Edit your lab/group
Use this guide if your lab or group's website is hosted by INSTAAR, and you want to edit it yourself.
Do not edit your lab/group on a shared computer
Logging out is is not reliable on UCB's Web Express system. After clicking the "Log Out" button, it can take hours before you are actually logged out. This delay is a serious security issue on a shared computer.
Alternatively, skip this guide and just ask David Lubinski to make changes on your behalf.
Although this guide is not relevant to labs/groups that are hosted elsewhere (eg., Squarespace, Wix, Weebly), feel free to contact David if you'd like some general feedback on such a website.
If you want to update your lab/group by yourself, follow these four steps:
1. Request access
How many pages do you need?
Most INSTAAR-hosted labs/groups have just a single home page. A few have additional pages for detailed topics or news. For example, the Mountain Hydrology Group has five pages: a home page, three pages to help visitors access snow data stored elsewhere, and a blog page. If your lab/group needs many pages, images, file uploads, or other complexity, then the INSTAAR website may not be the best option. Instead, we recommend an independent website hosted by Web Express, Squarespace, Wix, Weebly, or similar. David is happy to discuss options with you.
Request access for your web editor
Because of a limitation in CU Boulder’s Web Express website platform, only one person in your lab/group can access your lab/group webpages. Decide who will be your lab/group’s web editor and have them email David Lubinski to request an account. David can typically respond within about 24 hours. He will set up your editor to have “Edit My Content” privileges and change the author of the lab/group’s pages accordingly.
2. Log in
Anytime after your access has been set up, log in as follows:
- Log in at https://www.colorado.edu/instaar/user with your CU Boulder IdentiKey username and password.
- After logging in, navigate to your lab/group page as per usual.
- When you see your page, click “Edit” on the blue bar near the top of the page.
3. Learn how to edit
Using Web Express
The INSTAAR website uses CU Boulder’s Web Express website-building platform. Whether you are new to Web Express or not, we suggest that you check out the instructions, tips, and videos below. If needed, you might want to search the Web Express help docs or ask David a question or three. If you want to take CU’s Web Express training, keep in mind that the self-paced Canvas course and training video cover many more topics (eg. layout, person pages, news articles) than you need for editing an INSTAAR lab/group.
Editing in one main field
Once you've logged in and clicked the "Edit" button on your lab/group page, you'll see an editing screen. It shows your information in one big Body field with an editing toolbar at top. You can use the tools in the toolbar to format your text, add links and buttons, and paste in plain text. Images are uploaded via the Insert Media button in the toolbar; its icon looks like a picture and a musical note.
Stay concise
In general, your goal is to keep your home page to a reasonable length, mostly to avoid long scrolling on phone screens. People pay better attention to more concise content. If you have lots of descriptive text to include, you can set up expanding sections called accordions (like the one you are viewing now). Only the title of the accordion is visible until you click on its [+] symbol, which "expands" the content so that you can read all of it. If you have even more text, like multiple paragraphs and photos about the history of your lab, you might want a separate page for that. If so, contact David about creating a new page for you.
Dive in, you've got backups
Please don't hesitate to start editing your lab/group and do some experimentation. If you run into trouble, you've got two backups. First, you can contact David for help. Second, revisions are automatically saved; If you make a really big mistake, you can roll back to a prior version. Just look for the Revisions tab near the top of your editing screen.
The University has a legal obligation to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act. This means that all of the INSTAAR webpages must be accessible, including yours. As an editor, you can ensure accessibility for those with visual and cognitive impairments by carefully considering how you enter content. Here are some key tips:
- Use headings to structure the content of your page
- Start each main section with a Heading 2 (H2).
- Subheadings are H3 and so on (H4 > H5).
- Do not skip heading levels.
- Write descriptive text for your links
- Try to avoid using the raw URL as the text for your link.
- Don't use "Click Here" or "More Information" for your link text.
- Instead, make the text more descriptive, like "2023 snowfall information".
- Enter image alternative (alt) text
- Before you click the upload button for an image, you need to add a text description.
- Succinctly describe the image for someone who cannot see it well or at all.
- E.g. A smiling researcher in puffy winter parka holds a frozen ice core, with a dramatic mountain in the background.
- Avoid all caps
- Screen readers for visually impaired uses may read text that is written in all caps as the letters instead of the words.
- All caps is generally harder to read because the words lack the shape of letters.
- Use the toolbar buttons for lists
- Chose the button for a bulleted or numbered list.
- Do not type your own bullets, using symbols like "*" or "-".
See more about creating accessible content (Web Express support) >
To get a sense of how a disabled user might access your lab/group page, watch this 4-minute video demo of a blind person using screen reader software. The video was created by the Universal Access team at Salt Lake Community College. Although filmed in 2016, the process is similar today.
Overview - Editing your lab/group (12 min video)
Web Express editing of text and images (5 min video)
Video created by the Web Express support team. It covers text and image editing.
Editing people lists for your lab/group (8 min video)
Need to remake this video
[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17W0R-iGwpc]
4. Edit
Once you've logged in, navigated to your lab/group's home page or other page, and clicked the "Edit" button, you'll see a toolbar above your content and you are ready to start editing. Shown below are tips for how to structure your home page as well as optional blog and supporting pages.
Home page
Although the structure and headings of your lab/group's home page are flexible, we do ask that you try to follow the INSTAAR conventions for consistency across labs/groups that make it easier for the site visitor to understand your information. Basically, you just need to mix and match the sections below as needed. Most are optional.
* = Required
Blog page
Some labs/groups use an optional blog page to provide updates and show their culture.
Links to the blogs are typically near the Who we are and Group photo sections of the lab/group's home page, accompanied by a few blog headlines.
Example blogs:
Supporting pages
If you need a few supporting pages, just ask David to set them up and then you can add and edit your new content.
For example, the Mountain Hydrology Group has three pages to help visitors access near-real-time snow water equivalent (SWE) data. The data are stored on servers elsewhere, but these pages link to it.
Editing additional pages works pretty much the same as editing your home page.
If your lab/group needs many pages, images, file uploads, or other complexity, then the INSTAAR website is not the best option. Instead, we recommend migrating your lab/group to an independent website hosted by Squarespace, Wix, Weebly, Web Express, etc. David is happy to discuss options with you.