NOTES ON UPDATING CEMREC RECORDS
Welcome to Cemrec site admin. These notes are intended to help site administrators understand and update records in 'Grave Plan' (S1), 'Burial Records' (S2) and associated files. Updating is best done by an experienced user with a good knowledge of Excel: competence in html will also be helpful. The web host can be accessed here. You will need to log in to access its services. Unless you have the appropriate skills, please don’t try to edit files in css or js folders, as this requires knowledge of javascript, jquery and lightbox coding. Send a message via our contact link for login in details and other help if you need it. At the end of these notes, site developers can find an explanation of the site design for those who want to develop similar sites.
Folder and File Functions... |
index.html |
S1.html / S1_files |
S2.html / S2_files burial records |
S3.html / S3_files |
display folder |
images |
sp_img |
docs |
update.html |
contact |
js/css |
Software
Although not sold as a website editor, MS
Excel can be used for much of this update but not all of it. Extensive use is
made of hyperlinks, so you need to be confident in managing them.
For the rest, use Dreamweaver (DW) if you
have it, or else the free 'MS Expression Web 4' (ExW4), from here. ExW4 offers ‘wysiwyg’
editing and is also a powerful code editor.
Photographs
Take a photo of the new headstone in jpg format and
resize to about 390 x 450 px. If there is no headstone, just use a general photo
of the site.
Rename the photo for identification: (e.g ‘H0-NewnameF.jpg’
would be the first grave in a new group - Group H),
New photos are saved in the images folder.
To speed loading, create a thumbnail image of 90x120 px (c.20kb) with
the same name is also saved in the ‘thumbs’ folder (inside images
folder).
Use the webhost file manager to upload / download files.
Navigate to the appropriate folder and use the controls provided.
Editing in Excel
Download ‘S1-edit.xls’ and ‘S2-edit.xls’ from the admin folder and follow the instructions below. Don’t deviate from them
unless you really know what you are doing.
If things go wrong, just exit the editor without saving. You can always download a new
copy and start again.
Open S1 / S2 -edit.xls in Excel,
then copy /paste from a nearby cell to create a new record.
Edit data and hyperlinks accordingly. See
example below
Use ExW4 or DW to restore the links to background images discarded by Excel
Open S1.html / S2.html in ExW4 and click on
the table. From the top bar, select
Table > Properties > Table to align the table in the centre.
To add an S1 table background, check the box marked ‘use background
picture’ & enter ‘img/S1Plan.jpg’.
To add a page background image, select Format > Background, check
‘Background Picture’ and enter img/genview.jpg’.
If you are familiar with DW code,
you may find this a better option.
Display Folder
Files in the display folder (A.html etc.) are based on the free galleria classic to provide
links to photos and thumbs in the images folder and display each image in a
framed memorial with names.
New graves
can be inserted as e.g. Group H or added to existing groups by copying, pasting
and editing. You may need to renumber graves within a group to preserve a logical sequence.
Display files can be edited with ExW4 by selecting View > Page > Code from the top bar, then copying and
editing existing data in the appropriate file.
Each group index starts at 0
and is limited to about 25 graves to speed loading time and simplify updating.
Make sure file names are the same as those in the images folder –
filenames in Windows are case sensitive!
Save these files as .html and run each file to
check for errors.
Final Steps
If all looks ok, use the file manager to upload saved files to replace those in the webhost as follows:
S1.html, S2.html and associated folders to ‘public.hmtl’.
S1-edit.xls and S2-edit.xls and associated folders (if any) to the
webhost admin folder for future updates.
That's it! Run a final check of the new files in your browser..
Notes for Site Developers
To develop your own site, you will need a good knowledge of Excel, html, css, and web design. Some understanding in javascript and jquery will also be needed. Although essentially a database, the site was developed from an earlier Excel project - see slideshow notes describing this project here. The core components remain the same: a plan to locate each grave, and a record sheet with details of each burial. All the other files are there to support/display these two functions.Repeated indexing and re-arrangement of records can be time-consuming and frustrating. Much of this can be avoided at the start by careful planning, and indexing from top left of screen, working across then down. As many churchyard plans won’t conform to this layout, you may need to re-align your plan.
You may find it easier to do as much of the design work as possible in Excel. It is so widely used that help on any topic is always available online. It is best to prepare the files in the following order: Grave plan > Images > Thumbs > Records > Display files > Supporting images > Admin Files > Script Files The Index can be written at any stage.
Display files require an active link to the Galleria system, which is based on javascript. Each file includes this link. Please note that Html5 hosts require a secure (https://) path to Galleria.
Hyperlinks in the grave plan need to be inserted manually, as Excel's Hyperlink function won’t allow custom screen tips (used to display names and dates on mouse-over). Forename hyperlinks in the records file can be automated for quick updating, but they need reference columns.