Manual

 

 

As an authenticated user, you can add several types of content once you have logged in:

 

Content types Nr 1 and 3 differ in the way that "Date" adds an entry to the Calendar and therefore should be used to enter events that show up in the upcoming events block in the sidebar. Click on "Add Content > Article / News" or "Date / News" depending of the type of news entry you want to generate.

 

Please remember that clicking on the "Edit Summary" field while editing the "Description" of the "Article" or "Date" you are able to determine exactly what sentences will show in the teaser of your entry. The maximum length is 600 signs for the teaser. If you want to use the first sentences of your entry as teaser you should repeat them in the "Description"-Editor.

 

Don’t forget to select the language of your entry. Otherwise it cannot be seen once visitors filter the list view of news entries.

 

You should add an image through the image upload feature. Allowed formats are: png, gif, jpg, jpeg. The background is, in the slideshow on the frontpage, content of the type “Article” will show up. If there is no image involved it simply will not look good.

 

Content type Nr 4 "Forum topic" is at the present point used only internal as a discussion platform and is quite selfexplaining.

 

The part which needs some explanation are the "Blog" and “Media” entries.

Video content at the present point can be added in several ways, each has advantages and disadvantages (this is mostly due to the fact that there is no single format and /or codec that is supported on different browsers on different platforms: mostly Safari, Chrome, Firefox on iOS, OsX, Linux, Windows, Android. Currently the best user experience is provided when using chrome).

 

The short version is, for Media Video there are 3 options (explained in detail below):

 - as iframe: cleanest way, most options in terms of positioning the content in your blog entry. The downside: it will appear only in your blog, not on the "Materials" page)

 - embedded as material: not as pretty since there are no preview images visible (maybe we will find a fix for this)

 - native: nice depending on the filetype/codec you are using and the browser of the visitor (we are working on a more sophisticated setup that will allow to “stream” video with multiple codec, but at the present moment its not realized. you should noneoftheless upload your video in two formats as explained below, so we will have options).

 

The last two options are best for our own material, the first for linked external content or also your own material already available on external platforms (Youtube, Vimeo).

You can also combine the options. Embed your external content as iframe in the blog (see description below for how to do that) and put a url to the Media you uploaded before (see description below for how to do that).

 

Apart from what was said above for Content types 1 and 3 about the "Description" editor and its relation to the "Edit Summary" field plus the importance of choosing the language of your entry the tricky thing is combining a Blog entry with Media content. The rationale behind this is that actually the Drupal-CMS creates 2 content nodes and combines them through what is technicaly called an "entity reference". Therefore it will be explained in detail:

 

The best way of adding media content is by first writing the Blog entry by "Add Content > Blog entry" as described below and afterwards adding Video, Image, Sound or Text as Media by "Add Content > Media" and connecting it to your Blog:

 

<iframe width="960" height="720" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/l2CDzsSw1Is?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

 - Add Title

 - Select language

 - Edit summary (optional but important)

 - Edit Body

 - Select Media as 

  - Audio (allowed formats: mp3 m4v oga ogg)

  - Video (allowed formats: mpeg4 mp4 webm)

  - Image (allowed formats:  png gif jpg jpeg)

  - Text (allowed formats: pdf)

 - Click the Investigation the Mediaentry should relate to

 - Select the Blogentry your newly created Mediaentry should relate to (Caution!)

 

You can combine Audio and Text with an Image but you should avoid using Video with an image. Also avoid adding multiple files (through "Add another item") except for Video as explained below (formats mpeg/h.264 and webm/vp8). 

 

Audio content at the present point can be added only native. Upload mp3, m4v, oga or ogg and it will be played in the player. The soundcloud-plugin is (for reasons unknown) not working at the present point (Alternativly, as described below under 2., add external audio from soundcloud as iframe).

 

Video content at the present point can be added in several ways, as already said above, each has advantages and disadvantages:

 - Upload your video in the mentioned formats as mp4 or mpeg4: You should encode your video with h.264-codec in your favoured program (Handbrake?) and afterwards convert it to webm-format with the firefox-plugin firefogg.org. Upload both formats, filename should match, avoid spaces in the filename.

 - Under "Video > Select Media" on the second tab you can add Youtube and Vimeo-Urls from the respective providers. The Video will show then in the player on our site. Unfortunadtly the plugin does not support a preview image at the present point.

 - Video can also be embedded as "Iframe" from external mediaproviders such as Soundcloud for audio and Youtube/Vimeo for video. The mentioned platforms have much more ressources and a much better infrastructure then we have, so they can browser an platform incompatibilities. How this is done is described in the next section.