The homepage for Truman's Mathematical Biology program is a tool for sharing information. Members of this local community want to share news of our accomplishments with the rest of the University and the world. And members want to share with one another news of opportunities that might enrich our community.

This web site puts tools for sharing directly into the hands of each community member. All that's required is a site membership (see below for instructions on joining) and a willingness to learn the how to interact with this web site. Don't worry, it's easy.

About this Document

This document is meant for Truman undergraduates and faculty who are involved in or interesting is contributing to its Mathematical Biology Initaitive. Faculty involved in the Research-focused Learning Community in Mathematical Biology should read this and join the MathBio site. Alumni of this program and all students and faculty involved in activities that connect the life and mathematical sciences are also welcome to join.

This document is a quick-and-dirty introduction to the MathBio site. It covers only Members and the ways they can contribute to the site. Topics covered include:

• Joining the Site
• Logging Into the Site
• Adding Content to the Site
• Adding an Event to the Calendar
• Adding a News Item
• Adding an Image
• Other Content You Can Add
• Sharing Remarks

If you have any questions or comments about the site, please use the "Feedback" link on the MathBio homepage (in its upper right corner) to send them to the site's webmaster.

Functions offered by the site

This web site is built with highly functional, automated machinery that the average member will never see! Adding or modifying information requires the use of very simple web forms. There's very little jargon to learn. If you know how to make an on-line purchase at Amazon.com, you'll have no problem contributing to this site!

Even if you're not a member, you can browse content anonymously and have several site functions available to you. These include

• emailing a page you see to someone else who might be interested (click on ), or
• printing a page that's interesting to you (click on ).

If you are a member of the site, you can do the following when logged in:

• comment on page content (click on ),
• add site content such as a news item, event, photo, or document (see below), and
• view site content designated as "Members only"

Moreover, you can add information and limit the dates during which it should be shared. For example, if you want to share with people an opportunity to attend a conference, you might want to set that news item up with a date for the information to disappear from the site. You can also set a date for when the site should start sharing information.

Joining the Site

Joining the site is as simple as clicking on the "Join" link in the site's personal bar. (You'll see why it's "personal" after you join and log in.)

Clicking on "Join" will take you to a form that will ask you for your full name, a site username, an email address, and a password. You'll also get the option of having the site send you an email with this password to the address you specified in the form. Once you've entered that information, click on the "Register" button.

Please assume that the all information submitted to the sent and emailed from it are sent in the clear (i.e., without encryption). Do not use your Truman network password as your MathBio homepage password.

Logging into your account

Those who have joined the site are called Members. When you later return to the site to add content, you must log in. To do so, click on the "Log in" link in the personal bar.

This will take you to a login form that asks you for your authentication information. Notice that the form can remind you of your password via email should you forget it.

Also notice that you can instruct the form to remember your login and password. Caution: Only use this on a computer that nobody else will use to visit the MathBio site (e.g., your office computer or personal laptop).

Once you successfully log in, you'll be taken to another MathBio page (probably the home page) and you'll notice a change in your personal bar's content.

Clicking on your username or on "My Folder" will bring you to a place on the site to which you can add content. This is more important that it sounds and is described in more detail below.

Clicking on "Preferences" brings to you tools that allow you to change your password and to add more personal information to the site such as a photo or biographical information.

Clicking on "Undo" brings you to an insurance policy, of sorts. The page that appears is somewhat intimidating, but what you need to know is that it lets you undo previous changes you made to the site. To learn how to use it, experiment. Add some content to the site or edit something on the site, and then undo it using this page. Don't worry, a regular Member can't break anything in the site using this tool.

Clicking on "logout" will log you out of the MathBio site.

You are now ready to add content to the site to share with the all or some of the rest of the community.

Adding Content to the Site

Adding content to the site is an important part of your being an active member of the mathematical biology community at Truman, and adding it is just as easy as joining the site (described above). It's all point-and-click and form based. Once you're logged in, click on "My Folder" or your username in the personal bar and you'll be ready to add content!

Just below your personal bar you'll see another bar; the left end is divided into pull-down menus that related to content. To add content, click on "Add Item". You should see a menu that looks something like that pictured at right. (The list might change from time to time.) These are the types of content you are able to add to the site

This document will describe in detail the process for adding an Event, and then it will describe in less detail the process for adding News and other content. If you have any questions about adding content that this document does not address, please address them to the webmaster by using the site's Feedback form.

Adding an Event to the Calendar

Adding is easy. There are three steps you ought to take:

• Adding the basic descriptive information,
• Setting some secondary information for searches and availability, and
• publishing the event.

These are described below in enough detail to get an absolute newbie started. Those with more familiarity ought to skip around.

