ITS (TYPO3 Content Management System)

• How do I request a site or account?
• What is cache and how does TYPO3 use it?
• Can I edit HTML directly?
• Can I insert Javascript or other code?
• How to spell TYPO3 correctly
• What is a template?
• About TYPO3 drafts (versioning)
• How can I e-mail a link to a file in TYPO3?
• Who else uses TYPO3?

To request a site in CMS, complete the form available at www.ndsu.edu/cms/request_site .

To request an account or access to a site in CMS that already exists, complete the form available at www.ndsu.edu/cms/request_account or contact the ITS Help Desk.

As defined at wikipedia.org on 2/15/08, cache is "a temporary storage area where frequently accessed data can be stored for rapid access."

TYPO3 uses caching at a few levels. It may cache individual content elements or entire pages as they display in your browser. It caches many files, especially image files. It also caches URLs. It caches configurations used in the backend and the page template.

Why does it do all this?

To reduce the amount of time required to display a page in your Web browser. To display a page for the first time, TYPO3 must

• Retrieve page template information from the database and files
• Assemble automatically-generated navigation
• Retrieve reusable content, including footers
• Retrieve or calculates page information, including title and last-modified date
• Retrieve visible content elements, skipping any hidden content elements
• Resize images in content elements as necessary, saving the result as a reusable temp file
• Assemble content from plug-ins such as news and calendar
• Generate URL information (since TYPO3 rewrites URLs from cms.ndsu.edu/index.php?id=8271 to a friendlier format like cms.ndsu.edu/faq
• Process all of the above output using HTML Tidy

Retrieving and processing this for every visitor that comes to your site would cause significant "load" on the server and cause delays to view pages. Saving the generated page in a cache means the page can be quickly displayed to visitors.

This comes at the expense of occasionally requiring you to manually clear caches, forcing TYPO3 to regenerate the page it displays to visitors. Generally, a manual cache clear is only required when a page name is changed or when a page is moved (since navigations for pages not directly affected will not be rebuilt).

TYPO3 automatically clears its internal caches at midnight daily, which is why you may notice that, without manually clearing cache, some actions take "overnight" to be visible on your site.

Your browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, etc.) caches pages and files so that you don't need to re-download them every time you view the page or file. This means that if a page or linked file is updated, you may need to clear your browser cache to view the changes. The simplest way to do this is to hold the shift key down while clicking the refresh/reload button in your browser.

In short, no.

In a July 2006 e-mail from Marc Wallman, Director of IT Infrastructure Services in ITS,

"All editing features should be workable through TYPO3's rich text editor without modifying HTML. If something doesn't seem to be working right on that front, please [contact ITS]. Additionally, in the new web paradigm working with HTML should be reserved for web designers to ensure uniformity in the look and feel of web pages."

In short, no.

The basis for this answer is the previously mentioned HTML statement.

In most cases, an alternative solution to Javascript is available. For some examples of work-arounds, please see more information on Javascript <coming soon>.

File types including PHP, INC, HTM, HTML, DHTML, SHTML, PL and CGI may not be stored in the TYPO3 file manager. Use of such files conflicts with the paradigm where Web developers maintain programming code to ensure security and uniformity in look and feel of pages. If you have need to use such files because a particular functionality is not already provided by TYPO3, CMS may not be the appropriate host location for your application. Please contact ITS for assistance in identifying a solution.

Just as you have a proper name and like it to be spelled correctly, TYPO3 has a proper name and proper spelling. I (Jill) have seen some creative spellings, including Type 03 and typo 3.

The correct spelling of TYPO3 is TYPO3. A generally accepted abbreviation is T3.

To draw comparisons, writing TYPO3 as "Typo3" or "TYPO" is like writing "Ndsu" or Blackboard as "Black."

The TYPO3 organization has published a style document on spelling TYPO3.

In lieu of a detailed explanation of what TYPO3 draft/workspace/versioning is all about, here is a link to the official documentation. Hopefully I (Jill) can translate this to a less technical, more friendly, version soon.

typo3.org/documentation/document-library/core-documentation/doc_core_inside/4.1.0/view/3/7/

While TYPO3 does allow file upload and link-to-file capabilities, the suggested method for sending file links is to create a page in TYPO3 with a link to the file and send an e-mail with a link to that page.

For example,

1. Use the Filelist module to upload the file
2. Create a page or edit an existing page to include a brief explanation of what the file is for
3. Insert a link to the file
4. In e-mail references to download the file, include the URL for the page instead of the file

This method will allow you to update the file and provide a note to visitors that the file was updated on date mm/dd/yy to include some new details (if applicable), to tell them that a special program is required to open the file (if applicable), and to keep the URL short for e-mail purposes.

Note that when sending e-mail containing links to pages in TYPO3, you should reformat the address to follow university guidelines before sending the e-mail. For example, if I copy and paste the URL http://its.ndsu.edu/help_desk/hours/ from the address bar of my browser, I should replace the its.ndsu.edu format with www.ndsu.edu/its to have a final URL of http://www.ndsu.edu/its/help_desk/hours . Additional explanation is forthcoming.

At NDSU

• Department of Architecture and Landscape Architecture - http://www.ndsu.edu/arch
• Bison Connection - http://www.ndsu.edu/bisonconnection
• Diversity Resources - http://www.ndsu.edu/diversityresources
• Department of English - http://www.ndsu.edu/english
• Department of Health, Nutrition, and Exercise Sciences - http://www.ndsu.edu/hnes
• Information Technology Services - http://www.ndsu.edu/its
• IT Security Conference - http://www.ndsu.edu/itsecurity
• Memorial Union - http://www.ndsu.edu/mu
• Orientation and Student Success - http://www.ndsu.edu/student_success
• Records Management - http://www.ndsu.edu/recordsmanagement
• Technology Fee Advisory Committee - http://www.ndsu.edu/tfac
• Vice President of Information Technology - http://www.ndsu.edu/vpit
• Vice President of University Relations - http://www.ndsu.edu/vpur
• Weather - http://www.ndsu.edu/weather

(as of 12/12/2007)

Other .EDUs

• University of Arizona UITS - http://ccit.web.arizona.edu
• University of Michigan-Dearborn (home page, secondary pages, ITS) - http://www.umd.umich.edu , http://www.its.umd.umich.edu
• University of Hawai'i at Manoa (School of Architecture) - http://www.arch.hawaii.edu
• University of Rhode Island (Department of Natural Resources) - http://www.nrs.uri.edu
• Otis College of Art and Design - http://www.otis.edu
• Walla Walla College (home page, secondary pages) - http://www.wwc.edu
• College of Saint Elizabeth (home page, secondary pages) - http://www.cse.edu
• Maysville Community & Technical College - http://www.maysville.kctcs.edu