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How to create a project on your website


The project content type on Luggage is useful for showcasing research that your department has done. Listing grants and showing project start and end dates are some of the features that the project content type provides. Read this tutorial for more information about creating a project page.

 

Step 1: Creating Your Project


Using the menu bar at the top of the page, hover over the "Content" tab and select "Project" from the "Add Content" menu (Note: your menu may look slightly different):

Creating a Project from the home page

 

Step 2: Add Information to Fields


Start creating your project by filling out required fields. The first is the title, which is self-explanatory:

Screenshot showing how to create a Project Title

The next required fields are category and tags. An in-depth description of category and tags can be found here. Choose the category that best describes your project. Multiple categories can be selected by holding down either the command button (on Macs) or the control button (on Windows machines). Tags are descriptive words that enable users to search for pages more easily. They also create a relationship between pages that have similar tags. Here is an example:

Scrennshot showing category and tags

Next, the project content type allows you to list your funding organization, grant award amount, and grand number. If you list a funding organization, then you must also provide the organization's website URL.

Screenshot showing the funding organization, amount, and grant number

You can add more than one funding organization. Click on the "Add another item" button:

Screenshot showing how to add more funding information

Enter more information in the new text fields:

Screenshot showing expanded funding information

Step 2:  Adding a Project Summary


After you have finished filling in your funding organizations and grant information, it is time to enter text into the body text editor. This should contain the main descriptive text of your project. You can format the text and add images or links. You can view the image tutorial here. You can also add documents related to your research project. If you would like information about adding files to your news article, view the file tutorial here. Click on the image below for a larger size:

Screenshot showing body text

As you can see, our body text is rather wordy. In search results and in the "Projects" menu item (if your Luggage site has that feature), your text will be reduced to the first 600 characters. If your body text is long (like in the example above) or formatted in a way that would look odd when trimmed, you may want to create a summary of your project's text. To add a summary to your project, click on the "Edit Summary" link next to the "Body" header:

Screenshot with edit summary box highlighted

The summary text editor will appear above your body text editor. Enter a summary of your project into the box. Remember: the summary text will only appear on the "Projects" menu item and in search results. Here is an example summary of our tutorial project:

Screenshot showing summary box

You can see another description of summary text in our news article tutorial.

Step 3: Adding Project Duration and Order


Next is the project duration fields. This is where you enter in the start and end dates of your project. Be sure to enter the dates in the format displayed below the date fields. If you have a project that is ongoing or does not have a projected end date, you can choose to hide the end date. Here is an example project duration with a start and an end date:

Screenshot showing starting and ending dates

To hide the end date, click the "Show End Date" checkbox. Now, there should only be one date field. In our example, the project start date would look like this:

Screenshot with just starting date

Finally, there is project order. If you would like your projects to be in a certain order, you can change the order value. The higher the value, the lower your project will appear in the view. If you want your project to be the first thing your users see, give it a low value. Project page order values can be from -100 to 100. This weighting tutorial goes into more detail.

Screenshot with order box

 

Step 4: Publish Your Project


After you have finished adding and double-checking your content, it is time to publish your project. Above the "save" button at the bottom of the page, you should find a menu system that looks similar to the one in the screenshot below. Click on the "Publishing Options" tab and make sure that the box next to "Published" is checked. Then click the "Save" button at the bottom of the page to submit your project.

Screenshot showing publishing options

 

Step 5: Double-Check Your Content


Always double-check anything you create to make sure that all your information is accurate, your links go to the right websites, and your formatting looks correct. As a comparison, here is what our example project looks like when you view it in the "Projects" menu.

News article on news article page

Here is what the project will look like when you view the page itself:

News article in full

Congratulations! You just made your first project.


You are well on your way to making an awesome Luggage site. Click here to view other Luggage tutorials.

If you have questions about this tutorial, please contact Ann Greazel by emailing websupport@iastate.edu.

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