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Commonly Used Terms

If you are new to Cascade and website editing, we recommend you get yourself familiarized with the following commonly terms that you'll come across while working in Cascade.

  1. Anchor: An anchor is an internal bookmark that takes you to a specific position on your page. You can link to it from another point on your page or another page.
  2. Asset: A folder, page, or file in Cascade CMS. You can take certain actions like create, edit, copy, move, publish or delete assets, just like files on your computer.
  3. Banner (Hero) Image – It’s the big image on a webpage that appears at the top, right under the top navigation. It has a fixed place on the page.
  4. Breadcrumbs: Shows you the path to the current asset. Help visitors oriented on your site by showing a backwards pathway from the current page back to the homepage.
  5. Cascade Server: Northwestern University’s’ content management system by Hannon Hill.
  6. Content Management System (CMS): A tool for creating, editing and publishing web pages.
  7. Context Menu: Appears when you hover over an asset. The menu presents links to certain functions like view, edit, publish, move, rename, delete for faster navigation.
  8. Dashboard: Comprised of several widgets that allow you to explore your site (s).  
  9. Decorative Image: A decorative image is an image that does not have meaning and does not provide informative content to a website visitor.
  10. Display Name: The name that will be used in the site’s navigation, as the page heading above the main content area, and in the breadcrumbs below the banner image.
  11. Index Page: The system name of a folder’s landing or entry page. Every folder must have a page called index for your navigation to function properly. Do not change the system name of an index page or you’ll lose the entry page of that folder.
  12. Left Navigation: Left column in the templates where a site’s navigation is listed.
  13. Live Site: Live site is the site that’s on the web for everyone to see.
  14. Main Content Area: Center column of the templates.
  15. Parent Folder:  The location in Cascade for an asset.
  16. Publishing: Publishing an asset in Cascade means pushing your changes to the live or test website.
  17. Stale Content: Identifies and manages site content that may need updating. The Stale Content widget on your dashboard includes a graphical summary of content needing review and a table view of each stale item. The Stale Content report contains several actions to help manage stale content, including exporting CSV, sending notifications and scheduling review dates.
  18. System Name: The name that an asset will have in the last part of the URL. It is also the name that is displayed in the navigation panel in Cascade.
  19. Test Site: Test site is a copy of your live site on the test server and should be used internally for reviewing purposes only.
  20. Title: Appears in the title bar at the top of a web browser when viewing a page.
  21. Top Navigation: Navigation listed in the header of a site.
  22. Unpublishing: Unpublishing an asset means taking an asset off the live or test website. The asset will still be available in Cascade.
  23. WYSIWYG: What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get (WYSIWYG) is the name of the editing tool bar in Cascade.

 For a complete glossary of terms, visit: http://www.hannonhill.com/kb/glossary.html