Filling Out Your New Staff Page

You’ve been given a basic Staff Page that is mostly blank. Since your Staff Page helps others at Berkeley Lab identify and get to know you, take a few minutes to check over your basic information and add more detail according to the directions below.

Login to the web editing interface

We refer to the web editing interface as the Content Mangagement System (CMS).

FIRST: Follow these instructions to login to the CMS of the site where your basic Staff Page is published. (The login interface varies across websites, so please refer to the login instructions if you aren’t familiar with the process for your website.) 

ES.net USERS: Note there is no login text or button on the ES.net website. Go to es.net/admin and proceed with login. 

Navigate to your new page

You should have received an email with a link to your new page. Click the link to visit your page.

You can also get there by entering your page’s short URL, which follows the naming convention sitename/firstname-lastname:

• https://cs.lbl.gov/firstname-lastname

• https:/crd.lbl.gov/firstname-lastname

• https://nersc.gov/firstname-lastname

• https:/es.net/firstname-lastname

The short URL automatically redirects to your long URL.

If you did not receive a URL or your short URL isn’t working, file a ticket with CS Comms Help.

Tour of the CMS Interface
Once you are logged in, you’ll see a green “Live” widget at the upper right of the browser window. Expand the widget by clicking it: 

Next, choose “Edit in CMS” to open the CMS interface:

Once you are in the CMS editing space, you can choose to work in either Split Screen Mode or Editing Mode - control this from the fly-out menu in the little gray box in the lower right corner of the CMS screen:

The view below is Edit Mode. Here you can see the only three editing tabs you will need: 

1. Main Content Window

2. Image

3. Contact Info

Adding Content (or Updating it)

Contact Information

Even though the CMS Interface brings you to the Main Content window first, we recommend that you begin by checking the information on the Contact Info tab. Click on “Contact info”: 

Check your first and last name to make sure they are how you’d like them to appear:

Below the name fields, you have the option of adding a Prefix or Suffix to your name, such as “Dr.” or “Ph.D.” Most leave these fields blank, although some at Berkeley Lab choose to add this detail. If you do opt to add “Ph.D.” after your name, add a comma after your last name in the Last Name field (see above). Then, when you fill out the “Suffix” field, be sure to enter it as “(space)Ph.D.” so the suffix appears properly when displayed by the CMS:

Fill out the NICKNAME field if you go by a shortened form of you first name, or if you have another nickname you’d like to display. This will automatically show the nickname in parentheses on your Staff Page and in your group’s Bio Index listing (Staff Page):

More about the Nickname Field:
Good examples of use cases are Wibe (Bert) de Jong, Xiaoye (Sherry) Li, or Elizabeth (Liz) Ball. Each of these three individuals use their full legal name in publications and professionally, but go by a nickname socially. In each of those cases, you’d enter “Bert,” “Sherry,” or “Liz” (without quotations) in the Nickname field. 

More about Nicknames vs. Preferred Names:
If you routinely use a nickname, shortened name, or preferred name in place of your legal name, simply enter your preferred name in the “First Name” field. For example, a person’s legal name is Jennifer Jones. However, she never goes by “Jennifer” and instead prefers to go by her middle name, “Heather.” You’d fill in the first and last name fields as “Heather Jones,” leaving the name Jennifer out entirely.

Scroll or tab down to the “Phone Header” section if you wish to add a phone number. Enter your number beginning with the country code (+1) followed by area code in parentheses (510), then the remainder of the number separated with a dash : +1 (510) 555-5555
 
The next section is the “Internet” section, where you can verify or change your email address: 

Under “Organization”, fill out the “Title” field (you can view other members of the new hire’s group to see what their conventions are for this). Common Titles might include “Staff Scientist” “Group Lead,” “Research Scientist,” “Software Engineer,” or “Postdoctoral Researcher.” 

NOTE: Whatever you put in the “Title” field also shows up in the “Bio Index” view of the page. “Role” is an optional field that can only be viewed when the page is open. So, if your subject is a group lead, but also wants senior staff scientist to show up, then put both of those in the Title field.

IMPORTANT: Be sure to click “Save” before moving on to the next tab.

Adding an image

Locate a recent headshot or work-appropriate selfie. If you are taking a new selfie for this purpose, take it in natural light against a neutral background. Turn off your flash when taking the picture.

Image naming, file type, size and proportion 
Your image should be cropped to a rectangle in portrait orientation with a ratio of 4:5 (8:10). Recommended image size is 72 ppi, 200 px high x 160 px wide. Please save it as a JPG or PNG, renaming it with your full name and division, for example: jean_smith_esnet.jpg.

