Cascade

Purdue IT provides Hannon Hill’s Cascade Content Management System (or CMS) as the primary supported CMS on campus. Cascade is a back-end CMS, meaning it runs on a separate server from the servers hosting the web site, publishing remotely to those servers instead. This makes it scale better and is easier to secure than other CMS types.

The Cascade Support team provides primary application support for Cascade, while Web Services provides backend platform support for Cascade as well as integration of it with our hosting environments.

Requesting Sites

There are many ways to get a web site that’s managed by Cascade:

• Contract with Purdue Marketing and Communications to build your website. They’ll set up the templates and make it easy for your content editors to make and publish changes.
• Request web hosting through Web Services, then request a Cascade site through the Purdue IT Service Desk. You’ll be able to configure your Cascade site to publish to the hosting space Web Services sets up.
• If you already have a web site hosted by Web Services and want to manage it with Cascade, you can request that through the Purdue IT Service Desk.
• If you already have a site set up in Cascade and want to be able to publish it to the web, simply contact Web Services to get the type of hosting you need set up.

Note: If you already have a site managed by a different CMS, such as WordPress, it is not possible to automatically convert it to a Cascade managed site. Your best option is to rebuild the site in Cascade while leaving the old site live, then work with Web Services to make your Cascade site replace your old site when you’re ready.

Requesting User Access

Access to Cascade is separate from access to the web servers themselves along with the Deploy Tool. Most site developers will need both kinds of access.

Cascade Access

• Existing site administrators in Cascade can add additional users (editors, administrators, etc.) to their sites.
• The Purdue IT Service Desk can add new users to Cascade. Once added to Cascade, existing site administrators can grant them access to their sites.
• If a site no longer has an administrator or no administrators are available, the Purdue IT Service Desk can engage the Cascade Support team for help.

Web Developer Access

• Site owners or existing developers can request developer access (write, edit, and Deploy) for new developers by contacting Web Services.
• If a site is hosted on a Linux server, such as the PPWC, and the new developer has not worked on that server before, they may also need to submit a UNIX Account Request form to gain access.

Shared Group Accounts

When a team works on a site in Cascade that publishes via SFTP, it can be advantageous to configure Cascade to publish to the web servers using a shared group account instead of the personal account of one of the developers. This reduces the likelihood that a password change or a leave of absence will prevent the entire team from publishing. Speak to Web Services about using a shared group account if you’d like one set up.

Getting Support for Cascade

The Cascade Support team has made a site to collect information and help for Cascade users. This includes self help information, training, and how-to articles, as well as service announcements and links to the official vendor documentation. Be sure to bookmark that site!

Application support for Cascade is provided by the Cascade Support team, who have the ability to open cases with Hannon Hill. This includes:

• Questions about using Cascade
• Issues and errors encountered while using Cascade
• Programming questions about writing modules, scripts, and other components within Cascade

Please contact the Purdue IT Service Desk if you’d like to open a case.