The new LibGuides & CampusGuides SEI update is live! Thanks go out to everyone who offered feedback that led to this major redesign of the back end interface. For a full walkthrough of the organization changes, check out: http://help.springshare.com/lgcg-sei. Here are some of our favorite highlights:
- The new Dashboard screen (you’ll see it when you first log in) is clean and (we hope!) easy to navigate. You can always get back to the Dashboard from any screen, thanks to the link in the top-left corner of the menu bar.
- Admins – the Admin Alert Boxes are here! You can create system messages, reminders, links to your help and style guidelines, etc. and display them right on the screen where your content creators are! You have 2 alert boxes available – one on the Dashboard, and another on the Create Guide screen.
- RSS Feeds – The Tools menu has all the tools you know and love (API, Widgets, Link Checker & Bookmarklet), plus the new RSS Feeds tool! Instead of hunting around through guides, user profiles, etc. to find the RSS Feeds for your site, we figured we’d make things easy on you and put all the feeds in one spot.
- Add-on Module – The Modules menu has a new link for Add-on Module users – this offers a quick way to upload images and manage your image library, and gives you a quick way to access your site’s XML export and individual Guide Backups (HTML)
As you’ll quickly notice, the biggest change in this update is organization. The administrative organization of the system hasn’t changed since LibGuides was introduced in 2007. In that time, we’ve added hundreds of features and tools, and the administrative interface was reaching a critical mass. We really hope you’ll find the new interface intuitive, and we’re excited to hear what you think!
-Slaven and the Springy Team
As an aside, we know that many folks are experiencing issues with Syndetics images displaying in guides. This issue is not related to yesterday’s update – thanks to an unseasonable Nor’easter that hit the East Coast over the weekend, Syndetics servers appear to be down. We apologize for the inconvenience, but we know our friends at Syndetics are working hard to get things back online as soon as they can!