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Jumpstart my website

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Learn about saving, previewing, and publishing your CONTENTdm Website.  Find information about reviewing and tailoring your website.

Before you begin

  • To jumpstart your website, you need a user account with which you can sign in CONTENTdm Administration and have permissions to Setup Global Website. For more information, see Users.

 View a recording: Upgrading to CONTENTdm's new website.  See CONTENTdm Training or the event announcement (sign-in required) for more information. 

About saving, previewing and publishing

When you edit website configurations, you are working on a copy of your production style (.css) and configuration (.ini) files.  The Website Configuration Tool makes a copy of the production settings files when it starts.

  • When you click the Save button, you are saving your changes to the working copy, not to production.  You can revert to the last published version of your website.
  • When you click Preview, you are viewing your site using the working copy so you can verify your changes before pushing to production.
  • When you click Publish, you are copying from your preview settings to your production settings. 

Review your website

You can review what your existing collections (or the sample collection) look like by default without any configuration by going to your CONTENTdm Website URL. For more information about the default CONTENTdm Website pages and structure, see Website overview.

Tailor your website

Step 1: Brand and describe

You can use the CONTENTdm Website Configuration Tool to create Home and About pages, collection descriptions, and a global, website header.  No programming skills are required, but HTML skills might be helpful.

  1. Navigate to your CONTENTdm Administration URL. 
  2. From CONTENTdm Administration, click the Server or Collections tab and then click Website.  The Website Configuration Tool displays in a new window or tab.
  3. Log in using the same user name and password that you use when accessing CONTENTdm Administration.
  4. To configure the following elements of your website, use the options in the Website Configuration Tool:
    • Website header: Appearance > Header
    • Website description: Page Types> Home Page (global)
    • Collection descriptions: Page Types > Landing Pages (collection-level)

Step 2: Refine your configurations

After your initial configurations are published, review your website again.  If you need further changes, explore the options of the Website Configuration Tool, which enable you to configure more detailed global and collection-level settings.

For example, you may want to configure your collection landing page to display a representative image and Suggested Topics links.

For detailed information about these configurations, see Website Configuration Tool.