Step 1: Adding basic descriptive information

To add and event, choose "Event" from the "Add Item" pulldown menu in your home folder. You'll be presented with a form that asks for information about the event. Those fields marked with a small red box are required. The form and its questions are quite self-explanatory, but here's a cheat-sheet for those who are interested. Feel free to skip it if you prefer.

Once you have the information entered into the form, submit it using the "Save" button at the bottom of the page. If you overlooked any information that the site needs, it'll tell you. If you did everything fine, it'll save the page. At this point, the event is available for all Members to see. It's said to be in "public draft" state.

Step 2: adding information for searches and availability

When you save your event, the site will revert to a new view of the information you just entered. This view is very similar to what Members will see or what the community will see when the event is published. If you feel something ought to be changed, notice the tabs above the view.

Clicking on the "Edit" tab will return you to the form you just filled out and allow you to edit the Event information as you see fit. Click on "Save" when you are done. If you forget to click on "Save" before leaving this page, the website should warn you and give you a second chance to save your changes.

The "Properties" tab allows us to add more descriptive information and the dates during which the content you added should be available to the web site. The descriptive elements are not specific to the Event type. Moreover, none of the information held in this tab is required, but it's strongly recommended that you add at least the Effective and Expiration dates for the Event. Adding keywords and a list of contributors is a good idea, too.

The information desired by each of these forms should be clear from the information on the page. For those who want more information, there is the following list.

Publish the Event

To publish the event for the entire community, you must request that it's state be changed. To do this, click on the "State: Public Draft" box that's just below the left end of the personal bar. A short pull-down menu will appear; you want to select "Submit." Doing this will notify the site Managers that you have made a contribution to the site. One or more of the Managers will review your contribution and either approve it for publication (at which time your Event will appear in the Calendar) or send it back to you for revision.

During the review period, the state of your Event will have changed from "Public Draft" to "Pending." You may at any time use the same pull-down menu to retract your event or make it private. (Private events are only viewable by you and the site Managers.)

Adding a News Item

Another type of content you may want to add is the news item. These are items that broadcast to the community information about opportuntities, noteworthy happenings, and other interesting announcements.

The types of news that you might consider adding include:

• application deadlines for University programs (e.g., STEP, McNair, Loui Stokes),
• announcement of special talks,
• requests for help with a research-related project,
• announcments of a Masters defense or Capstone talk,
• notice of a publication by a Truman mathbio team, or
• report on a conference attended by a Truman mathbio team.

This list certainly isn't exhaustive. Be creative. If you have something to share, you probably want to use a News item to do it.

To add a News item, you basically mimic the process for adding an Event (described above). The information that's basic to a News item is a Title and a Description, which might be the story's lede. These are shown in the news summary page which the MathBio site uses as it's main page. There is also a "Body Text" field for your news story itself. The short description links to it once the News item is published.

In addition to the title and story, you can upload a picture to be displayed with both the lede and with the story.

Once you save the News item's basic information, you'll see the tabs described in Step 2, above. Be sure to set the Effective and Expiration dates of the news story or it will be displayed forever.

Adding an Image

Adding an image works much the same as adding a News or Event item. When you add an image, you must give it a Title and you must upload the image from the computer at which your working. The title will appear as a caption in some views of the image (e.g., in thumbnail view).

In addition, you may record a short summary decscription of the image you upload. Once the image is published to the site, this description will appear when a user's mouse pauses over the picture or its caption.

There are at least two places you should consider adding images. The first is your own folder on the site (i.e, the place that the "My Folder" link takes you). The second is the Photo Album folder in the Resources area of the site. This folder is intended as a place to share with one another and the wider community images of our work and play with one another and of us as we share our knowledge with the wider scientific community.

To add an image to a folder, navigate to that folder using links on the web site. Once you are in the place on the site that you want your image to be included (e.g., viewing the photos that are already in the album), start the process of adding the image just as you might add a News item. It's that simple. When you add any content, your name will be recorded with the content so it will be easy for you to locate with a search, later.

The MathBio web site recognized the following image types, but the ability to discplay each is browser dependant: BMP, GIF, JPEG, JPG, PICT, PNG, PNM, RGB, RGA, SGI, SVG, TIF, TIFF, WMF, XCF, and XFIG. The web site recognizes many more formats.

Other Content you Can Add

If you've read of skimmed this document, you should be ready to start contributing to the MathBio site! Add Events of interest to others, and add News. Your participation in this way increases the site's value for everyone.

There are several other types of content you can add to the MathBio site. For example, you could add a "homepage" for yourself in your "My Folder" area. Other content you can add, include the following:

• Image
• Address Book
• Folder and Large Folder
• File
• Link
• Seminar

There's also the possibility of having other types of content made available by the site. These could include blogs, discussion forums, and shared group spaces . Please talk to Jason Miller if you have questions about any of the current or potential types of content.