EditMe Blog: Tips and Tricks

November 2009

2.5 Minute Video: Blogging with EditMe
Friday, November 20, 2009
EditMe's blog module allows your site to host multiple blogs with multiple contributors. The blog capability is essentially some glue that combines several features of EditMe to create a chronological list of related pages that always shows the most recent "posts". This video shows you how to install and get started using EditMe's Blog Module.

Upgrade Your Obsolete Layout and Style Sheets
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
As I provide customer support for some of the older EditMe sites, I find a surprising number still using the long ago replaced XSL layouts and style sheet mechanisms. Yes, it was over two years ago! Even if your using one of the new JavaScript-based Layouts, you might consider upgrading or reapplying your skin if you haven't done so for a long time.

Disqus Comments for your EditMe Site
Monday, November 16, 2009
If you're using EditMe as a blog and invite public commentary, you might consider Disqus integration. Disqus is a centralized commenting service that provides several benefits over a single-site commenting system.

1 Minute Video: Limit the Number of Levels in EditMe's Menu
Thursday, November 12, 2009
The third and final installment of 1 minute videos covering EditMe's navigation features shows how to limit the number of levels in the multi-level navigation menu and move deep navigation into the page content where needed.

Why You Shouldn't Generate Your Wiki Content
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Two articles last week illustrated perfectly a lesser-known wiki aphorism: don't generate wiki content. Many a wiki concept has started off with a large existing data set. The idea is that if the data set is converted into a wiki, users will build upon the data set and add value, transforming commodity data into something more valuable. But does it work?

Tip: Create a Single Navigation Hierarchy for Your Entire Site
Monday, November 9, 2009
This tip shows how to connect the horizontal navigation bar to the multi-level navigation menu on the left. Using this method, your site can use a single hierarchy of pages, and the menu on the left can act as a continuation of the selected item in the horizontal menu.

Tip: How To Test Style Sheet & Layout Changes on a Live Site
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
If you want to test changes to an individual page of your EditMe site, just make a copy of the page (edit, select all, copy and then paste into a new page). But what about style sheet and layout changes? How can you make these without risking errors on your live site?

October 2009

When Introducing an Internal Wiki, Don't Lead with Change
Thursday, October 29, 2009
I was talking with a customer the other day about change. He's trying to get his team on board with a wiki to cut down on the flood of email chains and bring some order to his small firm's file server. "How do I push through the organizational changes needed to make this work?" was his question. The need for change and how to affect it is a fairly common line of thinking for somebody trying to implement an internal wiki.

1 Minute Video: Managing the Multi-level Navigation Menu
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Last week you might have seen the 1 Minute Video on Managing the Horizontal Navigation Bar. The next video in this series covers the other navigation tool in EditMe: the multi-level navigation menu that lives, by default, on the left column of EditMe sites.

1 Minute Video: Managing the Horizontal Navigation Bar
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Based on support requests it seems it's not particularly clear how to manage the links in EditMe's horizontal navigation bar - the bar of links beneath the site's title that, by default, links to Home. As a quick solution, we've created a 1 minute video to show you the ropes. It's really quite easy. Hopefully this will clear things up for those that have been stumped by it.

August 2009

Tips & Tricks: Google Analytics
Thursday, August 6, 2009
Though EditMe provides basic traffic reports based on your web site's logs, you may be interested in higher level analytics services that use information from visitors browsers rather than from the web server's logs. This article will look at one of the most popular free web analytics packages available: Google Analytics.

July 2009

Tip: RSS Address Bar Icons
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Yorktown skins now optionally include the RSS Autodiscovery icon in the browser's address bar. This post explains why this is limited to the Yorktown skins, and gives instructions for customizing your site's Autodiscovery icons regardless of which skin you use.

May 2009

Wiki Gardening
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
I wrote a few months ago about keeping the chaff out of your site with a regular Wiki Spring Cleaning. This is just one in a set of activities often referred to as Wiki Gardening. Now that it is actually Spring, I thought it a good time to summarize these activities and talk a bit about why they are important for any wiki. Beyond just wikis, these are important activities for any relatively large web site. It?s just a lot easier to do in a wiki.

Edit Your Web: Wiki Gardening
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
From EditYourWeb.com... I wrote a few months ago about keeping the chaff out of your site with a regular Wiki Spring Cleaning. This is just one in a set of activities often referred to as Wiki Gardening. Now that it is actually Spring, I thought it a good time to summarize these activities and talk a bit about why they are important for any wiki. Beyond just wikis, these are important activities for any relatively large web site. It?s just a lot easier to do in a wiki.

March 2009

10 Things To Consider When Choosing a Wiki for CMS
Friday, March 6, 2009

February 2009

“The Invisible Wiki” - Using a Wiki for your web CMS
Friday, February 20, 2009

December 2008

Tips & Tricks: New Screencasts
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
I got my hands on Camtasia Studio recently and have started recording replacements for the aging Flash demo/training videos. Though less Flashy (pun intended), these screencasts are created in minutes instead of days, which will allow me to create a steady stream of them over the next year. The first two I've released include a quick 4 minute demo (mostly for prospective customers) and a replacement of the Basic Content Management with EditMe training video.

