Destinations® technical documentation
Destinations® technical documentation
A guide to install and maintain the Destinations® website
Supporting material
This guide makes reference to a number of other sources which can be found on the Destinations® DVD. These include:
· ‘Templates’ folder
· Topic breakdown (the units which belong to a topic and the objects which belong to a unit)
· Topic navigation (a list of topics and their corresponding navigation includes)
· Video log (where and what video is used)
· Download log (where and what downloads are used)
· Code snippets (useful snippets of code)
Contents
Installation 4
Support 5
Configuring your server for FLV files 6
Standards 7
Structure 8
File naming 11
Multimedia 14
Stylesheets 15
Templates 16
Code snippets 17
‘How to’ guides
Create a topic introduction 23
Create a unit introduction 25
Create an object 26
Insert video into an object 27
Localise Destinations® 31
Installation
Follow the directions below to install Destinations® on to your web server:
· The DVD provided by CCMS contains the following:
o A ‘Destinations®’ folder
o An ‘MPEGs’ folder
o An ‘FLV’ folder
o A ‘Documentation’ folder
o A ‘Read Me’ file
· The ‘Read Me’ file is the installation guide
· The ‘Documentation’ folder contains the complete documentation and templates
· The ‘FLV and MPEGs’ folder contains video
· The ‘Destinations®’ folder contains a copy of the website
· To set up the Destinations® website copy the contents of the Destinations® folder to a virtual directory on your web server
· The default home page for the site is index.shtml. The file is located in the root of the directory
· Your web server must be set up to process server side includes
· Destinations® uses .shtml files to serve includes
· Includes themselves use the file extension .htm
· Includes are processed via <!-- #include file="../includes/FILE NAME.htm" -->. If this does not work with your setup you may need to change, via a global edit, file to <!-- #include virtual
· The ‘scripts’ folder must have the ability to execute scripts enabled for the site to function fully
· FLV must be a recognised file type. This is standard on most servers but Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) 6.0 does not recognise FLV and will need the mime type registering. More information is available at:
http://livedocs.adobe.com/flash/9.0/main/wwhelp/wwhimpl/common/html/wwhelp.htm?context=LiveDocs_Parts&file=00001040.html
· The information is repeated below for ease
If you are having problems installing Destinations®, please contact the support team by emailing
Support
Support will be provided for the installation of Destinations®. This documentation should provide the information to maintain the site and create new content. General questions can be submitted to the CCMS team but we do not guarantee a response.
All support questions should be made to . The CCMS team will aim to respond to installation enquiries within two working days and all others within five working days. By October 2007 the CCMS team intends to have developed a range of FAQs, which will cover a variety of areas.
Any faults should be reported to the same email address above.
Configuring your server for FLV files
When you work with FLV files, you might have to configure your server to work with the FLV file format. Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) is a standardized data specification that lets you send non-ASCII files over Internet connections. Web browsers and email clients are configured to interpret numerous MIME types so that they can send and receive video, audio, graphics, and formatted text. To load FLV files from a web server, you might need to register the file extension and MIME type with your web server, so you should check your web server documentation. The MIME type for FLV files is video/x-flv.
The full information for the FLV file type is as follows:
· Mime type: video/x-flv
· File extension: .flv
· Required parameters: none
· Optional parameters: none
· Encoding considerations: FLV files are binary files; some applications might require the application/octet-stream subtype to be set.
· Security issues: none
· Published specification: www.adobe.com/go/flashfileformat.
Microsoft changed the way streaming media is handled in Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) 6.0 web server from earlier versions. Earlier versions of IIS do not require any modification to stream Flash Video. In IIS 6.0, the default web server that comes withWindows 2003, the server requires a MIME type to recognize that FLV files are streamingmedia.
When SWF files that stream external FLV files are placed on a Microsoft Windows 2003 server and are viewed in a browser, the SWF file plays correctly but the FLV video does not stream. This issue affects all FLV files placed on Windows 2003 servers, including files you make with earlier versions of the Flash authoring tool, the Macromedia Flash Video Kit forDreamweaver MX 2004. These files work correctly if you test them on other operatingsystems.
For information about configuring Microsoft Windows 2003 and Microsoft IIS Server 6.0 to stream FLV video, see http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/knowledgebase/index.cfm?id=tn_19439.
Reproduced from:
http://livedocs.adobe.com/flash/9.0/main/wwhelp/wwhimpl/common/html/wwhelp.htm?context=LiveDocs_Parts&file=00001040.html
Standards
The site has been built to meet W3C standards.
· The code meets XHTML 1.0 strict standards
· The CSS meets CSS 2.0 standards
· The site has Level Triple-A Conformance to Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0
These standards are reflected in the three images displayed at the bottom of every page in the footer include.
If changes are made to a page or to the site overall, the footer should be changed to the ‘footer2’ include to reflect the change in copyright. Footer2 does not include the images, and they should not be added unless checks are made to ensure the site still meets the above standards.
If the standards are no longer achieved the accessibility page should have the section on 'Accessibility standards' removed.
Structure
Site structure
A note on terminology:
The site is divided into pages in Topics and pages in the front end. When referring to front end pages, these are taken to mean pages such as the Home page, Contacts page, Help pag,e etc. Topics pages form the vast majority of the content on the site.
Pages in Destinations® are constructed are three ways.
- Transcript and larger view pages
- Objects and Housing units
- Topic and unit introductions and front end pages
The first of these are simple .html pages and are covered under the Video section of this document.
