Configure Contribute administration settings

1. Select Edit > Administer Websites (Windows) or Contribute > Administer Websites (Mac OS), and select the website you want to set options for.

2. If prompted, enter the Administrator password, and then click OK.

   Assigning an administrator to a site and assigning a password for the administrative account are optional. For more information, see Become an administrator of an existing Contribute website.

   The Administer Website dialog box appears.

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3. Select the administrative settings category you want to modify from the list on the left side of the dialog box.

4. Choose from the options in the right-hand side of the dialog box to modify the settings from each category.

You can change the administrator of a Contribute website by changing the e-mail address associated with the website. Users send e-mail to this address when they need to contact the website administrator for assistance.

You can change the password used by the administrator.

1. Select Edit > Administer Websites (Windows) or Contribute > Administer Websites (Mac OS), and select the website you want to administer from the submenu.

2. If prompted, enter the Administrator password, and then click OK.

   Assigning an administrator to a site and assigning a password for the administrative account are optional. For more information, see Become an administrator of an existing Contribute website.

   The Administer Website dialog box appears.

3. Select the Administration category on the left side of the dialog box.

4. Click Change Password in the Administrator Information section of the dialog box.

   The Change Administrator Password dialog box appears.

5. Enter your current password and the new password you want to use in the text boxes. You must enter the new password twice to confirm that you are entering it correctly.

6. Click OK.

7. Select another category to modify, or click Close to exit the Administer Website dialog box.

Rollback pages are backup versions of each web page published with Contribute. Enable Rollback is off by default. You can disable rollback or change the number of rollback versions. Each rollback page is a copy of the last published version of that page before the currently published version.

For example, if you browse to a page for editing in Contribute, modify the content, and publish your changes without having previously updated and published that page, there is only one rollback version of the page (in this case, the rollback version is the original page).

Contribute can maintain as many as 99 rollback versions of each published page. When you specify the number of rollback pages, carefully consider the amount of disk space that will be consumed by storing the rollback pages. The pages are stored on the web server. The default number of rollback pages is three.

1. Select Edit > Administer Websites (Windows) or Contribute > Administer Websites (Mac OS) and select the website you want to administer from the submenu.

2. If prompted, enter the Administrator password, and then click OK.

   Assigning an administrator to a site and assigning a password for the administrative account are optional. For more information, see Become an administrator of an existing Contribute website.

   The Administer Website dialog box appears.

3. Select the Rollbacks category on the left side of the dialog box.

4. Select Enable rollbacks to activate rollbacks, or deselect it to turn rollbacks off.

5. Enter the number of rollback versions to maintain in the Keep previous versions of each page text box, or use the arrow buttons to change the number. Contribute can maintain as many as 99 rollback versions of each web page.

6. Select another category to modify, or click Close to exit the Administer Website dialog box.

The New Pages category lets you determine the document encoding that should be used for your web pages as well as the file extension to use when creating pages from a blank page or templates in a site.

Document encoding specifies the encoding used for characters on a web page. For English and Western European languages, select Western. Additional options include Central European, Cyrillic, Greek, Icelandic, Japanese, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, and Korean. If an option for the encoding you want is not available, select UTF-8 to create a page using the encoding that your operating system is using.

You can add new index filenames to your website settings that correspond to your website’s index files.

1. Select Edit > Administer Websites (Windows) or Contribute > Administer Websites (Mac OS), and select the website you want to administer from the submenu.

2. If prompted, enter the Administrator password, and click OK.

   Assigning an administrator to a site and assigning a password for the administrative account are optional. For more information, see Become an administrator of an existing Contribute website.

   The Administer Website dialog box appears.

3. Select the Web Server category on the left side of the dialog box and click the Index Files tab.

The Index Files panel appears.

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1. Click the Add button.

   The Add or Edit Index Filename dialog box appears.

2. Enter an index filename and click OK.

   The new index filename appears at the bottom of the list of possible index filenames.