November 2008

Tips & Tricks: Using the New Organize Features - Part 2
Friday, November 7, 2008
A little while back we announced a new release that adds an Organize tab to the editing screen. The Organize tab and corresponding Include Scripts are kind of like Legos. You can assemble them in lots of different ways to create lots of different results. This is part two of a two-part post to provide step-by-step instructions for some neat things you can do with these new features, particularly focused on using the new Page Date field.

October 2008

Tips & Tricks: Using the New Organize Features - Part 1
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Last Friday we announced the new release that adds an Organize tab to the editing screen. The Organize tab and corresponding Include Scripts are kind of like Legos. You can assemble them in lots of different ways to create lots of different results. This is part one of a two-part post to provide step-by-step instructions for some neat things you can do with these new features.

June 2008

Tip of the Knows: Fun with Favicons, RSS and Edit Buttons
Monday, June 30, 2008
Web sites can display an increasing variety of icons in a browser's address bar by including special tags in the HEAD area of the HTML document. You may have noticed that the main EditMe sites have light bulb favicons. A favicon is an icon image associated with a web site. Almost all modern browsers will display your favicon in the toolbar or favorites/bookmarks menu. It's an easy and effective way to add branding and visual appeal to your site. You may also notice that this site displays an RSS icon in the toolbar (or elsewhere, depending on your browser). You can link to your site's built in RSS feed to display such an icon for visitors and encourage them to subscribe to the site's feed. And just for wikis, a new "Edit This Page" icon is gaining traction. This article shows you how to add all three of these to your EditMe site.

April 2008

Tip of the Knows: Search Engine Optimization (Part 3 of 3)
Thursday, April 24, 2008
This is the last of a three part series on getting your EditMe site ranked well in the search engines. The first post discussed keyword selection and the second covered content optimization. What's left? Your link strategy. This post talks about what a link strategy is and offers tips for building and maintaining yours.

Tip of the Knows: Search Engine Optimization (Part 2 of 3)
Thursday, April 17, 2008
Earlier this week I posted part one of a three part series on optimizing your EditMe site for search engines. This second installment covers content optimization, including page names, keyword usage and linking.

Tip of the Knows: Search Engine Optimization (Part 1 of 3)
Monday, April 14, 2008
Many customers ask what they can do to maximize their site's placement in the search engines. This topic is commonly called SEO (search engine optimization) in the industry, and there is no shortage of opinions and advice out there. In fact, there is a highly competitive market of consulting companies dedicated to the pursuit of getting sites on the first page of search results. This is the first of a three-part post outlining a simple three-step search engine optimization process that can be implemented within your EditMe site (or any other site, for that matter). No expensive consulting fees required.

July 2007

Tip of the Knows: Use CSS
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
EditMe's editor allows several text formatting options, such as the ability to set the font, size and color of text. We've found these features are used most heavily by our least technical users, as they provide a simple way to attractively format content on the page. But, as some of our customers have found, these "one-off" formatting tricks have drawbacks. This tip discusses how you can use CSS to centralize, standardize, and simplify the formatting on your site to avoid these drawbacks.

Tip of the Knows: Google AdSense
Monday, July 16, 2007
AdSense is a service from Google that pays you for advertisements clicked on your site. Advertisers pay Google every time someone clicks their ad, and Google gives you a cut for hosting the ad on your site. Luckly, adding Google Ads to your EditMe site is easy. Google offers three ways to monetize your site...

June 2007

Tips & Tricks: Host Videos On Your Site
Wednesday, June 6, 2007
Many customers have asked how they can display video content on their EditMe site. This Tip of the Week covers a few different options for hosting local video and streaming remotely hosted video on your site.

May 2007

Tip of the Knows: Site Header Logo
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
By default, EditMe displays the title of your site (which you can modify in Site Settings) in a box at the top of every page. See the big "EditMe Demo Site" text at the top of the demo site for an example. Many customers want to replace this text with an image logo or banner of their own. In this Tip of the Week, we'll show you how.

April 2007

Tip of the Knows: Calendar Integration
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
This week, we look at two easy ways to slap a dynamic calendar into your site. Two of the leading free calendar services are covered: Google Calendar and 30Boxes.

March 2007

Tips & Tricks: Groups And Policies
Thursday, March 29, 2007
EditMe provides the most powerful access controls in the business, but all this power comes with some complexity. This week's tip provides a thorough treatment of the mechanisms behind EditMe's access controls and a complete example of how the Groups and Policies features can be used in a real world scenario. Using these techniques may allow you to use your EditMe site in ways you had not imagined before.

February 2007

Tip of the Knows: Includes and Access Control
Friday, February 9, 2007
This week's tip is a follow up to last week's Tip about includes. A particularly useful combination of includes and page-level access controls allows you to have parts of a page display for some users and not display for others. This is often used in Menu pages, hiding a section of the menu that links to pages that have restricted view access, or for notes that should only be seen by administrators.

January 2007

Tip of the Knows: Using Includes
Tuesday, January 2, 2007
Have you used EditMe's include feature? It's one the features that make EditMe unique. Includes allow content on your site to be reused in multiple areas, but managed in only one.