Adding your image

To add the headshot to your Staff Page, navigate to the Image tab, then click “Upload new” or drag and drop image into the white box with the dashed border.

Once your image upload is started and the filename and thumbnail show up on the screen, the CMS requires that you “publish” the image before moving on to the next step. This takes a few clicks, so please be patient.

Begin by clicking the eyeball icon to start the image publication process:

Clicking the eyeball icon brings you to this screen. You won’t do anything meaningful here, just click the “Details” button in the upper right to keep the process moving along:

The final image publication screen offers you a chance to adjust the “Title” of the image, which is where you need to enter alt text. Alt text is very important for accessibility, especially for those who use screen readers and other assistive devices. Enter your name, especially if your file name isn’t descriptive of the image. You can see that our example shows the alt text “Placeholder Person Graphic” that describes the generic placeholder graphic image.

Finally, click the dark green “Publish” button to publish the image before moving on:

Publication of your image brings you to the screen below, shown here in split screen mode.
Note that the image upload is complete when you no longer see the word “Draft” in red letters at left. In split screen mode, your image should also display next to your name and all of the information from the “Contact Info” tab.

There is no need to click “Save” in the lower left corner if you see that the button’s background is white and a checkmark is present. The image below shows that your image upload was saved successfully and it’s OK to move on. 

*NOTE: If you get an error message at any time when uploading or publishing your image, don’t reupload the image! Pause for 2 minutes and reload the page. There is sometimes a lag between the upload acknowledgement and the image fully loading. If you keep reuploading, you’ll wind up with many multiples of the same image in the CMS. 

Main Content Window

This is where you’ll be placing a brief professional biography. This helps others in your group, department, and throughout the lab and beyond learn more about you.

Minimum info your staff bio should include:

• A mention of your current position and/or area of expertise

• The name of your group or project

• Any professional specializations or research interests

• Your degree(s) and educational institution(s)

A few bio examples

The staff bios listed below are all brief but good examples. The shortest is a single sentence! Any of these an excellent guide to the type of content we hope you’ll add to your own staff page:

• Brian Friesen (NERSC)

• Kelly Rowland (NERSC)

• Lipi Gupta (NERSC)

• Jack Deslippe (NERSC)

• Damian Rouson (AMCR)

• Xiaoye (Sherry) Li (AMCR)

• Oluwamayowa (Mayo) Amusat (SciData)

• Valerie Hendrix (SciData)

• Inder Monga (ESnet)

• Erhan Saglamyurek (ESnet/Scientific Networking Division)

Main Content Window

You can type directly into the Main Content window, then click “Save.” Below we see the text entered in the CMS content window displays below the contact information block (shown in Split Mode):

3

Paste text into HTML view

Although it is possible to draft your bio directly in the Main Content window, we suggest that you compose the text of your bio in another appication for a variety of reasons. HOWEVER, DO NOT paste pre-written text directly into the Main Content window! Any word processing application will bring with it hidden markup and formatting that can disagree with the CMS, so it’s best to paste your text into the html window.

Click the bracket symbol to bring up the “Source Code” or HTML screen:

Once you see the “Source Code” screen pop up, paste your text in. You can separate paragraphs by bracketing them with <p> and </p> paragraph tags, or you can insert paragraph breaks in the editing window afterwards:

Click “Ok” to exit the Source Code screen. You can add text treatments (bold, italic, etc), links and more from the Main Content window: 

Be sure to save your work often, especially if you are spending a lot of time adding or changing details. 

Add Metadata and publish your page

Once you have your page’s body text the way you want it to appear, scroll down to the “Metadata” section directly below the Main Content window. Expand the section by clicking on arrow next to “Metadata.” Add a short summary of your bio (usually one sentence, or no more than two). Search engines display this text with the page title. If you don’t fill it out, they either display nothing, or guess which part of your page is most important to the searcher.

When you are done, click “Publish” to go live and publish the page!

About publications

IMPORTANT! You will not be adding publications manually in this part of the CMS. 
Instead, each site (crd.lbl.gov, nersc.gov, es.net, cs.lbl.gov) has its own database. If you have a staff page on more than one website, you’ll need to add your publications to each site. We do not currently have a central database to pull from (we are working on that, we promise!).

To add publications, read the separate tutorial, “How to add publications to your staff page.” 

Troubleshooting

As always, if you are not able to log in, cannot locate your page, have issues or questions with any aspect of your Staff page, file a ticket with CS Comms Help.