3. Using the arrow buttons, arrange the index pages in the order that your web server’s configuration specifies. For example, if your web server is configured to use three index pages—index.htm, index2.htm, and 404error.htm—and the primary page is index.htm, the designated order is:

   • index.htm

   • index2.htm

   • 404error.htm

   This is the order in which the web server retrieves and displays the index pages if one or more of the pages are unavailable.

4. When you have added and ordered the filenames in the Index file list, click Close to exit the Administer Website dialog box and save your changes, or select another category to modify.

You can remove index page names from the default list in Contribute. When deleting index page filenames, ensure that your Contribute sites don’t rely on the page names you are removing from the Index files list.

1. Select Edit > Administer Websites (Windows) or Contribute > Administer Websites (Mac OS), and select the website you want to administer from the submenu.

2. If prompted, enter the Administrator password, and click OK.

   Assigning an administrator to a site and assigning a password for the administrative account are optional. For more information, see Become an administrator of an existing Contribute website.

   The Administer Website dialog box appears.

3. Select the Web Server category on the left side of the dialog box, and click the Index Files tab.

   The Index Files panel appears.

4. Select the filename you want to remove from the Index files list.

   Note: You cannot select multiple index files from the list; you must select each file individually and click Remove.

5. Click Remove.

6. When you have removed the filename from the Index file list, click Close to exit the Administer Website dialog box and save your changes, or select another category to modify.

If Contribute users visit a website using a different host name, directory path, or port number, you must configure Contribute to recognize these alternative web addresses and associate them with the appropriate website connection.

If you don’t configure Contribute to recognize alternative web addresses, users might have problems editing or publishing web pages if they connect to a website that isn’t defined in Contribute.

You need to configure Contribute to recognize the alternative web addresses that users need to access, not all possible alternative web addresses.

1. Select Edit > Administer Websites (Windows) or Contribute > Administer Websites (Mac OS), and select the website you want to administer from the submenu.

2. If prompted, enter the Administrator password, and click OK.

   Assigning an administrator to a site and assigning a password for the administrative account are optional. For more information, see Become an administrator of an existing Contribute website.

   The Administer Website dialog box appears.

3. Select the Web Server category on the left side of the dialog box, and click the Web Address tab.

   The Web Addresses panel appears.

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4. Click the Add button.

   The Add or Edit Alternate Address dialog box appears.

5. Enter an alternative URL, and click OK.

   The new URL appears in the Alternate addresses list.

6. When you have entered all the alternative web addresses, click Close to exit the Administer Website dialog box and save your changes, or select another category to modify.

Guard pages are web pages that Contribute places in folders containing administrative files and temporary copies of pages that have been sent for review. The guard page prevents users from browsing to a Contribute folder containing files that you don’t want them to access.

1. Select Edit > Administer Websites (Windows) or Contribute > Administer Websites (Mac OS), and select the website you want to administer from the submenu.

2. If prompted, enter the Administrator password, and click OK.

   Assigning an administrator to a site and assigning a password for the administrative account are optional. For more information, see Become an administrator of an existing Contribute website.

   The Administer Website dialog box appears.

3. Select the Web Server category on the left side of the dialog box, and click the Guard Page tab.

   The Guard Page Panel dialog box appears.

4. Click Find Guard Page.

   The web page you specified as an index page for the site is set as the guard page. By placing a copy of the website’s index page in a folder, Contribute can redirect users to the home page of the website.

5. When you have specified a guard page, click Close to exit the Administer Website dialog box and save your changes, or select another category to modify.

Contribute offers administrators two compatibility options—one that allows users with earlier versions to work on the website, and one that does not:

• Transition mode

  In this mode, users of earlier versions of Contribute can continue working on the website, along with Contribute 4.0 and later users. This lets you evaluate the new version and set up new roles and permissions without disrupting users with earlier versions of Contribute.

• Compatibility mode

  In this mode, all users must use Contribute 4.0 or later. Users with earlier versions cannot work on the website.

