BYC Website Content Administration

Each page of the BYC website can be modified to show new text, images and downloads using a tool called the ‘Content Administration’ tool. This tool is really a set of webpages that allow a content administrator (if you are reading this document then that is probably you) to make changes and have them immediately reflected on the website. In other words, you can locate the correct set of ‘content’ in the content admin tool and make a change and when you save the change you can immediately go to the corresponding page in the site and see your edits.

Here are some important points about editing content on the BYC website:

  • Changes are immediate. This means that as soon as you click ‘save’ you will see the updates on the site.
  • You cannot ‘break the site’ with the content tool. Don’t worry, it’s only content. You can make some pretty ugly pages but you can’t truly break anything. It can always be fixed so don’t hesitate to key in your content.
  • With formatting, less is more. Try not to do too much formatting. There are a few options such as bulleted lists, bold, italic, etc. Try to uses these sparingly for best effect. If you have any questions about formatting, please email me.
  • Do not copy and paste when editing. This is important. When you copy from a program like Microsoft Word and paste into the content administration tool, a lot of hidden formatting comes into the site. This hidden formatting can break the way the page looks and possibly even make it not show up when someone hits the site. Your best bet is to key in the content.
  • Practice makes perfect. If you want to try making some changes or linking to an uploaded file, try using the “Content Playground” to give it a shot. The Content Playground is a section of the Content Admin tool that is hidden from the outside world. You link to it from the Content Administration tool and can edit a section of test and then view your edits in a hidden page that is not part of the main website. Feel free to practice and make changes to the playground to get a feel for how the editor works.

The next couple of sections will outline some key concepts about the Content Admin tool and will walk you through the three activities you are most likely to perform.

Key Concepts

The Content Admin tool is set of web pages. You get to the tool by navigating your browser to: . You will be asked to enter a username and password. If you don’t remember your username and password please send me an email

Once you login you will see the Content Admin Home page. This is the launching point for all of your content administration tasks.

They top portion of the page down to the Content Playground is the same for everyone. To get back to this page from any other content admin page you can click on the link for ‘content admin home.’ Click the ‘my profile’ link to go to a page and change your password. To practice editing content or to preview your content changes, use the ‘content playground.’

The bottom portion will vary based on the areas you have access to edit. Some people will have many links and some will only have a few.

The links to edit content are arranged in three sections.

  • General Site Administration: This section is available only to the webmaster and other administrative users. You will likely not see this section.
  • Site-wide Content Administration: These pages edit content that affects the whole site. This includes items like calendar events and files that can be linked to or viewed throughout the site.
  • Main Content Areas: This section allows editing all of the pages of the site and is organized to match the site’s main navigation menu.

General Site Administration

Ignore this section as it is for administrators only. You will not see this link but the image above contains the link so for consistency I wanted to mention it.

Site-wide Content Administration

This section contains subsections that are not specific to one page. The items that you edit in this section are available to or affect the content on potentially more than one page on the site.

File Upload console

The file upload console allows you to upload files that can be later linked for download or that can be shown on the site as an image.


If you want to upload a new file or replace an existing file, use the “browse” button to locate the file on your computer. Once selected, click the upload link. This will upload the file to the server and make it available in the list. Please check the list before uploading files. If you upload a file with the same name as one that already exists the file you upload will replace the old file. This is useful if you are updating a document such as racing instructions or current race series standings but might be a problem if you do it unintentionally. Please be careful when uploading files.

Once your file is uploaded it will show up in the list. You can click the view link next to your filename to see the file that is there or confirm your upload. You can also delete a file that you are sure is no longer being used by clicking the delete link next to the name of the file. Please be sure if you choose to delete a file it is truly not being used as once you click delete it will no longer be available on the site.

Event Manager Console

The event manager console is where you add items you want to appear on one of the club calendars or one of the event lists. Items added in this area are assigned a category of Race, Social, Cruise or General. Selecting any of the categories other than “general” will cause the event to be shown on the pages specific to that category. For example, an event tagged as “social” will appear on the social calendar. All events appear on the main calendar on the home page as well as on the Calendar pages off of the main menu. However, events tagged as Racing events will not appear on the Social calendar.

