Page broken/partly not showing after updating CMS
Last updated 8th June 2010
Problems after updating a CMS page of your website:
The most common cause of problems with a CMS - on any website - is when you copy and paste text from Microsoft Word. Microsoft Word is computer software and so text contains lots of computer code to help it look the way you want it to (colours, sizes etc.). This code is not compatible with websites as websites have their own, different code.
It's like putting wax crayons in a colour printer!
Whenever you update your CMS we strongly advise you do not copy and paste from Microsoft Word. Even if your editor gives you a "paste from Word" option, it's advisable not to rely on it.
If you wish to copy and paste text, so you can write it at your leisure/save a copy on your computer, please use a text editor, such as Notepad (available under "Accessories" with all Windows PCs) or TextEdit (on a mac).
If you do encounter problems from copying and pasting, please click on the 'HTML' icon along the top of the editor (where all the Bold, Italic etc. links are) and remove anything that isn't normal text. Strip out all the lines and lines of code that Word will have brought with it. In doing so, you will probably strip out all/anything that you formatted using the editor on your website, so you will have to redo that. Ideally - view the HTML view and strip out everything and start again.
If you just delete the text you can see this won't necessarily mean you've stripped out the code. You need to click the HTML icon to really see what's happening!
Save regularly:
If you are typing a large amount of text straight into your website, be sure to save the page regularly. Depending on the specification of your website, you may have a "save as draft" option. Alternatively, use a text editor as described above to write your copy first and save it on your computer. You can then copy and paste from here and do any bold/italic/etc. formatting once the text is on your website.