Contribute 4.0 or later starts in Transition mode by default when you migrate from an earlier version of Contribute. Use this mode temporarily; when you’re ready, transition all users to Contribute 4.0 or later and enable Compatibility Mode.

1. In Contribute 4.0 or later, select Edit > Administer Websites, and then select a website.

   The Administer Website dialog box appears.

2. Select Compatibility from the category list on the left.

   The Compatibility options appear in the Administer Website dialog box.

3. Select Compatibility, and then click Close.

After you enable Compatibility Mode, all users connected to the website must use Contribute 4.0 or later.

You can check if any website user is using a version of Contribute earlier than CS5. When Subversion is enabled, Contribute automatically changes the settings to Compatibility Mode with details of the change in a message.

1. Select Edit > Administer Websites and select the website.

2. In the Administer Website dialog box, select Compatibility.

   Compatibility Mode

   Indicates that users are using earlier version of contribute and cannot connect to Subversion enabled website. They must upgrade to the latest version (CS5) of Contribute to connect and edit pages in the Subversion-enabled website.

Administrators can set an expiry date for pages on the website. This way, older pages that are not relevant after a period of time can be deleted, or replaced with other pages. Authors can change the expiry date for individual web pages when publishing the files.

Pages expired using the Administer Website dialog box must be deleted manually from the website using the Manage Page Expiry dialog box.

The expiry date setting is applied to only those pages that are created after the administrator has configured this option. It is not applied to pages created or published previous to these settings being configured. Pages that are in a workflow cannot be deleted until they have completed the workflow.

1. Select Edit > Administer Websites (Windows) or Contribute > Administer Websites (Mac OS), and select the website you want to administer from the submenu.

2. If prompted, enter the Administrator password and click OK. The Administer Website dialog box appears.

3. Select Page Expiry on the left panel.

4. In the right panel, select Enable Page Expiry to set an expiry date for the page. Do one of the following:

   • Select Expire pages on, and set a specific date for page expiry.

   • Select Expire pages, and type the number of days for which the page can be live on the server.

5. In the Page Expiry Action section, do one of the following:

   • Select Replace the page with, and choose a page that replaces the expired page on expiry. For example, you can replace the expired page with a page saying, “Sorry, this page is no longer available on the website.”

   • To delete the page, select Delete the page in the website.

   Note: Specifying the delete option does not delete the pages from the website automatically after the expiry date. Delete expired pages manually using the Manage Page Expiry dialog box.

The Administrators of a website can use the Manage Page Expiry dialog box to do the following:

• Delete the expired page from the website

• Change the expiry settings for individual web pages on the website

• Expire individual pages ahead of their time

• Notify authors whose web pages are nearing the expiry date

• Sort the web pages by their expiry date. Administrators can view all the web pages on the site; authors can view only those pages assigned to them.

It is possible to perform the same action on multiple files by selecting them in the list.

1. Select Edit > Administer Websites > Manage Page Expiry. The Manage Page Expiry dialog appears. The list of web pages in the site along with their details are displayed in the panel.

2. Ensure that you are connected to the correct website by checking the Website field. To display pages for another website to which you are connected, choose the corresponding option from the Website pop-up menu.

3. You can filter the pages by their expiry date using the Show pop-up menu.

4. To inform the author that the web page is nearing its expiry date, select a page from the list, and click Notify. A compose mail dialog box of your favorite email editor appears containing information about the expired page. Edit and send the mail to the author. For multiple authors, compose a separate email for each author containing information on files authored by them.

5. To edit the expiry date for a page, click Edit. In the Edit Page Expiry dialog box, configure the expiry settings. For more information on configuring expiry settings, see Set the expiry date for pages on the website.

6. To delete a page from the website permanently, select a page from the list, and click Expire. The page is removed from the website or replaced with another page as specified by the settings in the Administer Website dialog box.

7. Click Close.

Certain pieces of code called paths are used to link Internet files. Software applications, such as a browser, use paths to locate a file. A browser can use a path to find, for example, an image file to display in an HTML page.