Objects and Housing unit structure
Pages are made up of a number of ‘server includes’ (see fig .1), which are all brought together using a ‘housing unit’. A housing unit is a shtml page which contains the following elements within the code of the page:
· Object/page title
· Unit title
· Link to the header include
o header-hp.htm for homepage and header.htm for all other pages
· Link to the topic navigation include
o The navigation include will vary depending on where the page sits in the site. For example, if you are creating a new object within the CVs topic the navigation will point to the cv-nav.htm include
· Link to the object include
o This refers to the actual object that you want to pull in e.g. info-0212.htm or act-0024. Objects are designed to be reused and can be deployed anywhere within the site simply by creating a new housing unit which will reference a different navigation include.
· Link to the footer include
o Destinations® comes with a default footer, which states all content is copyright of the University of Reading. When the content of a page is altered or new content added, the default footer must be changed to the supplied alternative (footer2). The alternative footer states that the content is the copyright of both institutions. Purchasers must insert their institution’s name within the second footer.
The page is assembled by the server to create the object.
Topic and unit introductions and front end page structure
Pages are almost the same as for an object; however the unit also contains the content (see fig. 2). Here it differs from the object and housing unit which contains its content in a separate include.
File structure
The following diagram (fig. 3) illustrates how Destinations® is structured:
File naming
To understand the file naming used it is important to understand the structure of topics in Destinations®. Below is a simple outline of the structure:
Topic 1
Unit 1
Object 1
Object 2
Object 3
Object 4
Each topic is made up of a number of units and each unit is made up of a number of objects. The structure of pages is described in the previous section.
Topics
· The name of the file will be the same as the topic e.g. cv, values, application-forms.shtml
· The file extension: shtml
· Files are stored in the ‘units’ folder
Units
· There are two types of unit file:
1. Housing unit
A housing unit is used as a container to pull all the relevant includes, e.g. object, header, navigation, footer. The housing unit also holds the title of the unit and the object title, which is displayed at the top of the browser window.
2. Unit introduction
Topics are built up of units, which in turn are built up of objects. Unit introductions introduce the unit as a whole, e.g. Types of work experience.
Housing unit
· The name of housing files: unit-[initials of topic][number] e.g. unit-cv003, unit-af020
· The number is always three digits long
· The file has a .shtml extension
· The files are stored in the ‘units’ folder
Unit introduction
· Unit introductions follow the same format as housing units. When developing new topics it is recommended to create unit introductions first. This enables the first unit to be dedicated to actual unit introductions. For example, if you have 4 units with a topic, the first 4 units (001-004) will be unit introductions and not housing units.
Objects
There are four main types of web page, listed below. Each type has a specific prefix within the file name, which can be used to identify the object type. You may find it helpful to follow the same file naming protocol when developing your own content.(NB During the refinement of Destinations®, prefixes were allotted when the object was created, but not subsequently changed if the page type changed.)
· Objects are grouped into the following types:
o info (the webpage gives general information)
o formt (the webpage contains a form element)
o act (the webpage contains an activity)
o ref (the web page is a ‘Find out more’)
· The type is followed by –[number] e.g. act-0020, info-0123, formt-0224, ref-0012
· The number will always be four digits long
· The file has a .htm extension
· The files are stored in the ‘units/objects’ folder
Downloads
Downloads are files such as Microsoft Word documents, PDFs, spreadsheets, etc, which are provided within objects for users to download, e.g. a sample CV.
· The name of the file: down-[number] e.g. down-0023, down-0145
· The number will always be four digits long
· The file extension will vary according to the file type
· Currently supported types:
o pdf and doc, e.g. down-0012.pdf, down-0134.doc
· The files are stored in the ‘files’ folder
Content images
Content images are used to illustrate pages and are separate from images used for navigation.
There are two types:
o Introduction images
o Object images
Introduction images
· Introduction images are named in numeric order, e.g. 001, 002
· The number should always be three digits long
· The files are stored in the ‘units/images/intropics’ folder
· They can be jpeg, gif or png
Object images
· Object images are named: [name of object]-pic[number] e.g. act-0032-pic01, info-0125-pic12
· The number will always be four digits long
· The files are stored in the ‘units/images/obpics’ folder
Flash files
Flash files are used throughout the site for components such as interactive activities.
· The files are named: [name of object] e.g. act-0003
· If multiple flash files were required for an object, an a/b suffix could be used to differentiate
· The file has a .swf extension
· The files are stored in the ‘Flash’ folder
Video
· Video file names use the following protocol: r(reading)Number(4 digits) e.g. r1611
· The file has a .flv extension
· The files are stored in the ‘video’ folder (but can be moved to a streaming server if available)
Local file naming
Purchasers of Destinations® will be supplied with their own unique identifier e.g. the University of Mars might be assigned the id ‘ma’. This unique id can be used when creating new objects and units. Simply insert the id at the end of the filename, e.g. unit-012ma.shtml or info-0112ma.htm.
Using this id has two benefits:
- It avoids problems with integrating new content released by CCMS
- The purchaser has the option to share any content they create with the wider Destinations® community
Multimedia
Video
The ‘video’ folder contains:
· FLV player (swf), used to display video across the site
· ‘Stills’ folder (jpegs of interviewees)
· Transcripts and large video pages
· ‘FLV’ folder, within which are stored FLVs (which should remain here if running from the web server).
FLVs will need to be copied to the streaming server if they are going to be streamed, which will also require the pages to be updated where the video appears.
Changing the video location to your own
· Find and replace all instances of:
flashvars:"file=../video/flv/
· With the route to your own streaming server address, e.g.
flashvars:"file=rtmp://address of streaming server.com/videosource&id=
· Ensure that the &id= is added to the string
· Find and replace all instances of:
.flv&image=
· With:
&image=
Changing the video location within the XML playlist to your own