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Tips, How To & Commentary

Tips & Tricks, Case Studies, Commentary, Editorials and other info from the Support team.

"Tips" Posts

RSS stalling in SWEB (?)
One of the issues that we see quite often here on the SWEB Support Desk, is the issue of an RSS feed stalling, or, ceasing to update beyond a certain date. If you've had this happen to you, here's what's going on and, more importantly, what you can do to fix the issue.

When you create an RSS feed inside SWEB, the system conducts a verification process, in which it connects to the RSS source you've supplied and verifies that the source exists and that there is *valid* content at the location. The status of this verification process is shown in the SWEB back-endby the "pending/verified" indicator, to the right of each feed in yourRSS listing.

Please note that *valid* content does NOT merely mean that the feed can be accessed and it shows content - but that the feed has been tested by the SWEB RSS Processor and has been verified to conform to current RSS standards.

When the SWEB RSS Processor encounters errors in the RSS stream, it will, briefly, ignore the content in that particular feed. Once the error condition within the feed has been corrected, the feed will again start to update.

Every so often, the errors in some RSS feeds will persist. When this happens, the SWEB RSS Processor will see this feed as invalid and, at some point, will completely cease any further updates from the problematic feed. When a feed reaches this point, the feed will stay "stalled" until we take some action...

To solve this problem, all we need to do is to simply re-save the RSS feed, as if we were just creating it for the first time.

1. Go to "Manage > Content > RSS".
2. Open the feed that appears to be stalled (click the "title" of the feed - not the URL)
3. Select "SAVE" at the bottom

This process will force the SWEB RSS Processor to re-verify the feed. As soon as the feed passes validation, the system will begin to update the feed content again.

 

Posted By: Threespot Support on 7/28/2008 1:31:00 PM

comments (0) How-to ,  Tips

To www or not? Local networking issues and the SWEB system
At the Support Desk we’ve encountered a number of cases where Local admins report that they are unable to see certain parts of their site, or find that some functions of the website seem not to operate from inside their offices, yet when these problems are tested from outside the Local's offices, there is no trouble at all.

We’ve determined that the reason this happens is linked to the Local’s internal network configuration. Most often this occurs when the Local's internal network name is the same as the Local’s web address. Although this frequently is reported to us as an error in the SWEB framework, the error is not something wrong with SWEB; however, we do have some tips for fixing this.

Try this test to see if your network is configured properly:

1. Pull up your site.
2. Now try to pull your site up without using 'www' in the address.

If there is an error or you don't get your site when you don't use www, then your local network is likely not configured properly. You'll need to contact your local networking folks and direct them to this blog or our Support team.

A website should always be available when www is used with the domain, or when www is not used. So http://seiu4321.org should always bring up the same website as http://www.seiu4321.org.

What's happening for Locals that have this problem is that their network is set to send anything using www in the web address to a location outside their local network (consequently, http://www.seiu4321.org works), but because the domain name and the local network have the same name, any traffic not using www is assumed by the network to be internal. Consequently http://seiu4321.org does not work.

This is the reason users may get a 404 error internally, and it has been linked to a number of other odd behaviors as well, such as seeing only gray squares in the Photo Gallery, having links to blog entries not work properly, and more.

In cases where this is happening, the local network administrator will need to ensure that both the www hostname *and* the wildcard for the domain are both pointed at the external IP address of the website. We in Support can provide all of the necessary information, should there be any questions. Feel free to contact us for more details.

 

Posted By: James McDonald - Threespot Support on 6/17/2008 11:34:00 AM

comments (0) Support Comment ,  Tips

Maximum widths for tables and images
The following dimensions highlight some of the most common image size properties used in the S-Web system:

  • Max width of items in the main column of 2-column pages = 572 pixels
  • Max width of items in the center well of a 3-column layout = 398 pixels
  • Max width for center well of the homepage layout = 398 pixels
  • Max width of images or flash files in homepage billboard area = 570 pixels

Realistically, you may want to cut these numbers down a few pixels, unless you want the edge of the image(s) to be completely flush with the edges of the content well.

 

Posted By: Beth Bacon on 11/15/2007 4:21:00 PM

comments (0) Tips

Content types organized by tags ... and ideas for a tagging strategy
Many of you had expressed frustration with the long list of articles (and other content types in the Content Library). In order to help you organize those lists, we've added a feature that organizes the view of articles (and other content types) by tags. For example, in the Manage > Articles view, the first screen you see is a list of tags (including nontagged, for articles that are not assigned to a tag). (We've used a blog-like "tag cloud" format -- the tags with the most items assigned to it appears largest.) You will also see a link to the original view of the all article list.

