ISD Sites Editor Updates

ISD Sites Status

All serivces are functioning normally.

ISD Sites Maintenance

No maintenance is schedule at this time.

ISD Sites Editor

The ISD Sites Editor is an online tool that allows you to build a school related website quickly and without needing to wait for IT to set it up. It only takes two clicks to create your site. And adding content to your site is easier than editing a Word document. With inline editing options, what you see is really what you get. Uploading files and images is hassle free. Just drag and drop them to the cloud icon on the left side of the page. Creating a website has never been so easy!

Recent Updates

File Manager - YAY! There's finally some file managment. I've added a popup window that will allow you to browse through the files you've uploaded to the site and delete the one's you no longer need. Please be careful when using this feature. If you delete a file that you still have linked somewhere on the site, the link will no longer work properly after the file is deleted. (2014-10-01)

Bug Fixes and Stuff - Wow! It's been a year since I released the ISD Site Editor and it is still going strong. To mark the occasion, I've spent a little time cleaning up some of the code and fixing some of the bugs that we've found. (I've also introduced more, I'm sure, so please let me know if you see any issues). Bug fixes are marked in the section below. Along with the bug fixes, I've upgraded some of the libraries that the editor uses as well as the editor's theme. I also create a new theme for users to choose called the ISD Responsive Theme. This theme is based on Bootstrap 3 and allows you to take your site MOBILE! You can choose the new theme from the Site Properties section. Other changes include deprecating the Quick Links and List blocks. Users should just use HTML blocks for that. (2014-07-10)

Horizontal Menu Bar - You can now add a custom horizontal menu bar to each page. This will free up some space on your content page. Currently, the menu only supports one level of options, but I'll soon update that to include sub menus as well. You can create one menu for each page or one for your entire site. Any edits you make will automatically update on your other pages so you will no longer have to go and resave all your pages. (2013-10-18)

Google Calendar Block - The Google Calendar block is now available. The block allows you to display one or more public Google Calendars on your site. There are three different display options to choose from as well. Check it out in the Add Block drop down. (2013-09-09)

New Feature! - I've built in a popup login box so that if your session times out while you are editing a page you will know it and you can quickly sign back in. Note: you must make sure to hit the save button again after you log back in. I haven't figured out a nice way to make it auto save after logging in...

Daily Backups - After the disastrous crash last week I wrote a custom backup module to backup the sites to a different server every night. The process runs at 1:30am and will backup anything new on the sites. The awesome thing about my backups is that you'll soon be able to go visit your backup and make sure it's working properly. Look for a link on your My Sites page in the next week or so that will take you to your backups. Note: Backups will only be visible if you are on a district computer. They won't be accessible outside of the district. (2013-08-06)

Bugs

Known Bugs

HMenuBlock in Mobile - The horizontal menu block minimizes in mobile mode, but doesn't expand when the icon is pressed. I think it is an issue with Bootstrap not loading correctly.
Ordering Issues - There is an issue when reordering blocks in columns. Blocks aren't being put into the correct positions. Don't have a reproducible situation but I will take another look at the block order code and see if I can get it fixed up.
Anchors Don't Work Properly - Insert an anchor works fine, but when trying to link to the anchor, it fails because the page name is required since a base element is included in the HTML. Current Solution: Use the URL link type option, set Protocol to '<other>' and then do page-name/#anchor-name in the url bar.

Proposed solution: Edit the link.js file in ckeditor to prefix the anchor with the page name.
Site Editors Error - Adding a user as a site editor does not create a user object in the user database. The lack of this record blocks the site owner from going back to site properties to add more editors.
Solution: When editors are added to a site, autocreate their user account.
Block Affinity - There is an error caused by incorrect block affinity. To reproduce, create a page with more than one column. Add blocks to both columns. Save. Then change the theme to one column. All blocks retain the affinity of the column they were created in. This causes issues when that affinity is no longer available. For example, blocks from a side_column won't sort properly with blocks from main_column once they have been forced into the same column. A solution may be to reset block affinity after a theme is changed, however, this will require manual relocation of blocks if a them is switched back to multicolumns.

Fixed Bugs

Hard to drag blocks - Trying to drag the first block into a column is extremely challengeing. (2014-07-10: This was something I should have fixed a long time ago. IT WAS SOOOO SIMPLE. Sorry.)
Hidden Pages - If a page is marked as hidden, and it is set back to visible, the page will be made visisble HOWEVER, if they hit save again, then it will resave with the property as hidden. (2014-07-10)
Pasting into the Title Block - Pasting into the title block causes Chrome to crash. Whoops. (2014-07-10)
Waving Drop Box - The drop box for file uploads likes to wave frenetically after dropping files. (2014-07-10)
Session timeout without warning - If your session times out and you try to save a page a popup login box will appear to alert you that you need to sign back in. (2013-08-06)
Can't basckpase block headers - If you create a block header, you can highlight and delete the text, but you can't use the backspace key to remove text. (2013-10-11 This bug seems fixed. Perhaps it was an actual issue with a specific version of Chrome)
(2014-07-10 Okay, this one is really fixed this time. I changed the content-editable type for the header bars so they should work so much better now.)

Features Roadmap

Near Future

Keyboard shortcuts - Shortcuts for saving and creating a new page.
Files list tray - A popopen side tray that lists all files that have been uploaded. (Added 2014-10-01)
Page Change Notifications - Creating a new page or navigating to a different page will cause you to lose any changes that haven't been saved. Alerts need to be added to confirm the action.
Hidden Pages - You can mark a page as hidden in the properties window, but it currently doesn't do anything. This should result in a 404 "file not found" error if it is set.
Error Pages - HTTP Error pages are one line of text. They need to be pretty!
View Backups Link - My custom backup module will allow you to view the content that is on the backup server (In-district only though)
Better Handling of File Uploads - Check file names at upload to alert to any bad characters.
Slideshow Features - Allow user to set slide timing and whether slides advance automatically.
Twitter Integration - While Twitter embeds can technically be used now, they are not easy to set up. A custom block would make that embed process easier.

Not-so-near-Future

Retrieve hidden blocks - A popopen side tray that shows all hidden blocks for the page and allows you to drag them back into the page content.
Copy and Paste Blocks - Copy a block on one page will save it to a clipboard and make it pasteable on different page.
More Themes - Provide a few more themes to choose from. (Sorta fixed with the addition of color schemes. 2013-10-15) (2014-07-10: Added the ISD Responsive Theme. It's awesome. You should use it.)
Horizontal Menu Block - Allow users to create a horizontal menu. (Added 2013-10-18)

The Future

Multi-paged, Tabbed Editing - Editing one page at a time is boring, let's edit lots of pages at once.
Revision History - See all the changes you've made to a site and revert to an older one if necessary.
Multi-User Edit - Let multiple people edit the site at one time.