Administrator Tour

Summary: Orientation to general administration features and location of functionality. Your instructor will give you a quick tour of the administrative areas on your site.

Instructor Demo: Administration tour

You should be able to see a black administrative toolbar across the top of your site.

1. The Administrative Toolbar shows you the functionality your user account is allowed to access.

2. Click on Manage and you’ll see the Submenu appears. The Submenu can be displayed vertically or horizontally. Click the Menu Control Icon to change the view.
   
   
3. Click Content to see and manage all of the current content on the site. We will review this in more detail later.
4. Click the Test button that appears to the right of Manage. From anywhere in the site interface, this button will take you back to the home page. You can also click on the Drupal logo.
5. Administrator Role View.  Your instructor will take a moment to explain what your site administrators see when they log in.  There are a number of settings on your site that only they can work on.  For example:
   1. Taxonomies
   2. Webforms
   3. Components, Helpers & Templates
   4. Site Studio Blocks

Exercise: Content Layout Interface

In addition to the Drupal core content management tools, your custom site utilizes Acquia Site Studio. Site Studio is a low-code solution for building and editing Drupal site pages with a visual page builder. It dramatically improves the process for developers, designers and marketers. Developers create components and make them accessible to non-technical users in a drag and drop interface. Designers and marketers can quickly use those components to create or modify pages—without touching any code. When you create or edit a page on your site, you’ll see the components available in your Layout Canvas.

As we begin this exercise, please note everyone in the class is logged in to edit the same piece of content, so do not attempt to save changes at this time.

1. From the Home page, click Edit in the gray menu above the Hero image.
2. Observe the fields available for you to customize on this piece of content.
3. The Title is what appears above the page content and is always required.
4. Search Description is a big WYSIWYG text box used for adding the content description users will see when the page appears in search results.
5. Under Search Description, you’ll find the Layout canvas tool
6. In the Layout canvas, click the plus icon.
7. The side tray interface that appears contains the following:
   1. Feature Sections
   2. Layout Components
   3. Basic Components
   4. Dynamic Components
   5. Card Components
   6. Slider Components
   7. Accordion Components
   8. Tab Components
   9. Read More Components
   10. Map Components
   11. Header & Footer Components
8. Note that each of the components are color coded for easier identification within the canvas area.
9. Components are mini templates with custom edit forms. They can be added and combined on the Layout canvas to create new layouts. Editors can use them to create pages where the content and layout requirements don’t fit within a fixed template structure.
10. Click the icon to the right of the white Search for Components box. Notice that this toggles your view from a list to icons. Click again to return to the list.
11. Use your mouse to Click and Drag one of the BASIC components into the Layout canvas, drop the component under the existing Hero component.
12. Click the ellipses icon on the right end of the component you just placed and choose Edit (double click) to observe the customization options.
13. When done exploring, DO NOT click Save. Instead, click Test in the black toolbar to exit editing and return to the Home page. If the interface asks you to save or leave, choose to leave without saving.

Now that you’ve had a peek at the administration tools in your new Drupal site, we’ll talk about reporting issues with your site and then jump right into session two to learn about how content (called data) is collected, or entered, on your site.

REPORTING ERRORS AND BUGS

Summary: How to report bugs and problems? How to suggest changes? 

Websites are constantly evolving and changing. Even well after a site is launched, newcontent or functionality will be added and new bugs and errors might pop-up. As a power-user on your own site, you will want to report these errors to someone who can improve the site.

For your site, you as Content Administrators will provide front-line support. If an issue needs to be escalated, you will assign TAC tickets to the Web Development team.

Reporting errors

Here are best practices for effective communication of an issue:

• Report where the error occurred, what page were you on.
• Explain what you were trying to do, what was the expected behavior.
• Report what error message (if any) you received.
• If you can provide a screenshot, that usually helps when the errors are visible. Screenshot software:

Jing is free and easy to use: http://www.techsmith.com/jing.html

Awesome Screenshot is a free Google Chrome Extension to make screenshots: https://www.awesomescreenshot.com/

Acquia Tour

Your website has a great “Tour.” Some sites may have additional documentation and support available to help administrators. Find out where the documentation is stored and how you can add to it and amend it. If there is no such documentation, encourage your colleagues to start a collaborative document to keep track of key information about the site. 

In the top menu bar, click Tour to explore the content there.