Freestlye provides a point-and-click interface within a web browser window to facilitate the development of official Denison web pages. Web pages are built using a series of templates provided by Denison's Web Services department.

Page maintainers and approvers of official Denison sites. These include:

• offices
• academic departments
• athletics

Personal sites are hosted and maintained on webby.cc.denison.edu.   Reference Web Development Tutorials for assistance.

Student organization sites are maintained via OrgSync.

 If you are unsure how to maintain your site, contact Web Services for assistance.

Log in to Freestyle with your e-mail username and password.

Any modern web browser should be fine;  Firefox 3+, Internet Explorer 8+, and Safari 3+ are known to work well.   Other browsers may vary. 

Note: Internet Explorer may display warnings about "unsecured" connections when previewing documents; this is normal.

The login is case-sensitive, so make sure you're typing your e-mail username (the part before @denison.edu) and password correctly.

If you are typing your username and password correctly, there is the possibility that you do not have an account in the system.  Please see our web publishing FAQ for instructions.

After logging in, you should see gray menu options down the left side of the screen.  These are called Workflows.

1. Click on the Pages workflow for the site that you want (e.g. Art History Pages).
2. Click on the Find Stories action.
3. In the Search box, type the name of the file (the last part of the url - "somefile.html") you want to edit.
4. Select the Checkout box, and click the Check Out button.
   
5. You're ready to edit!  Please reference Web Development Tutorials for more specific assistance.
   

Scroll down to the box labeled Content - this is the box with all your content. If you're editing a Standard Page story type (see the first box on the page) you'll probably see things with labels like Enhanced Paragraph, Table, or Heading.  If you're editing a Faculty/Staff Bio Page, you'll see information for that person.  Notice you can edit some of the items on this screen, while others require you to click the Edit button right below it.

Adding links will likely be novel at first, but it's easy once you get the hang of it. You'll see a drop-down menu at the bottom of the aforementioned Content box. When you are editing an Enhanced Paragraph, your options will include:

• Link - Internal Story
  
• Link - Email
• Link - External
• Link - Internal Media

To create a link, follow these steps:

1. In the Text area, place the word "link" followed by square brackets with a key name inside where you want the link to appear (e.g. link[denisonrodeo]).
2. To link to another page within Denison.edu, select Link - Internal Story from the drop-down menu.  To link to a page outside of Denison.edu, select Link - External from the drop-down menu.   Once your selection has been made, click the Add Element button.
3. In the "key" field, enter the word you put in the square brackets. In this example, that would be "denisonrodeo".  Link Text is what you would like to display to the reader on screen.  Something like "This is a link" would be good to try out the first time.  For an embedded Internal Story link, scroll to the Related Story box to relate a story.  Click on the Edit button at the right of the Related Story box to search for the page you want to link to, then click its Relate link.  For an External link, enter the URL in the URL field.
   
4. Click Save to return to the Enhanced Paragraph.
5. Click on the Preview button at the top of your screen.  A new browser window opens to render a preview of your updated web page.
   

If there is a problem, Freestyle will throw an error when it attempts to preview the document.  Common problems are embedded link elements with no related story or URL or link keys that don't match.

If you are editing an element like the Enhanced Paragraph, click the Save button until you arrive back at the top level of your story.  You'll see the label Content at the top of your story's content box.  Scroll to the bottom of the page.  On the drop-down menu next to the Check In button, select the appropriate Approval Desk for your site (e.g. Art History Approval). Click the Check In button, NOT the Save button.

In your Pages Workflow on the left, click on the Approval Desk you selected in the previous step.  You should see your story listed on the Desk.  Check the Publish check box and click Publish Assets.  You are now presented with a confirmation screen. Click Publish again.  Your changes are scheduled for publication and will become publicly available on Denison.edu momentarily.

You probably only have Maintainer privileges. Let your site Approver know the documents are ready for publication, or contact Web Services if you need to be granted Approver privileges.

You still can. Just use the Raw Code element in your pages and away you go.

You need to use an image manipulation program such as iPhoto or Photoshop to resize your image to a more web-suitable size.

Bio images are set to a standard width of 200 pixels for uniformity.  Uploading your bio images at this size will ensure they look sharp and clear.

To ensure media work properly within Freestyle, your filenames should:

1. contain only lower case letters
   
2. contain no spaces, symbols (e.g. "&"), or punctuation other than underscore (e.g. "!")
   
3. end with a lowercase extension (MIME type) such as .pdf, .png, .jpg, etc.

Examples of media filenames ready to be uploaded into Freestyle:

• mickey_mouse.jpg
• fellows_hall_renovation.pdf
• student_research_project.docx
• denison.gif
  

The best way to report a problem with a page is to use the Feedback link at the bottom of the page.  You can then use the form provided to detail the bug to the page maintainer.

Common causes include not having a Source selected at content creation time, using the back button, or uploading a corrupt image.  If you are in a situation that doesn't fit one of those descriptions, please report a bug.