This page will define the steps in the School of Medicine Website workflow. Use it as a checklist.

• Background
• Preparing Your Workspace
• Adding Content and Testing Your Pages
• Uploading/Publishing Your Pages

Important: For complete explanations of the various steps, follow the links to the tutorials.

Background

1. Understand how to use DreamWeaver/DW. We have compiled a list of required topics and DreamWeaver training resources.
   
   
2. Download and install Xenu, a free program which checks your site for broken links.
   
   
3. If you will be working remotely (for instance from home or from behind a firewall) download and install VPN/Virtual Private Network from UCSF and configure it correctly. You will request the SSL version of the “School of Medicine” client.
   
   Please contact ISU or have your CSC/Computer Support Coordinator handle this step for you.
   
   

   Full Instructions for VPN

   
   
4. Familiarize yourself with our styleguide, CSS styles and preformatted elements.
   
   
5. Please review our tutorials and be familiar with them. They contain much invaluable information and will be a resource to you as you work on your sites.
   

Preparing Your Workspace

1. Your work files are housed on the Integration server. You will work directly on your web files on this server. This is where you will make edits and changes to your site and where you will create new pages. The public cannot see these working pages. When you have done creating or editing pages, you will then publish them to the live site (aka the Production server), where the public will see them.
   
   In order to get to your working files, you will need to map a Network drive (or a Network connection on Mac) from your computer to the Integration server.
   
   
2. Next, create a site in DreamWeaver which points to this same drive, so that you can use DreamWeaver to work directly on your files on the Integration server. Important: Please edit DreamWeaver preferences before you begin working.
   
   
3. Book mark your site on Integration and bookmark the WebUpdate Tool. (You will use the WebUpdate Tool to publish your pages to the live site.)
   
   
4. Optional: Set up your browser homepage to your site if you wish. If you make changes regularly to your site, you may wish to bookmark your page on the Integration server (where you will be doing the actual edits) rather than on the live site (on the Production server.)
   
   

Adding Content and Testing Your Pages

Add or Edit Content

1. Open DreamWeaver/DW.  Create a new page from your template. Do a ‘save as’ and rename it. Remember to use the file extension .aspx. Important: Observe correct naming conventions.
   
   Note: To edit an existing page, simply browse to it, open it, revise and save it.


2. Open a browser window and browse to the page you are working on in your site on Integration (or use your bookmarked site) so that you can see your changes in a live environment while you work. Note that you will be working on your pages in DreamWeaver, and testing them by viewing them in this open browser window.
   
   Important: Do not rely on DW for previewing your pages. Much of our site (left-hand navigation, footer navigation, headers, etc.) runs off the back-end server which DW cannot read. If you rely on Preview in Browser from within DW, you will not get an accurate impression of how your page looks and behaves.
   
   
3. Add content according to our styleguides and standards. Save again.
   
   Main content must be no wider than 415 pixels in width, this includes images. Anything bigger than this will 'bust' the design/redesign and ruin the look of the page.
   
   Note: Remember that you will not use Dreamweaver's Property Inspector to format text you will use our CSS styles instead. Be sure to use the correct classes to format your text.
   
   Please use our preformatted library elements, such as tables, call-out boxes etc. This will save you from having to create or build your own tables, etc. In addition, your pages will look professional and will retain the overall look and feel of the School of Medicine website.
   
   
4. Save your changes and edits in DreamWeaver. Go to the browser window and refresh it to preview these changes in the live integration environment. Repeat steps 4 and 5 as needed, remembering to check your pages in the browser window as you go.
   
   
5. Clean up your pages using the appropriate commands in DreamWeaver.
   

Check your Work

Perform initial quality assurance/QA on integration by viewing your pages in a browser. You will be checking for formatting problems and broken images.

Uploading/Publishing Your Pages

1. To reiterate, your work area is the called the Integration server. This is where you will have made edits and changes to your site and where you will have created new pages. The public cannot see the Integration server. The URL of the integration sever is:
   http://intmedschool.ucsf.edu.
   
   The actual live site is called the Production server. It is the site that users see when they go to http://medschool.ucsf.edu.
   
   
2. In order for your pages to get from your work are to the live site, you will have to ‘push them up’ or ‘publish’ them.  You will use the proprietorial web-based WebUpdateTool/WUT to move your pages to the Staging server.  The WebUpdate tool will email you a link to your pages on staging.
   
   Before the pages get to the live site, they are held on the Staging server for approximately a day so that you can test them one last time before they are live. The public cannot view the staging server. The URL for the staging server is: http://stagemedschool.ucsf.edu. Your paged will be pushed up to the live site from staging automatically the following morning at 10AM.
   
   
3. Important: Test your pages on the Staging server, in the same manner as you qa'd your page on Integration. Check for formatting and broken links and the proper use of headers etc.
   
   This is a very important step and must not be overlooked. This is your last chance to check your work before it goes live and any mistakes will be seen by the public.
   
   In particular, check that your page properly links to all images, PDF's etc. Remember to upload them to the Staging server along with the page you have created. It is quite common to simply push up the page and omit to push up the files it links to, causing broken links or 'busted' images.
   
   
4. If testing results in revisions, revise your pages on the Integration server. Then re-post the changes to staging where the faulty pages will be overwritten, and test again.