Direct Edit: a quicker way to edit your CMS content

Some of you may have noticed the appearance of a new 'Direct Edit' link in the footer of your web pages in the last few days. If you've not tried it yet, Direct Edit is a really quick way to make edits to your web content, especially when you just need to make small changes.

The link to Direct Edit is available from the bottom right of every page published from the CMS

When you're looking at a published page, selecting the Direct Edit link will take you into the CMS (you'll be asked to login if you haven't already done so) with a view that might be new to you. Instead of the usual listing of your content items, you'll see a view of the page with dotted red lines around each of the content items.

In the Direct Edit view each of your content items will have a dotted red line around it

When hovering over any of the dotted boxes an option will appear to modify that content, which will let you make your changes. You can also delete content items and see the page history from within Direct Edit.

Direct Edit works with most of our templates, but not all of them just yet. If a template can't be used in Direct Edit then you won't see the red dotted lines around that particular content item.

The other link in the footer is 'Modify', which takes you the same view you would see when selecting 'Modify content' from within the CMS (we renamed this from 'Edit' to clarify the difference between this and Direct Edit).

Happy editing!

Writing tip - stress the benefits, not the features

When writing content that needs to be persuasive (whether that's to encourage a purchase, sign up for a course, attend a lecture, etc) it's important to appeal to the emotions of your reader. You need to be answering the question "What's in it for me?", by telling your readers how they will benefit, rather than just listing features.

Think of a glass of water - you could describe it in terms of features (wet, cold, transparent) or benefits (thirst-quenching, refeshing, healthy). What sounds more appealing?

The Apple website is an excellent example of benefits over features. Although they produce electronic gadgets which by their very nature are packed with features, the main focus of the site is about the benefits for the purchaser. The iPhone and iPod pages are all about benefits: you can take your whole music library with you, keep up to date with your friends by being able to use Facebook anywhere, find a nearby restaurant when you've got a pizza craving, etc.

The specific details of the features are all there too (you need to be able to back up any benefits you claim) but that's not the first thing you see. If I really want to know, I can look at the technical specifications page to find out that it has a 480 by 320 pixel screen with 163 pixel per inch resolution, but most people won't know or care what that means - they want to know the benefit: that their photos will look fantastic.

Even something as dull as a wireless keyboard can sound more exciting when you focus on the benefits (your desk will be clutter-free) rather than the features (it uses Bluetooth to connect to your computer wirelessly).

If you only focus on features, you risk two things:

• Your audience might not make the leap from the feature to how they will benefit from them, especially if the features are technical or use a lot of jargon.
• They might make the leap, but you've now given them an extra uncessary step of making the mental connection between the features and what's in it for them - you've made them think.

So how are you selling your department / course / college? Are you stating the benefits or just the features?

Learn more

Interested in learning about writing effective web content? Come along to one of our Writing for the Web sessions on 30 April or 24 May 2010 for more practical tips.

Blog publishing from Word

I've just created a new document in MS Word 2007 for the first time since I upgraded and there were two options presented: blank document or blog post. I'm not supposed to be writing a blog post right now, but the temptation is too good to resist.

Early signs are good, because Blogger is listed as a blog I can write for. The next step doesn't fill me with confidence because Word announces that when it contacts the blog provider my username and password may be visible to others. But I'm reckless, so carried on regardless.

I'm now writing my blog post in what looks like Word's normal editing screen, just with a few things removed. It's actually quite good.

How to quickly search the University Directory from the Firefox address bar

Is the way that you search the University Directory something like this?

1. Go to the University homepage
2. Click on Contacting People
3. Click on Directory
4. Type in the name of the person you're looking for
5. Click Search

Well, using Firefox's Smart Keywords functionality, you can do this a whole lot quicker, without even taking your hands off the keyboard. Here's how you set it up:

1. Navigate to the University Directory

2. Right click in the Surname field, and select Add a Keyword for this Search...

3. In the Add Bookmark dialog box that appears, give the bookmark a name and a short keyword. I've used "d" (for "directory").

4. Now, whenever that you want to search the directory, just go to the address bar (which you quickly do by pressing CTRL + L) and type "d" followed by the surname of the person you are looking for. Eg to search for someone with the surname Kelly, you'd type d kelly.

You can expand on this further and create keywords for the different types of searches that are possible with the directory - for example I also have a "de" keyword that searches the directory by email address.