Updating or Adding Website Files or Images

Overview

Use the info on this page for any/all of the following things. You can combine any type of the following in one pass of these procedures:

• Add new documents (not new pages - do that with the CMS Admin interface) to the website for download
• Add new images to the website for use on pages (but not the front page slideshow - for how to do that, go here
• Add any other sort of binary file for download
• Update any existing items of the above types

Throughout the rest of this page, the word FILE can be used to mean any of the above types of items. So if something talks about updating a file, it can apply to photos, documents, powerpoints, whatever fits in the above categories. Often, there is some special handling for images. When this is the case, the word picture or image will be used.

Website is Case Sensitive

Note carefully that the website system treats folder and file names as case sensitive. This means that MyFile.doc is not the same as myfile.DOC and is not the same as myfile.doc. This applies to both files and folder names!

Updating existing items or recreating existing folder structure, be certain the case of the file or folder name matches that used on the website now. For new items you can use caps however you please, but it is often easiest to just make the file all lowercase.

Organizing Files: New Files

New files can be added to the site and then linked on one or more page(s) for download by browsers of the site. Collect the new files and organize them in local folders on your computer as they should appear on the web site under the Files folder. Files on the web site are mostly held under the Files directory. You can browse the organization of the existing files by going here. The folders you see organize the files roughly by the page they are used on. If a file will be used on more than one page, organize it according to the page that will be most prominently featuring it.

If you have new files for a new web page (or one that does not yet have any files already, and thus no folder tree exists for it on the site now) just make a new folder on your computer at the appropriate level and place the new file in it.

Example: the robots page has images and other files about all the existing robots. You can see that each of these files is in the About_Us folder (as this is where the Robots page is contained on the web site menus) , then under a Robots folder (representing the Robots page itself). If you wanted to add new files for new content you would edit into the Robots page for a new year's robot, you would create a Files folder on your computer, then in it create an About_Us folder, and then finally a Robots folder and place all the new files within that folder.

New Folder Example: Now let's say that the team really loved the new robot and wanted to make a dedicated page for it, which is a sub-page of Robots in the CMS (menu tree). If you had files for this page, you would create the same folder structure as in the example above, but instead of placing your new files directly in the Robots folder, you would make another folder under it that is representative of this new page (maybe the name of the beloved robot or the year in which it was made). You would then place the new files for that page within this new folder.

Organizing Files: Updating Existing Files

Existing files may be updated by basically following the directions for Adding New Files above, but instead of making up the folder location and name, you use the exact same name and folder location as already exists on the site.

If you need to know the existing location of a file, you can find it easily by browsing to the page that has the file linked (or includes the image for images).

To find the location of images: right-click the image and click "view image" or "view image in a new tab". Once the image is shown, the location of the image will be in your browser's address bar. Remove the initial "http://penfieldrobotics.com" and you have your folder structure and final file name.

To find the location of other files: hover over the link and most web browsers will show the web address to which the link refers. This is the file's location on the site. You can also right-click and "Copy Link Location" to copy the file location to the clipboard. Remove the initial "http://penfieldrobotics.com" and you have your folder structure and final file name.

Again, be conscious that the capitalization of the folders and image file must match the originals.

Generally it is a bad idea to relocate items during update cycles, even if their containing page name/location changes. This is because files can be linked to from other websites and moving them breaks those links! (for example, FIRST links to several of our documents from their website - we wouldn't want to break those links without great reasons!)

Preparing Images for Upload

Aside from the above procedures for organizing the files, images need special consideration.

Image Format

Images should use either png or jpg (jpeg) format. For existing image updates, you should use the same format as the original image. You can convert image format using photoshop or gimp or other tool.

bmp, gif, etc are not to be used except when updating an existing image that uses these formats.

Image Size

Images should be resized before they are provided for uploading to the website. Yes, you can most certainly resize the image in the CMS editor or via HTML code once it is on the site. But this is highly discouraged because it requires the user's web browser to download the actual image at full size, then resize it locally on their computer. This makes the web site loading "feel" slow, as well as requires significant additional internet bandwidth (important for mobile browsers on phones, etc!)

Use gimp or photoshop or other tool to resize the image and then place the result in the appropriate location in your local folder structure per the instructions in the previous section.

Preparing Documents for Upload

Documents should be uploaded in PDF format whenever possible. The reason for this is that PDF is one of the most widely supported document formats across many different types of computers, web browsers, and mobile devices. Microsoft Word documents should not be used in most cases as many devices lack the support to interpret these documents. The sole exception to this is not intended to be "read or print only", but rather to be downloaded and edited (think a team document that we want other teams to be able to grab and tailor to their own use directly). Things like copies of essays, letters, etc. should all be PDF.

The school computers have PDF generation on them; simply open the application your document is authored in (Word, Publisher, whatever) and "print" to PDF - there is a printer that basically just generates a PDF file.

Preparing the Collection of Files for Upload

When done collecting all the files, organizing them, and preparing any images, you should have, in most cases, only one top-level folder named "Files" (assuming all your files are going under the Files/ location on the website). ZIP this folder into a .zip file with the name of your choosing -- on Windows you can right-click the folder and "Send To Compressed/ZIP Folder" to create the zip file.

If you had files outside the Files/ location on the website, then you will have other top-level folders as well. When you prepare these, just select all the top-level folders (CTRL+Click each to select them all in turn) and then right-click and "Send to compressed folder" all of them at once.

Example

You want to update [1] and [2]. You should have the following folder and file tree in the end:

Files (folder)
   Team (folder)
      Leadership (folder)
        LeadershipInterviewQuestions.pdf (file)

images (folder)
   Join1511.png (file)

In this example, you would select both "images" and "Files" folder at the same time, then ZIP them together by sending to compressed folder.

Provide File for Upload

Send the ZIP file you prepared above to Jeff Downs for upload. Please keep in mind it takes a day or two for upload.

Requesting Files Be Deleted

You can include in your email any files you wish to have removed from the website (with or without a ZIP file with new/updated items). Just place a list of files in the body of you email request to Jeff. Identify file(s) or folder(s) to remove by complete path, including the folders. You can basically just copy the entire web address of the file(s) to identify them.

Note that files should not be removed unless they are entirely irrelevant as they may be linked to from other web sites and search engines!