iTunes U Administration Guide: Editing Public Feature Pages

Editing Public Feature Pages

Apple creates your site’s initial iTunes U Public Feature page using a predefined design and layout as a starting point. As the site administrator, you can change your Public Feature page to display your institution’s specific design and information. For example, you can change the banner image, Links box text and links, number and location of Links boxes, featured content, and general feature content section information and order.

iTunes U can take up to 15 minutes to display any updates you make to the Public Feature page in your iTunes U site. If your site is included in the iTunes U area in the iTunes Store, iTunes U can take:

Up to 1 hour to display your updates
Up to 9 hours to include your updates in search

If you are logged in as the iTunes U site administrator or another user with editing access, you can click Edit Page to edit your Public Feature page and customize your iTunes U site. When you’re done editing the page, click End Editing.

To edit this element	Take this action
Banner image	Click the Upload icon in the upper-left corner of the banner image, and then select a new banner image for your Public Feature page. Apple provides default descriptions for all your iTunes U images for improved accessibility. iTunes U saves the descriptions as the image’s alt text. The default alt text is based on the page name where the image was uploaded. If the default alt text does not apply or is incomplete, you can use the Upload Artwork page to add your own alt text.
Page theme	Choose a theme for your Public Feature page from the Theme pop-up menu. iTunes U immediately updates the Public Feature page to use the new theme. A descendant Welcome page or Course page inherits the theme you selected in the Public Feature page, until you select a different theme from within the descendant page.
Links box titles	Click the Edit icon in the Links box title bar for the Links box title you want to edit, edit the existing Links box title text, and then click the Save icon to save the new title. Note: If your iTunes U site is public, iTunes U displays a link (RSS) in the title bar to an RSS feed view of the contents of the Links box. Control-click the link (or right-click for Windows) and choose Copy Link from the shortcut menu or use the “ShowTree” Web Services operation to obtain a URL containing the RSS feed.
Multiple Links boxes	Click the Add icon above the Links box to add a new Links box below the existing Links box, and then click the Save icon to save the new Links box. Notes: To move a Links box up or down one level in the Public Feature page, click the Edit icon for the Links box you want to move, and then click the Up or Down Triangle icon. To move a Links box right or left in the Public Feature page, click the Edit icon for the Links box you want to move, and then click the Right or Left Triangle icon. To delete a Links box, click the Edit icon for the Links box you want to delete, and then click the Delete icon.
Links box links	Click the Edit icon in the Links box next to the link you want to edit, edit the existing link’s title and URL, and then click the Save icon to save the link information. Notes: To move a link up or down one level in the Links box, click the Edit icon for the link you want to move, and then click the Up or Down Triangle icon. To delete a link in the Links box, click the Edit icon for the link you want to delete, and then click the Delete icon. To add a new link to the Links box, such as to a department webpage, click the Add icon in the Links box above where you want the new link to appear, type a title and URL, and then save the new link by clicking the Save icon. To add links between iTunes U pages and avoid a trip through the web browser, use an itmss:// URL in the Links box. When you installed iTunes on your system, it added itself as a URL scheme handler for itmss:// URLs. When a user tries to access an itmss:// URL using advanced access controls, if the user has not already established a session, iTunes U reroutes the user to the Site login URL.
Section Links box	Click the Edit icon in the Section Links box title bar to edit the Links box title, edit the existing Section Links box title, and then click the Save icon to save the new title. Notes: To add a new page in the Section Links box, choose From Template “Default Welcome” from the Create Page pop-up menu, specify the page title, short name, and identifier for the Welcome page, and then click the Save icon to save the information. To edit an existing page, click the Edit icon for the page you want to edit, type a new title, short name, or identifier, and then click the Save icon to save the new information. To move a page up or down one level in the Section Links box, click the Edit icon for the page you want to move, and then click the Up or Down Triangle icon. To delete a page in the Section Links box, click the Edit icon for the page you want to delete, and then click the Delete icon.
Top Downloads box	To hide the Top Downloads box, click the Hide button. By default, iTunes U shows the top five downloads for your site. iTunes U begins collecting download data as soon as your site is active. About a half a day after the first track is downloaded from your site, iTunes U has enough data to determine the most downloaded tracks and to display the top tracks in the Top Downloads box. iTunes U does not display more than one track from a single Course page. To specify how many downloads to display in the box, choose one of the following from the Display pop-up menu: 5, 10, 15, or 20. Notes: If your iTunes U site is public, iTunes U displays a link (RSS) in the title bar to an RSS feed view of the contents of the Links box. Control-click the link (or right-click for Windows) and choose Copy Link from the shortcut menu or use the “ShowTree” Web Services operation to obtain a URL containing the RSS feed. When not in edit mode, you can click the See All icon in the Top Downloads title bar to display an iTunes U page with up to 100 of your site’s top downloads.
Featured Content section heading text	Click the Edit icon, edit the section heading text, and then click the Save icon to save the section heading. Notes: To move a section up or down one level in the page, click the Up or Down Triangle icon. To delete a section, click the Delete icon. To add a new section in your Public Feature page, click the Add icon. iTunes U creates a new section below the section where you clicked the Add icon. Type a heading for your new section.
Featured Content section page images and information	Choose one of the following options from the Sort pop-up menu in the section where you want to sort page or track images and information: Sort Manually. When editing a page or track in a section, iTunes U displays the Right and Left Triangle icons so you can move pages or tracks manually. Sort By Title. iTunes U sorts the page and track images and information in ascending order, by title name. Sort By Last Modified Date. iTunes U sorts the page and track images and information in descending order, by the date the page or track was last modified. Notes: To specify how many courses and tracks you want to display in the featured content section, choose Show All or Show X from the pop-up menu, where X is the number of courses or tracks, in multiples of three. To display a See All link in a featured content section title bar that will jump to a page displaying all content for the section, choose Show X from the pop-up menu where X is a number smaller than the total number of courses or tracks in the section.
Destination handle	Click the Edit icon under the page or track title and details, edit the destination handle, and then click the Save icon to save the information. Notes: To move a page or track link right or left one position in the section, click the Right or Left Triangle icon. To delete a page or track link from the section, click the Delete icon. To add a new page or track link to the section, choose Create Course Link or Create Track Link from the Create Page pop-up menu in the section where you want to add a new page or track link, type a destination handle for the page or track, and then click the Save icon to save the new page or track link. You can also copy and paste course and track URLs into the Destination Handle field to link to the course or track. If you copy and paste a track URL, be sure to delete everything from the question mark to then of the URL before you click the Save icon to save the new track link. For information on how to obtain a handle or URL for a specific iTunes U page, group, or track, see “Obtaining an iTunes U URL.”