Contribution Mode

Contribution mode is a way of viewing a web page so that you can see what parts of the page you, as the contributor, can edit. Before you can view a page in contribution mode, you must know which pages you are responsible for editing. You should learn this from the site designer or site manager within your organization. You may even be notified by an automated e-mail message using Content Server's workflow features (the message contains a link to the page that must be reviewed or edited).

Once you identify the page (or pages) that must be edited, you can then switch to contribution mode, and start editing the page. You enter contribution mode for a web page by pressing a special key combination while viewing the web page in a web browser. The default key combination is Ctrl+Shift+F5, but the site administrator may have set up a different combination.

Note:

Contact your site administrator if you are not sure what key combination to use to activate contribution mode.

When you press the assigned key combination, you may be prompted for your login credentials (user name and password) to connect to the content server that the Web site resides on. After you log on, you see two changes in your web browser: the page now has a Contribution Mode bar at the top with one or more options for the web page as a whole, and the page includes one or more contribution graphics close to each of the contribution regions (that is, the areas on the web page that can be edited) (Figure).

Please note that the web page you see in contribution mode may look quite different from the one currently on the Web site. As a contributor, you will see the latest saved version on the content server, whereas site consumers will always see the latest released version, and these may be different (for example, the released web page may not yet include changes to the currently saved page while it is going through a workflow process).

Contribution Graphic

Description of Contribution Graphic

The contribution graphic shows (from left to right) the name of the contribution region, an edit icon (for data files only), and a menu icon. If you hover your mouse cursor over a contribution graphic, its associated contribution region is marked in a yellow box. This is the content that can be edited using the selected contribution graphic.

To edit the selected contribution region, click its edit icon, or click the menu icon and choose the Edit option. The Contributor editor then launches in a browser popup window, and you can start editing the content in that region (see Contributor Editor Window). Please note that this browser popup window may be suppressed by popup-blocking software, so you must configure that software to allow pop-ups on your site. Also, when the Contributor editor opens, the web browser displaying the original web page becomes temporarily unavailable. You can return to the web browser when you close the Contributor editor.

Considerations

Please note the following regarding contribution mode:

The options available in the contribution graphic depend on your access privileges. If you do not have permission to edit a contribution region, its associated contribution graphic will not have any edit options. This is a security choice by the site designer or network administrator.
The Contributor editor may show more editable data elements than are actually displayed in the contribution region being edited. This is because the current display definition for the contribution region may have been set up to use only a portion of the data file associated with it. The other information may be used elsewhere on the Web site, so editing that information may affect other pages on the site.
The contribution graphic may also include a workflow icon (Figure). For more information, see Using Workflows on a Web Site.

Workflow Icon
There may be sections of the site that appear only in contribution mode. As such, you must enter contribution mode first to view those sections.