# Page Space Help ## What is Page Space? Page Space is an application developed by the Department of Mathematics to build, maintain, and host personal and group web pages. It allows department members to easily maintain their own content while presenting it with a cohesive layout and style across the department. The goal of Page Space is to balance flexibility with ease of use. It allows users to create and maintain multiple pages within their sites, upload file content (PDFs, word documents, images, etc), and build a navigation menu to link them all together. Page content is written using Markdown syntax, for which we have created a [Markdown Guide](https://apps.math.msu.edu/PageSpace/SiteBuilder/Home/MarkdownGuide) (requires MSU login) that can be opened any time at the top of a content editor for quick reference. ## Who can have a Page Space site? Currently, a site can be requested by faculty, staff, and graduate students within the Department of Mathematics and the Department of Statistics and Probability. Sites can also be requested for research groups, course pages, and other departmental groups. ## How do I request a Page Space site? Page Space site _creation_ is limited to Math/STT IT staff. Please email [Math.ITHelp@msu.edu](mailto:Math.ITHelp@msu.edu) with a brief description of how your site will be used (i.e. personal, group, course materials, et) and we will start the process of creating your site. ## Who can see a Page Space site? Page Space allows individual sites to be configured for public access as well as three levels of restricted access: MSU login, department users, or a fixed list of users maintained within the site editor. The access level of each site will be determined at the time of site creation, based on its intended purpose. ---
# Page Space Usage Instructions ## The Page Space Site Listing When you first log in to [Page Space](https://apps.math.msu.edu/PageSpace), you will see a list of sites that you have been granted access to view and/or edit. Each site in the list will have the site name, its category (personal, group, etc), its access level (public, campus, department, or private), and its published URL. If you have access to _edit_ the site, you will also see an Edit button in the upper right corner. ## The Page Space Site Editor The Page Space site editor is split into four main areas: Pages, Page Content, Navigation Menu, and Site People. At the top of the page you will see the site's name, category, access level, and publish URL as well as an indicator for whether the site is published or unpublished.  Also in the upper-right of the editor, you will see the Site Actions button, which will allow you to adjust some of the site-level settings, like published status (for the site), layout, theme, hero image, and default page. For now, "Default" is the only option for theme and layout, but this would allow us to possibly create additional layouts and/or themes in the future. The default page of your site is the page a browser will be directed to when no page is specified in the URL after the site name. A hero image (or banner image) will be displayed at the top of your site below the University and Department branding banner, for all pages in your site. Once you upload images to your Files & Media sections, you should see those as options for Hero Image.
### Creating and Selecting Pages When you first get your site, you should have at least one page listed under Pages that has already been created for you called "Home" and it should be set as the default page for your site. To add a _new_ page, simply click the "New Page" button at the top of the page list (above Home for a newly created site), enter the required information; currently, this is just the name for the page and whether it should be published immediately (with no content). Once a new page has been created, you will be able to switch between active pages by clicking the page name in the Pages list. This will change the content in the page content editor to match the selected page.
### The Page Content Editor  At the top of the page content editor, you will see two navigation tabs: one for the page content and another for Files & Media. Uploaded files and media _can_ be uploaded to and organized by page, but you may also choose to upload them all to Home for simplicity. Next you will see published Page URL and an indicator for whether that page is published or unpublished. **Changes to published pages are visible on the published site immediately** and unpublishing a page removes it entirely from the _published_ site, but remains available in the editor. Whether you choose to edit a page while it is published, or to unpublish it first, is up to you. There is currently no way to update the content of a page while leaving the original content in place until you are done with all of your edits. This functionality _may_ become available in the future. To make a changes to the page settings (such as its publish state) or to delete it altogether, you can use the Page Actions on the right side of the page content editor. The page content editor splits content up into "sections" that be added, removed, shrunk, stretch, re-ordered, and text-aligned. There are also certain features, like LaTeX support and reverse-ordered-lists that can be enabled per-section. For a newly created site, there should be at least one existing, empty content section, with its own section control bar. To edit the content of a section, click the pencil button in the control bar. A window should pop up allowing you to edit section's using Markdown. You should also see a link to the Markdown Guide at the top of this editor. When you have made your changes to this section, click Submit at the bottom of the Edit Content window and your changes will be saved. **Please note that if your changes are significant or took a long time to type, you may want to copy all of the contents to your computer's clipboard OR another text editor before clicking submit** because, as is the case with many web-based applications, your session _could_ timeout without interaction with the server, typically this time period is 30 minutes, and you _could_ lose what you've typed. To add a new content section, click the New Section button next to Page Actions; this will add an empty section at the end of your existing sections.  Using the section control bar for a particular section you can change the order of the sections using the left and right arrow buttons or change the width of the section by using the shrink and stretch buttons. If the column base (found in Page Actions -> Page Settings) is set to 3, then shrink and stretch will allow you to change the width of a particular section to 1/3, 2/3, or 3/3 (full-width). If the column base is set to 2, then you can shrink and stretch between 1/2 and full-width sections. The section control bar will also allow you to set the text-alignment for the entire section: left, right, justify, or center. There is also a button for enabling section-specific features like LaTeX/MathJax and reverse-ordered lists and gives us a space to possibly add additional rendering features later on. Lastly, you can delete a section using the X button, but please note that although there is a confirmation prompt to prevent accidental deletion, **there is no undo**.
### Files & Media The Files & Media editor allows you to upload files that you would like to publish and share along with your page content. Each page has its _own_ Files & Media collection that you can use to organize your files. However, you can choose to upload them to only one of your pages for simplicity, if you choose. Files uploaded to one page can still be referenced from another page as long as the file is published.  To upload media, select the Files & Media tab at the top of the active page content editor. Click the Add File button, browse to the file you would like to upload, select whether or not you would like the file to publish immediately, and click Submit. If you have elected to publish the file immediately, the file will be added to the list of files with a link to its published URL. This URL can be copied and used create links in your page content using the Markdown link syntax. If the file is **unpublished**, the URL/link shown for View Unpublished File is an **internal link** that only works within the Page Space editor and you should **not** use this URL to create links in your page content. For any file that has been added, you can rename it and change its publish status by clicking the pencil icon on the right.
### Navigation Menu The navigation menu editor allows you to build a menu that is composed of links to any of the pages within your site as well as any links to external sites. To add a new menu item, click New Menu Item at the top of the Navigation Menu item list. Give the menu item a name, select which of your pages it should link to (or provide the full URL to external web content), and finally select whether this menu item should be placed underneath another to-level menu item by selecting a Parent menu item. Click Submit. Please note that Page Space only supports single-nested menus, so only top-level menu items will be available in the Parents drop-down. **To link to uploaded Files & Media** in your menu, you should treat those as external content and provide the full, published URL. Once a menu item has been added, you can use its menu control to rename it, change its link, change its parent, move it up or down, or delete it.
### Site People The Site People editor allows you to control who can view and edit the site within the Page Space Site Builder, as well as who can view the published site content for sites that are configured for the _private_ access level. The Site People editor typically starts in a collapsed state. To see the contents of the editor, you will need to click the Site People bar to expand it. Once it is expanded you can view the list of people who have been added to your site and their respective access privileges. To add a new person, click the New Person button at the top of the Site People editor. Enter their name, their MSUNetID, and select whether or not that person should be a site editor. Once added, you can use each site person's action menu to change any of these values or delete the person from the site.
