Welcome to the New Ploud Upgrade

Ploud6 is the latest update to the Ploud platform. For those who have been with us for a while, there are some changes you need to be aware of. For those new to Ploud, this page will still be helpful. 

What do I need to do first?
When your Ploud6 website is established, the original content from your existing website is transferred. However, one specific feature was not included in the migration because it is no longer available in Ploud6: the Cover page feature, which has been replaced by Mosaic.

• Cover pages: The cover page feature is no longer supported, however; has been replaced by a more robust editor called Mosaic. When your current Cover pages were migrated, they were converted to HTML. Most libraries won't see a difference; however, there could be some issues with the migration. These migrated pages will no longer have the drag-and-drop functionality until they are re-authored in Mosaic.

• Some custom 3rd party widgets may have compatible code that may cause them not to work properly. We've tried to handle most widgets to get them to work but we may have missed a few.
  
  
• There may be some text alignment issues. You, the Webmaster, will need to adjust these manually.
  
  
• Carousels cannot be edited like before. (Cover page carousels needs to be replaced with Mosaic Carousels.) 
  Learn more about Mosaic
  How to add a Carousel in Mosaic
  
  
• Forms: The old product for creating forms is PloneFormGen, which has been replaced by Easy Forms.
  
  Easy Forms Documentation
  Contact forms
  Forms setting up the mailer adapter
  
  

Note,: In Ploud6, templates have been modified a bit and your migrated site is not going to look exactly as it did before. For example, text sizes and fonts may have changed to increase accessibility. After migration, it is important for you to look for missing content and not content that looks a bit different.

If you run into errors being reported by the system, please Report issues by submitting a ticket to our support system!

After Verifying your content

Expected Changes

• Site Toolbar - Major update where all content management options are in a new toolbar on the left
  of the browser window.
  
  

• General Authoring/Editing UI changes. 
  
  

• Theme cleanup and updates.
  
  

• New Mosaic Page Layout engine that replaces the previous Cover Page content type
  
  

• New User Interface for Managing Portlets
  
  

• Footer Content is managed with a single Footer portlet instead of 3 separate portlets.
  
  

• Moving our email infrastructure will result in fewer emails landing in SPAM.

How do I know which site version I'm on?

1. One way is to log in if you see a text link at the bottom center of the home page, then the site is on Ploud6
   
2. If on the lower right of the home page, you see the Staff login button, the site is on the old version of Ploud. ( This does not mean anything is wrong it just means your site is still in queue for your old site to be migrated to the new version)
   
3. The cover page feature is no longer available. 
   This information is important for those sites using the Cover page feature, especially for those using carousels
   
   For the updated sites, all Cover pages have been converted to HTML. If the page you are currently seeing is sufficient for your library, then no action is needed.
   
   What replaced the Cover page?
   The Cover page content item has been replaced with Mosaic layouts. This new feature has many of the same features as Cover Pages but offers more control over the page layout.
   
   

New In This Update
Mosaic Editor A full-featured page editor. Learn more about Mosaic here

Mosaic offers all the same features plus a couple of things Cover could not do.

• Center a page title
• Add more than one carousel to a page
  
• Drag and drop column content positioning (Create newspaper-type text columns
  
  

Easy Form Is replacing PloneFormGen This form generator is a robust tool that allows the creation of custom forms.. Learn more about Easy Form here.

Have your users submit forms based on options such as radio buttons that they select and input fields you have programmed. The forms can be sent to multiple email addresses. By default a Contact Us Form is provided as an example.

View a Collection as a Calendar 

The default calendar searches the entire site for Events and displays them on a calendar. But what if you wanted to have separate calendars marking specific events?

You can now create Collections based on Events and display them as a calendar. For example, let's say you wanted to have a separate calendar that only holds events for the community or a separate calendar for events that only pertain to a club using the library facilities. This is now possible in Ploud6.

Learn more here

How do I report issues or access the knowledge base? 

Report issues by entering a ticket or searching the knowledge base. Ploud includes an easy way to submit support tickets which is the best way to answer your question and report any problem you have run into. A support ticket can contain images and step-by-step instructions and is always available should you need that information again.

To enter a ticket through your website, follow these instructions.

1. Log-in to your website
2. Select  your name found at the bottom on the tools menu
   
3.  Select Get Help from the menu
   
4.  This will open a form to fill out make sure to enter information in all the fields marked with a red dot. If you don't see the form make sure the Ploud Support tab is selected
   
   
5.   To view and search the knowledge base, select the tab Search Articles. In the search field, enter words such as Image Resize.
   
   
6. Currently, there are two sets of help articles the articles containing information for your new site will contain the word Ploud6 in the title. Clicking on any of the links will open the article in the knowledge base
   
   

Website Analytics

Ploud6 now has site analytics 

so you now can see hits to your site as well as gather all kinds of information how your site is being used.

Learn More Here