For faculty and staff

April, 2011 — Version 2 of the MU Extension website authoring tool introduces some new features and many small changes to improve usability. Following are the highlights.

Name and location change from WebAdmin to WebTool
We have separated the administrative tools from the authoring tools to simplify the interface. You will now go to http://extension.missouri.edu/WebTool to login to update your website and maintain county resources.

Login screen
A new login screen is necessary for accommodating our new ability to allow non-employee users to edit specific pages by logging in with a MU Extension Passport account.

Not just for counties any more
The website tool will now accommodate all types of pages for MU Extension, not just county pages. We will be moving regional sites, programmatic sites and other sub-sections of the MU Extension Web presence into this tool.

Control panel
The control panel for websites now has drop-down menus at the top. This was necessary to accommodate the growing number of tools available.

County specialty pages split out
In the county website control panel, there is a drop-down menu for Specialty pages. Here you will find each one of the specialty pages (location, services, etc.). We had previously grouped some of them together, but that prevented being able to preview each page individually. These specialty pages are now separate. Even though you can only change the banner choice on the Faculty and staff page, you can now preview it, which you couldn't do before.

Metadata now called Page properties
This label is more intuitive, as it is consistent with other applications where pages or documents have properties or settings that are embedded.

Updated CKEditor
We've updated the version of CKEditor, the integrated HTML editor, to version 3.5.3. To see what's new, view the changelog on the CKEditor site.

Sharing pages
Based on ideas from staff who have been using the system and want to work efficiently to promote their programs, we've created a feature called page sharing. It allows someone to create a page in one site and share it to other sites so the same content appears in multiple sites. Read more about sharing.

Sharing pages could be a double-edged sword, so we ask that people really understand and think through page sharing before implementing it.

Passport access to WebTool
MU Extension Passports is a system for non-employees to create a user ID and password to access our resources such as online courses. The Passport system is now tied to WebTool so that specific trusted non-employees can be granted editing access to Web pages through WebTool. First they must create a Passport account, then the webteam adds their access to a website as a limited user. Then an employee site maintainer can grant them editing access to particular pages.

Page level editing permissions
Previously, we granted people editing permissions for entire sites (groups of pages such as a county site). Now we can grant editing permissions to employees and Passport users for specific pages only. These are referred to as limited access users. An employee may have full access to some sites and limited access to other sites. A Passport user may only be able to edit one page in one site.

Contact
Kate Akers, Technical and training support
DeeAnna Adkins, Editorial style and design support