Updating your website profile
This is referring to the pages under the People menu on the https://www.astro.columbia.edu/ website.
You can always request any updates to the website by sending an email with the details of your request to: astro-website-updates@columbia.edu.
You can also update your own profile by following the directions:
- Login. Go to: https://www.astro.columbia.edu/user and log in with your UNI and UNI password.
- Find your profile. Choose People on the menu and whatever category of person you are in the Department (grad student, postdoc, etc) and on the subsequent screen, click on your profile.
- Switch to Edit mode. Just below the menus (About, People, Academics, Research, etc), you should see a tab that says Edit. Click on Edit.
- Research Interests (if applicable). Choose one or more of your Research Interests from the following list:
- Cosmology & Large Scale structure
- Galaxies & the ISM
- High Energy Astrophysics
- Planets & Origins
- Stars
- Instrumentation
- Observational Astronomy
- Simulations
- Theory
(You can also see the list on this page: https://www.astro.columbia.edu/content/research-interests .)
To add an Interest to the list, start typing in on a blank line and then select the desired value that appears in a drop down list. If there isn't a blank line, click on the "Add another item" button. To remove a Research Interest, simple use the delete key to blank out the line of the Research Interest that you want to remove.
These values are chosen from a pre-set list so that visitors to the website can look up people by Research Interest.
(If you would like to be more specific about your research interests, you can do so by creating a "Research Topics" section in the free text area of your profile, described in the next step. It is technically possible to add a new Research Interest to the list, but please don't do that because then you will be the only person listed with that Interest. If you think that the above list should be modified, please send an email to astro-website-updates@columbia.edu with your suggestion.)
- Profile Information. This the free text area where you can enter whatever you would like others to see about you. There should be a single "Text with Label" section in here that has a WYSIWYG box, a text box where you can have some minimal level of formatting (bold, italics, etc). If it already exists, click "Edit" next to it to see it or change it, or if it doesn't already exist, click on the "Add Text with Label" button. Leave the Title field blank.
Although you can add anything to this section that it will allow, here are some guidelines that will help keep it consistent across the Department:
- Include an initial section with no heading that has a brief bio and any other information you would like people to know about your experience and interests.
- Optionally add a section (with the Formatting of "Heading 2") called "Research Topics" where your can add your research interests that are more specific than or don't fit into the preset "Research Interests" that you chose in step #4).
- Optionally add a section called "Advisor" or "Grad Students" or "Postdocs" and list the name(s) of those people with links to their profile page(s).
- In WYSIWYG fields, you should not use the paragraph Format of "Heading 3" unless it occurs under a "Heading 2" section, and you should not use a "Heading 4" Format unless it occurs under a "Heading 3" section, and so on. This it to keep from confusing screen readers used by vision impaired readers.
Note on links: You can also add links, both to pages within the www.astro.columbia.edu site and to pages on external sites. To do that in any WYSIWYG field (like the Profile Information Text field above), select the text that you want the user to see as the link (the text that they would click on to follow the link) and then click on the "link" icon (just to the right of the icon that looks like "Tx" in the formatting bar). If you are adding a link to an external site, include the entire URL (including the "http" part) in the "Link" field. You can leave the "Title" field blank. If you are linking to another page in the www.astro.columbia.edu site, leave off the "https://www.astro.columbia.edu" part. In that case, if you include a leading slash, '/', it will be an absolute link, meaning that the full link will what you entered in the Link field with "https://www.astro.columbia.edu" added to the beginning what you entered. If there isn't a leading slash, it will be a relative link, meaning that the full link will what you entered in the Link field with "https://www.astro.columbia.edu/content/" added to the beginning of what you entered. All the profiles have URLs that start like that, so to put in a link to another profile you only need to enter the part after the final slash. For example, to put in a link to Zoltan's profile (if, for example, he were your advisor), you can just enter "zoltan-haiman" in the Link field.
- Profile picture. Our conventions are to use black and white pictures that are square with resolution from 317 x 317 to 2000 x 2000 where the filename has the form, [first initial][last name].jpg. For example, my profile picture filename is dsecrest.jpg.
To add a picture if you don't have one:
- In the section labeled, Sidebar, under the word, Image, click on the "Open File Browser" button.
- Click on "Upload", "+ Add File", and then locate the picture file on your local computer, and click on the "Open" button.
- With your newly uploaded picture file highlighted in the "File Manager" box, click on "Select".
To change a picture that is already there:
- Under the picture, click "Remove".
- That does not remove the picture from the server, however. It only removes the reference to it on your profile page. To be neat, remove the old picture itself from the server as well. To do that, in the section labeled, Sidebar, under the word, Image, click on the "Open File Browser" button, navigate to the location and filename of the old picture, select it by clicking on it once, and click on the "Delete" button.
- Click on "Upload", "+ Add File", and then locate the new picture file on your local computer, and click on the "Open" button.
- With your newly uploaded picture file highlighted in the "File Manager" box, click on "Select".
- A caveat: there is a delay in updating the file store on the server. The old picture will appear to hang around for a number of minutes. If this process appears to not work, just wait a little bit.
- Address. Enter [Building name] [Room #]. For example, "Pupin 1007".
- Phone, E-mail address, Web address, LinkedIn, Twitter, and YouTube. Enter whatever values you will like to appear for you or leave them blank if they aren't applicable.