Clicking on the name of a tag pulls up a list of articles assigned to that tag, thus providing a view of smaller groups of articles. (We used this method of organization because it worked with our existing system infrastructure of tags. We are also building a 'grid view' of content types, ie, view all articles in a spreadsheet-like view, with some fields sortable.

The importance of tagging:
Up until now, tagging was used only for creating dynamic lists. Now that we are using tags to organize content types, you may want to reconsider your tagging strategy. Here are ideas:

  • Use key phrases that describe to the content on your site
  • Think about subjects, topics, concepts, themes of content to choose key phrases
  • One-word phrases are best; two word phrases will work(keep the phrases short!)
  • Be specific and descriptive
  • Think about terms you'd use to search for content.  (ie. What terms would you use to search for your site's content?)
  • You may want to start with a list of tags that correlate with the names of your main nav sections and/or your Local's divisions, sectors, employers, or facilities

To create a set of tags, go to 'Configure > Content Tags' - You can also create tags on the fly when creating/editing content, under the Tags tab. Once you've created your tag structure, be sure to assign tags to articles and other content types. Use the 'Tags' tab in the Edit interface.

  Some ideas for basic tags:

  • Names of Divisions/Sectors
  • [Division] events (ie, State employee events)
  • News
  • Politics
  • COPE
  • Benefits
  • Rights at work
  • Join SEIU

These are just a few ideas to get you started with your site's tag strategy or structure.

 

Posted By: Beth Bacon on 9/12/2007 4:23:00 PM

comments (0) Tips

RSS feed enhancements
Several enhancements to the display of RSS feeds and are here. You can now:

  • Choose the number of items to display
  • Assign an alternative title
  • Choose what displays (try title, summary, and link for RSS feeds to get a short summary of individual articles)

We can also now place RSS feeds in the 3rd column, for example:
The third column on your home page will be a good spot for the SEIU News RSS feed - the URL for this feed is: http://www.seiunews.org/rss.ashx.

 

Posted By: Beth Bacon on 7/26/2007 10:33:00 AM

comments (0) Tips

Jobs on LOLv3

Jobs posted on LOLv3 sites are not synched with the seiu.org database. The way to get jobs to show on the SEIU website (http://www.seiu.org/jobs/index.cfm) is to also enter the job in your 'old' LOL site (eg, seiu1.localsonline.org).

To help site visitors search for all jobs, we've hardcoded the link to the seiu.org jobs page on all LOLv3 jobs index pages (so your local jobs show there but visitors also see where to search all jobs).

 

Posted By: Beth Bacon on 7/13/2007 10:10:00 AM

Tips

Ideas for RSS feeds
RSS feeds provide easy (and updated) content for your new Locals Onlinesite. Here are some suggestions for sources of feeds with labor andprogressive news:

LabourStart

Change to Win BLOG
  • http://feeds.feedburner.com/CtwConnect

AlterNet
  • http://www.alternet.org/webfeeds

Also, check to see if your state legislature or local newspaper has an RSS feed.



Do you have ideas for additional feeds? Please share them by commenting on this blog post.

 

Posted By: Beth Bacon on 5/31/2007 10:16:00 AM

comments (0) Tips

Billboard Flash
If you want to display a flash movie in the billboard area:

  • Enter it as a Promo/Ad
  • Make the flash a maximum width  of 570 px wide

  We've made the change so that we can accommodate flash files that span the entire width of the billboard area -- 570 pixels wide.

 

Posted By: Beth Bacon on 5/29/2007 10:25:00 AM

Tips

Page and content unlock feature ready
We've just added an "unlock" feature for content and pages.

When a piece of content or page is locked by another user, you will see a link that says 'unlock'. Click the link, get a confirmation message, and the content or page will be unlocked for editing.

Hope this prevents the frustration around locked content...

 PLEASE NOTE: Using this "unlock" feature will force ANY other user currently editing the content piece out of their editing session.  This is IMPORTANT, as when a user is forced from their editing session, ALL pending changes will be irrevocably LOST.  ONLY use this feature if you are certain that NO OTHER user currently has pending changes.


 

Posted By: Beth Bacon on 5/7/2007 10:28:00 AM

Tips