Creating a KU Web Site - Site-Wide Settings

Create a site-wide settings file

Create a new page using your favorite web development tool. If you are using Dreamweaver you will need to be in Code View rather than Design View. Remove all default code from the page including html, head, title, body tags, etc. Your page should be completely blank of any code or content at this point.

Copy and paste the following Server-Side Include settings into the blank file.

<!--#set var="sitetitle" value="KU: Your Title Here" -->
<!--#set var="sitekeywords" value="Your metadata keywords here, separated by commas" -->
<!--#set var="sitedescription" value="A description of your site here." -->
<!--#set var="kuaffiliation" value="KU Affiliation Here (school, department, or unit)" -->
<!--#set var="kuaffiliationlink" value="http://www.ku.edu/" -->
<!--#set var="mynavigation" value="/~accountname/myssi/navigation.shtml" -->
<!--#set var="myfooter" value="/~accountname/myssi/footer_file.shtml" -->
<!--#include virtual="/~http/ssi/header_ku.shtml" -->

Customize the text in your new file with your site title, description, etc. Don't forget to change "accountname" to your actual account name.
Save your file. The rest of these instructions assume that you'll save this settings file in a sub-directory of public_html called "myssi", with a filename of "myheader.shtml". The full name of the file on the web server should look similar to this:
/homea/accountname/public_html/myssi/myheader.shtml
If you already have a navigation file and a footer file, once you adjust the "mynavigation" and "myfooter" settings to refer to the locations of those files, you'll be ready for the next step. (return to the documentation track index)

If you don't already have navigation file and a footer file, read on for instructions on how to create them for your site.

Create a footer file

If you are updating an existing KU web site, you may already have a footer file. You can continue to use your old footer, just adjust the "myfooter" setting to point to the location of your file.

To create a new footer file, copy this text into a new, blank file and then customize the footer content with contact information for your department or unit.

<div id="ku_contactinfo">
	<address>
		The University of Kansas<br />
		Lawrence, KS 66045<br />
		(785) 864-2700
	</address>
</div>
<div id="ku_copyright">Copyright &copy;
	<!--#config timefmt="%Y"--><!--#echo var="DATE_LOCAL"-->
	by the University of Kansas:
	<a href="<!--#echo var="REQUEST_URI" -->?textonly">Text Only</a>
</div>

Save the file as "footer_file.shtml" in the "myssi" directory.

Create a navigation file

If you are updating an existing KU web site, you may already have a navigation file. You can continue to use your old navigation file, just adjust the "mynavigation" setting to point to the location of your file.

A navigation file is not required. If you don't want one for your site, simply remove the "mynavigation" line from your "myheader.shtml" file that you just created. Your web site will display using the full width of the content panel below the KU Web Template banner.

If you wish to create a navgation file, it may be easiest to use existing navigation files as models. A navigation file is generally nothing more than a set of links which direct the user to significant portions of your web site. Here are a few links to sample navigation files that you may find useful as a starting point:

Navigation File for this page
Navigation File for the Web Template Sample Page
Navigation File for www.ku.edu's Technology page

Once you've created your navigation file, save it as "navigation.shtml" in the "myssi" directory.

Site-wide Server-Side Include Settings

These SSI settings are all slightly different from SSI settings used in the past so that any old settings from an existing page won't interfere with the new template settings. If you're migrating to the new KU template, you can remove all the old SSI settings from the top of all your pages, but it's not necessary.

sitetitle
The title of your KU Web Site

<!--#set var="sitetitle" value="KU: Your Title Here" -->

sitekeywords
A list of keywords and phrases which search engines can use to reference your site. Use commas to separate the words and phrases in the list. Capitalization is not important.
```

```
sitedescription
A description of your KU Web Site. Search engines will display this text when it's available.
```

```
kuaffiliation
The text contents of this template setting will appear within the banner at the top-left corner of the page. See the sample page for a working example.
```

```
kuaffiliationlink
The "kuaffiliation" text will be a link to the home page of that affiliation. The "kuaffiliationlink" setting sets the destination URL for that link. For example, if the affiliation is "School of Fine Arts", the link would be "http://www2.ku.edu/~sfa/"
```

```
mynavigation
Your navigation file contains the links and text which displays in the narrow left column of your KU web pages. The "mynavigation" setting directs the KU Template to your navigation file. If you are creating a new site, you should place this file in the same "myssi" directory used for your site-wide settings file. If you updating an existing KU Template Site, you can use the same file location as the "navigation_file" setting from the old template.
```

```
myfooter
If you want to display a footer on the pages in your site, you will need to create a file with the footer text. The "myfooter" setting directs the KU Template to that file so it will be included at the bottom of each page in your site.
If you have a "footer_file.shtml" from the old KU template, you can adjust this setting to refer to that same file and it will continue to work. Be aware that the footer will display differently in this new template, though all the text content should be preserved.
```

```
mycss
You can add your own Cascading Style Sheet styles in a separate file. To direct the KU Template to include that file, give the file's URL here.
```

```
mycss_media
Cascading Style Sheets allow different styles to be applied in different web page display situations. The most common example is to use special display settings when the page is printed. If the style sheet you're including using the "mycss" setting is targeting a specific type of media, you can specify that here.
```

```
printall
By default, when a KU Web Template page is printed, the printed output will be missing the banner and navigation columns. This allows more of the web page's principal content to fit on the printed page. However, when this is not desired, an alternate printing style can be requested which generates an As-Is version when printed. To enable this style, use the "printall" option:
```

```
mycharset
The KU Web Site defaults to the ISO-8859-1 character set. This is a common character set used by default on many home computers. If your site requires an alternate character set, you can specify it here.
```

```
myjs
You can add your own JavaScript code in a separate file. To direct the KU Template to include that file, give the file's URL here.
```

```
myjs2
You can add a second JavaScript file if you wish. To direct the KU Template to include that file, give the file's URL here.
```

```
mygoogle
If you have a Google subcollection for your web site, enter the name of the subcollection here and the search menu in the KU Template banner will include that subcollection as the default choice. How to add Google Search to your web site
```

```