Web Services Amherst Web Updates

Tomorrow morning at 9:30 AM the college will perform a storage upgrade on the CMS (website) servers to deal with higher than anticipated demand for additional storage space.

Users should not notice any interruption of service during this upgrade. However, if you are planning to perform multiple file uploads tomorrow and can defer until after 10AM things will go smoother for the IT staff performing the upgrade.

On Wednesday, January 14th, the college switched over its academic systems such that spring semester course information is the active information on faculty and student myamherst and myrss pages, on faculty pages, in academic department course listings, and in the various other places where course information is published.

If you detect errors of any sort in this information, please contact the help desk for assistance.

On Wednesday, September 17, the college rolled out a new Web service for all members of the Amherst College community: “My Amherst”

Now you can find your course information, the Campus Intranet and a host of Web resources in one place: “My Amherst.” Faculty and students will have one-click access to their courses, and everyone will find the Intranet, college announcements, RSS reader (formerly “My portal”), as well as their profiles and personal Web sites, easily in one place. In the future, more of the “My Amherst” features will be customizable.

You can get to “My Amherst” from anywhere on the college Web site by clicking the “My Amherst” link in the upper right of the screen. Note that you can still go to the Intranet and announcements without logging in, via the “Campus Intranet” link on the college homepage. Learn more by logging into “My Amherst” now: https://www.amherst.edu/myamherst/start

You can also read up on the new features and watch a brief screencast demonstrating them on this help page.

The second community meeting about the redesign of the College web site will be this Friday, March 28th in Webster 102 from 12:30-1:30. We will be present and discuss options for nomenclature, organization, and related options.

For members of the community who are either not on campus or unable to attend, we invite you to view options, post your comments and opinions, and/or complete a survey on this topic  at the following web site:

https://cms.amherst.edu/offices/it/about/committees/isg/subgroups/redesign/c
omments/organization

Thank you for assisting us in the development of a new Amherst College web site. 

The CMS-driven Amherst website is changing rapidly, with new features and capabilities being added on a weekly basis. To keep you informed about these changes, we've added this Amherst Website Updates feed to the My Portal page of every member of the Amherst community. 

For starters, the next item in this feed (after this announcement) is an article about the new portal and how you can take advantage of its capabilities. Whether you're a student, faculty member, alum, applicant, or staff member, you'll find that the portal is an excellent tool for accessing the places on the Amherst website that are of interest to you. And it works with information feeds outside of Amherst, too.

Among the CMS updates you'll be reading about in the near future are:

• Updates to the content editor
• A quiz maker for course websites
• Announcements of training sessions
• Tips and tricks
• and many more!

So use this feed, and others on your Amherst portal, to keep abreast of what's happening on campus and around the world.

What is my portal and how do I get to it?

Your personal Amherst portal is a place on the college Website where you can see college announcements, your course announcements and e-reserves (if a student or faculty member), and other information just for you. This information is shown in a news reader, which will also allow you to subscribe easily to any news “feed” you like, whether an Amherst feed, such as our News Releases, or a non-Amherst feed, such as the New York Times headlines. Watch screencast demonstrations of the reader.

To see your portal, log into the Amherst Website. Once you've logged in, you may get to your portal anytime by clicking "My portal" at the top of the screen.

What Amherst College news and information will I see in my portal?

		Students will see Amherst College Announcements, announcements and e-reserves for their courses, and (if applicable) their financial aid information. See features for students...
		Faculty will see Amherst College Announcements, and announcements and e-reserves for courses they teach. See features for faculty...
		Alumni will see Amherst College Announcements, Amherst in the News, announcements from the Office of Alumni & Parents Programs, and their Class news. See features for alumni...
		Applicants will see Amherst College Announcements and news from the Office of Admission. See features for applicants...

What are feeds? 

Feeds, also called "RSS feeds" or "news feeds," allow you to subscribe to the content on a Website. For instance, if you subscribe to the Amherst College News Releases, the latest News Release headlines will appear in your reader. You may also subscribe to external news sites, such as the New York Times. Whenever you see the RSS symbol on a Website, you can subscribe.

What's what in the reader?

I see the headlines, but how can I read the whole article?

Click on a headline so that the summary of the article shows in the bottom pane. Click the "Full Article" button to go to the article on its originating Web page.

Can I subscribe to Amherst College pages, such as my classmate's blog?

Yes, you can subscribe to any Amherst page that provides an RSS feed. Log in and go to the Amherst page and see if it has the "Add this page to my portal" button in the banner. If so, just click the button.

How can I subscribe to my favorite news source?

Go to the news site and copy the URL (the page's address, beginning with http://). Come back to your Amherst portal and click the "Add Feed" button. Paste the URL into the field provided. You can either add the feed to an existing category, or create a new category.

What's a feed category?

A feed category is a group of feeds. To keep your feeds organized, you might want to create categories for them, such as "U.S. news sites" or "political blogs."

What are tags and why would I "subscribe" to one?

Tags are keywords that people assign to their articles, photos, and other items when publishing on the Amherst site. Clicking on a tag shows you all items associated with that tag.

If you have logged into the Amherst site, you'll notice that every tag has an orange dot next to it. Click the dot to subscribe to the tag in your Amherst portal. When you subscribe to a tag, you'll see when anyone has added an item to the Amherst site and assigned that tag to it. 

The "Summary" button toggles back and forth between showing and hiding the brief summaries that appear directly under the headlines in the top right pane. (It does not affect the summary in the bottom pane.)

Can I change to a two-pane view?

Yes. Click the "Reading Pane" button and choose a layout; for a two-pane layout, choose "hide," which hides the third pane. In this view, to read the full article, double-click on the headline.

Help! I clicked something and my feeds disappeared.

You probably clicked the « button, which collapsed the left column containing your feeds. Click the » button to expand the left column.

If I subscribe to a page, will I see when a new comment has been added to it?

No, not currently. We will add this capability in the future.

Can anyone else see my portal and the news feeds I've subscribed to?

Only you (and IT administrators) can see your portal and the feeds you've added to it.

How can I provide a feed so that people can subscribe to my page?

You can provide an RSS feed for your Web page by checking an option under the Settings tab: Under Appearance, check "Show the Add this page to my portal button and enable the RSS feed." This option will make the RSS icon appear in the browser's address bar (in Firefox and IE7) when someone visits your page, and will also cause the "Add this page to my portal" button to appear on your page.