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OCLC Support

How do you refresh/renew your entire CONTENTdm site for a new year ?

Applies to
  • CONTENTdm  (Only for LIS Program Cdm teaching sites)
Answer
  1. The admin user will need to edit the site to remove all old collections no longer required -  its good practice to leave a few of the sample template collections that come with CONTENTdm, to act as templates if required. Such as: Dublin Core Collection Template, Text collection Template & Visual Resources Association Collection template.
  2. Then the Admin user will then need to delete all users no longer required  - retaining the Admin and Cdmhostingsupport users. 
  3. There is no need to request re-indexing, as when a collection is deleted, it is removed from the search engine and then moved into a delete folder on server, awaiting a garbage collection.  Users just disappear out of admin and are not indexed in any manner.  
  4. The collection-level settings remain in the web-config tool even after collections are removed. If it’s likely students will create similar collections again, the CONTENTdm team can completely clear all collection-level configurations if you send a request to OCLC Support.

  5. The Admin user then needs to add in the new collections and new users as required.
  6. Once new users are added, the Admin user will need to set them up with their correct user rights. See Managing User rights. 

To remove old collections and users from your CONTENTdm site

Delete a Collection
Deleting a collection cannot be undone. If you deleted a collection by mistake, contact OCLC Support to see if the collection can be recovered.

To delete a collection

1. Open CONTENTdm Administration and select the server tab.
2. Click collections.
3. Find the row that contains the collection that you wish to delete and click delete. A confirmation message appears.
4. Click OK.
5. The collection will be removed from the collections list. Deleting a collection cannot be undone. If you deleted a collection by mistake, contact OCLC Support to see if the 
     collection can be recovered. 

Delete users 
When you delete users using the CONTENTdm Administration interface you are deleting their specific CONTENTdm Administration rights; you are not deleting their accounts from WorldCat.org.
Note: You cannot delete Administer user rights for the account that you are currently using.

To delete users: 
1.    Open CONTENTdm Administration and select the server tab.
2.    Click users. A list of all users with CONTENTdm rights is shown.
3.    Click delete next to the user whose rights you wish to delete. A dialog box asks you if you are sure you want to delete the user.
4.    Click OK.
5. The user list no longer lists the user that was deleted.

Tips: 

  • It may be a good idea to keep one older student [delete later] until you have set up your new ones, so you can give the new one the correct permissions, based on what the other past students had
  • To help students remember the email they used for their WorldCat logins, they may like to create the username to be same as the front of their email perhaps? 
  • If they forget their passwords, we don’t keep those and they can only reset theirs, by knowing the email account used for their username set up in WorldCat.
  • When adding new collections, you can rearrange the order they appear in. The collections are listed in order of creation unless they have been rearranged.
  • The display order of the collections are reflected on the following pages:  Go to > Home page > Collection List > Search & Browse page > Collection list in the left navigation pane and set up the order required. See Collection display order
Page ID
17647