then you need to know these few simple rules:
    • Be aware that the the whole thing is wrapped in a paragraph tag. <p> is prepended. </p> is appended.
    • So, avoid using the <h1></h1> - <h6></h6> tags. Instead, use <span class="h1"></span> tags.
    • Put a </p> tag before any <blockquote>, <table>, <ul> or <ol> tags you insert.
    • Put a <p> tag after any </blockquote>, </table>, </ul> or </ol> tags you insert.
    • Every time you press "Enter" there will be a <br> tag inserted in that spot when it is published, which in the wrong places can cause quite a problem with formatting, so...
    • Put the <ol><li> or <ul><li> tags on the same line as the text for the first item in a list.
    • Put the </li><li> on the same line as any item in a list, don't put a </li> on one line and a <li> on the next.
    • Put the </li></ul> or </li></ol> at the end of the same line as the text for that last item in a list.
    • Similar care should be taken when creating tables with auto formatting turned on.
    • I don't have specific advice or examples because so far if my pages contain complicated tables, it is easier for me to turn auto formatting off and put in ALL of my own HTML.
    • The simpler you make your work, the more you can just "type it in" without having to think about it.
  • When you are done updating it, click on the "Save" button at the top or bottom of the page.

Converting Article Manager Data into Assist-Ready Data

Importing Assist-Ready Data into Assist

  • This is not yet implemented.

Pushing Assist Data to WebStore

  • This is not yet ready, but it will be done in the E-Commerce menu in Assist.
  • Once this step is completed the updates should be visible on the web.
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Page last modified on December 12, 2006, at 11:01 AM