Administrators link web pages or files by specifying a path for them. The path to a file can be specified in any one of the following ways:

Document relative path

provides the location of a file in relation to another file on the same storage device. The starting point is the location of the document under consideration.

Site-root-relative

Websites are stored inside a main folder on a computer configured to work with browsers to display Web pages. This main folder is often referred to as the site root folder or just the root folder. A site root-relative path describes the location of a file relative to the root folder of the site. In other words, the starting point is the root folder of the site rather than the location of the document within the path. For example, the path can appear as: /html/images/image1.gif

The "/" indicates to the computer to search for a file within the site root folder.

Site root-relative links are most often used with sites that have many directories with files that get moved around often.

Absolute

provides the exact location of a file on the Internet. It doesn't specify the path in relation to something. The starting point is the location of the website on the Internet.

For example, "http://my.site.com/html/images/image1.gif".

When a file is inserted from your computer, Contribute writes the link in "file:///" URL format before publishing in Edit mode. The link settings are applied after the page is published to the site. The path is rewritten as document relative or site-root-relative depending upon link settings specified in Contribute.

When you insert files from websites, Contribute writes the link in a relative format if the files are from the same site (or domain). If the files are from different domains, Contribute uses the absolute format. The new Link setting affects the way the relative format is created. If the setting is for "Site root-relative," the links are created as root relative links.

For files inserted from the Internet, Contribute writes the links in an absolute format irrespective of the option specified in the Link setting.

For shared assets, and URLs in the same domain, Contribute writes the links in a "relative" format. In this case, the new Link setting decides the type of "relative" format. For all other cases, Contribute rewrites the link to the format chosen by the administrator.

When you publish a web page, Contribute updates all dependent links in the page. It also updates links to the current page in all its parents. In this process, Contribute rewrites all "file:///" links as relative links. The Link setting decides the type of relative link that is chosen.

1. Select Edit > Administer Websites (Windows) or Contribute > Administer Websites (Mac OS), and select the website you want to administer from the submenu.

2. If prompted, enter the Administrator password and click OK. The Administer Website dialog box appears.

3. Select Links on the left panel.

4. In the right panel, do one of the following

   • Select Write links relative to the current page (document relative) to link files in the website using a document relative path.

   • Select Write links relative to the root of the website (site root relative) to link files in the website using a site-root-relative path.

5. Click Close.

The Link setting is applied to all pages in a website. You can change the document relative setting to site-root relative for individual files when specifying the link for file types in the File Placement Rule dialog box. If you have selected the site-root-relative link, the option to insert a link as site-root-relative in the File Placement Rule dialog box is disabled.

Note: This setting overrides any role-specific setting for file placement.

Contribute enables an Administrator to restrict users from embedding PDF documents as objects in a web page. If users are allowed to insert embedded PDF objects, they can choose to insert the document either as a link or as an embedded PDF. However, if users are not allowed to embed PDF objects, they only have the option to insert the PDF document as a link.

1. Select Edit > Administer Websites (Windows) or Contribute > Administer Websites (Mac OS), and select the website you want to administer from the submenu.

2. If prompted, enter the Administrator password and click OK.

   The Administer Website dialog box appears.

3. Select the PDF Embedding category on the left side of the dialog box.

4. Select the Allow PDF Embedding or Do not allow PDF Embedding option.

A content type defines all the attributes of a web page including its template, workflow, expiry settings, and so on. If you are an administrator, you can create and configure a content type for a website. New pages created using a content type inherit all the page settings defined in the content type. You can create content types for both HTML and XML pages.

All the web pages published based on content type can be tracked in a Smart List, an XML file providing the metadata about each publish action. The information includes author name, date, and time of publish. This list can be used as dynamic data in another file or can be used as data for site analytics.

Administrators can assign a workflow to a template. Every template must be associated with a workflow. A default workflow for a template is applied if the Administrator does not assign a workflow to it.