Formatting text

Once you have pasted content into an LCMS editor window only a few steps remain. Styles are a predefined set of rules for text formatting. These rules determine the font, color, and size of your text.

Styles Available

There are many text style choices to choose from. For most pages you will probably only need two or three. The most common styles are listed first. Here is an example of proper usage:

This page uses three styles.

1. The first sentence in the body of this page uses the “heading1” style. This should be used for all headings.

2. The second sentence uses “subhead1”. Just by changing color, attention can be drawn to any text. You should use this for sub-headings.

3. The remaining text uses the “body1” style. This is the default style for text within LCMS. Nothing needs to be done to select this style.

Applying Styles

When creating new web pages you will either be typing in new text or copying and pasting text from an existing source. The content management system has greatly simplified the way you apply styles to your text.  There are two ways you can apply styles to text. You can apply a style to a paragraph of text or you can apply a style to highlighted text.

Applying a style to a paragraph

To apply a style to a paragraph of text, put your cursor anywhere in the paragraph and choose which style you want to apply from the Style pull down menu.

Applying a style to a word or sentence

To apply a style to a word or sentence, select the text and then click on the style pull down menu.  The style you choose will be applied to the selected text.

Cleaning out unwanted styles

To remove style-based text formatting, select the text and choose the Format menu from within the editor. Select “Clean Styles” to remove most formatting information from a selected range of content. 

Inserting Images

Once your text has been copied and formatted properly, you can add images. Earlier in the conversion process you should have imported any images into the “images” folder of your Webview. You should not attempt to copy and paste images into LCMS along with text. Only images that have been imported first can be inserted into your web pages.

Don’t copy and paste images – import first, then insert the image

Please add descriptions of your images in the field labeled “Alt Text” as you insert them into an LCMS web page. Alt Text enables software for the visually impaired to “read” your image as well as providing a “Tool Tip” for users who hover their mouse over your image.

Placing images in a captioned table

In certain instances you may want to pair an image with a caption and set a body of text to wrap around on either the left or right. The easiest way to achieve this is to create a table to contain both the image and caption. Set your cursor in the desired location within a body of text and select the Insert menu within the editor. Select “Insert Table” to bring up the following dialog:

Insert Table dialog

In this example, the table will have two cells, one on top of the other. The table width has been set a few pixels wider than the image we want to insert. This is easy to determine if your images have file names which include pixel width. Border Width should be set to 0 to avoid unsightly lines around your image. Set Table Alignment to left, right, or center according to your preference for the current page. Column Width and Row Height should be left blank. Cell Padding and Cell Spacing should typically be set to values between 5 and 10. Together, these values determine how much breathing room will exist between the table content and the body of text that is wrapping around your table. Finally, make sure that Table Background Color shows you a letter “A”. This indicates that the table will be transparent. Select OK to create the table. Place your cursor inside the top cell of the new table and choose the Insert menu from within the editor. Select “Insert Image” as you would normally, remembering to add Alt Text. Type your caption into the bottom cell and apply appropriate formatting to distinguish caption text from the main body. Finally, save the page and view it, since text wrapping does not show up within the editor.

Creating Links

Any text within the LCMS editor can be changed into a hyperlink. Simply highlight the text and click the chain link icon. The resulting dialog box gives you several choices:

LCMS Insert Link dialog box

There are three main types of links you will be likely to use.

1. If your link is pointing to another LCMS page you can simply browse to it using the Folders and Files boxes within the Insert Link dialog. 
2. You can link to an Internet web address, also known as a URL. Use another web browser to navigate to the external website. Then copy the web address directly from a live web browser window. This guarantees the validity and spelling of the URL. The web address can then be pasted into the URL box shown above. 
3. You might want to create a link to an e-mail address. To do this you must clear any text from the URL field shown above, including the http://. Type mailto: followed by an e-mail address, with no spaces.

The radio buttons labeled "Target" should remain at the system default value.

Helpful Hints

• Add a line break at the end of pages – this creates a little breathing room at the bottom of your content and gives them a consistent, professional look
• To quickly modify a link or styled body of text, begin typing inside the already-linked or already-styled text, then delete the old text. That way you won't have to re-link or re-style modified text.
• Don't get bogged down editing content while converting existing pages. Make a quick pass to fix obvious problems and broken links but stay focused. Get your pages into LCMS first, then review and edit content later.
• Each Webview and folder must have a file called “index” even if one did not exist on your old website.
• Create index pages after all the other content is done. This allows you to complete all of your links without coming back to edit the index later.

If you need additional assistance, please call the Information Technology Services Help Desk at 309-556-3900, e-mail it@iwu.edu, or use the online support request form (on-campus or via campus proxy server only).