To enter a new event, simply give it a name. Add details and format them as you desire. Enter a date (required) and a time (optional). Choose a group and click the ‘add new event’ link. At that point, the event is saved and will appear in the appropriate places on the site. At the bottom of the page in the ‘Manage Existing Events’ section there is a listing of all events currently in the system.

You can edit or delete these by clicking the link next to the event title. Again, keep in mind that all changes are immediately reflected on the public pages on the site.

Main Content Areas

These sections are collapsed which means the lists are hidden when the page initially shows. By clicking on the section name you will expand the list to see additional links. The sections form a hierarchy that matches the structure of the site. For example, expanding Main Content Areas shows a list of sections that match the top-level menu items for the site. Clicking on one of those items shows a list of pages underneath those top-level items. You can keep clicking on headings to navigate down to the page you are trying to modify.

In this example, you can see that under Main content Areas, the Social link has been clicked. This reveals a set of links for editing the pages listed under the Social menu on the site.

Under each page-level heading (e.g. TGIF) there is at least one link. These links take you to the screen where you can actually edit the content. The links are named based on the type of content on the page. For example, the link labeled “Title” typically refers to the text that goes in the blue title bar of each page. Some pages have more than one title and detail section.

Once you have identified the page, the best way to determine which page section goes with which link is to click a link, look at the content in the edit box and compare it to the live content on the site.

NOTE: Content that appears in the blue bars in the site (e.g. elements labeled Title on the edit pages) should not be formatted. Formatting will be taken care of by the site. These should be entered as text only with no spaces before or after.

Clicking on any page element will bring up an edit box. This edit box will allow you to type and format the text on the page.

The best approach is to type in your text without formatting, save your text and then immediately add formatting. Sometimes, adding formatting can cause unexpected results and you want to be able to close without saving and revert back to the unformatted version if you are unable to undo your formatting changes. Along those same lines, if you are working with a long section of text, save changes every so often so as not to accidentally lose your work. Understand that you need to complete the editing as soon as possible since as soon as you save the changes the content is live on the site. This is not a problem if you are plan on completing your edits in a few minutes but should not be left partially finished for much longer than that.

Advanced Editing

Most basic updates are covered in the above sections. However, some content edits require multiple steps. Here is a rundown of some of these and the step-by-step instructions to make it work.

Add an image or document to be downloaded to a content page

Adding an image or link to a document to be downloaded by the user is an almost identical process. It requires you to first upload the image or document using the File Upload Console and then to edit the content to insert the link or image to the correct place in the content.

Here are the steps:

  1. Log in using your id and password.
  2. Click on the Site-wide Content Administration to expand the section.
  3. Click on the File Upload Console to go to that page.
  4. Scan the list of files to make sure your file doesn’t already exist.
  5. Click on the browse button and locate the file on your computer.
  6. Click the Open button on the File Open dialog box.
  7. Click the Upload link to upload the file to the server.
  8. Repeat step 4-7 until all of the necessary files have been uploaded.
  9. Click on Content Admin Home to go back the admin home page.
  10. Navigate to the content you would like to edit (e.g. Main Content Areas, About BYC, Prospective Members, Body Text) and bring up the editor.
  11. Follow the following steps to complete this task:

If you are adding an image:

  1. Position the cursor in the content where you want the image to appear.
  2. Click the Insert/edit image button on the editor toolbar (it looks like a little tree).
  3. Select the Image from the “image list” drop down box.
  4. Set the alignment, size, etc as appropriate. (If you are not sure what to do with these, send me an email and I’ll work with you on it)
  5. Click ‘insert’ to close the Insert/edit image box.
  6. Click ‘Save changes’ to close the content edit box.
  7. Go to the corresponding page on the site, refresh your browser and test your link.

If you are adding a link to download a file or document:

  1. Add the text you would like to appear in the site.
  2. With your mouse, select the text that you want to become a hyperlink.
  3. In the editor’s toolbar, click the icon that looks like a chain link to bring up the “insert/edit links” box.
  4. Select the file that you just uploaded from the drop down list (you may need to make the box wider so you can see the drop down arrow to expand it).
  5. In the target drop down, choose “open link in a new window”.
  6. Click Insert.
  7. Finalize content edits and click the “save changes” link.
  8. Go to the corresponding page on the site, refresh your browser and test your link.
  9. If you need to edit your link start at step 2 in this list.