What is CommonSpot?
CommonSpot is the content management system (CMS) for ECU's official website. Only departments and official university entities can request a CommonSpot subsite.*
See the Web Standards section of this page for official Web policies and requirements.
Get Access
New users attend the face-to-face beginner training class to obtain editing access. Register for this training through the ECU Training Calendar.
Get Help
After training, you may have questions or need more help. Call the IT Help Desk at 252.328.9866 or submit a service request for a "one-on-one consult for CommonSpot." Someone from the Web team will give you a call to set up an appointment.
ECU Page Defaults
- Page width is 960 pixels.
- Pages use "responsive design" to create a mobile version of all pages in the 960 template.
- At this time, there is no option to add a "Printer Friendly" link to a page or template.
- A department's contact information is displayed to the right of the ECU logo in the footer area.
- Each page footer contains a Last Updated date that is automatically updated each time the page is edited.
- Images cannot be scaled in the CommonSpot image properties dialog box - they must be exactly sized in an image editing program.
Recommended Guidelines
The following are recommended guidelines for departments.
- Set a full-width image for the home page at 960 pixels wide.
- To download ECU photos (960 pixels), visit the Image Gallery.
- Use of university colors and photos is encouraged.
- Keep contact information updated.
- Remove out-of-date content.
- Do not place sensitive information on Web servers. This includes SSN, credit card info, Ferpa, etc. Even if the information is not linked in a Web folder, it could be accessed by unauthorized users.
- Require input validation on all forms.
- Secure content via password protection or encryption as necessary.
- Use an image editor to size all images to the exact specifications before uploading to the page. See the image editing tutorial on the CommonSpot blog tutorial page for two online resources or use PhotoShop, Fireworks or the image editing program of your choice. Photo resolution should be 72dpi.
Themes
CommonSpot authors can use the "themes" to quickly change the look of an individual page. Visit the CommonSpot blog for how-to's.
*Faculty, staff and students should create research, teaching, course or professional websites in the My Web system.
CommonSpot Users Blog
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Enable Common Spot copy/paste in Google Chrome
Chrome Users: if you want to use the copy/paste operation in Chrome to edit your commonspot pages, install the cs_paste_extension. Go to the Google Chrome Store https://chrome.google.com/webstore/category/home?hl=en-US&utm_source=chrome-ntp-launcher Search for paperthin chrome extension Install cs_paste_extension by Fred Kingsbury Click the menu button and choose Tools, Manage Extensions. Verify that the cs_paste_extension is Enabled. -
Using Common Spot’s Redirect Feature
A “redirect” is when a visitor is automatically forwarded from one page to another page. Common Spot provides a an easy way to setup a page to page redirect. You can use this feature if you have a page that is being replaced by a new page or may have been moved to another part of your [...] -
Recent changes in web browsers may affect how you use CommonSpot.
Most browser companies are moving to prevent programmatic access to the system clipboard. That means that the buttons in the Rich Text Editor (RTE) for Cut, Copy and Paste are prevented from working in Chrome and Firefox. Using Ctrl+X, Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V still work. IE 10 still allows programmatic access to the clipboard. The PaperThin [...]
