CASCADE USER GUIDE

Welcome! This handy reference is your guide to The College of Agriculture’s (CoA) choice of Content Management System (CMS) named Cascade. Use this always up-to-date guide to help you learn, access and use Cascade more efficiently to create and edit web content as a content manager and/or content creator.

START HERENEWSLETTER SIGN-UP

Use the Contact Us information for any additional Cascade support requests.

search the guide

Welcome!

This handy reference is your web guide to all things Cascade. Cascade is a Hannon Hill software solution and is a major CMS used at colleges and universities around the world. The College and Indiana State Extension use Cascade to maintain and manage content for the following site domains:

Use this always up-to-date guide to help you learn, access, and use Cascade more efficiently to create and edit web content as a content manager and/or content creator. 

Note: This guide cross-references Cascade’s official help site, which is an extremely useful resource for any Cascade user.

Test The Guide's New ChatBot

We are excited to introduce a new feature that will help you find answers to your Cascade User Guide questions faster and easier. We have teamed up with Chatbase Custom ChatGPT to create a chatbot demo that uses artificial intelligence to answer your queries. But we need your test questions to improve this tool, so please give it a try and ask it anything you want to know about Cascade. For example, you can ask “How do I add a new Cascade page” or “How do I edit images”.

ask your questions

Latest Site Insight

Latest Site Insight

cascade logo
Check Out Site Insight and Sign-Up!

Do you want to learn how to keep your Cascade site in good shape and discover new Cascade features? Sign up for the Site Insight newsletter and get helpful tips delivered to your inbox. Click the link at the top of this page to subscribe.

view newsletter

Pick a Subject to Learn More

Site maintenance is at the core of The Web Stewardship Best Practices Agreement. Learn how you can keep your site content fresh the easy way.

Weekly site maintenance actions you can perform:

  • A weekly broken link report is available for all sites. Learn how to access these reports for your sites to help you identify and fix these access issues. This report runs each Saturday. 
  • Purdue has purchased a product called Siteimprove to automate site compliance testing. Siteimprove is a comprehensive tool that tests for accessibility and broken links. It works from within Cascade, requires no installation, works on Mac and PC, and there is no charge to use it. Please email AGCOMM via this link for Siteimprove information and access.
  • Review our ADA guide to verify your digital documents (web pages, pdfs, word docs, Qualtrics forms, etc.) are compliant.
  • If you have content that you are still working on and it’s not ready to be published, please keep that content in an unpublished folder and change its properties by unchecking the Include when publishing box. Read more about how to keep your content unpublished.

Siteimprove reports

Purdue has purchased a product called Siteimprove to automate site compliance testing and reporting. Siteimprove is a comprehensive tool that tests for accessibility and broken links. It works from within Cascade, requires no installation, works on Mac and PC, and there is no charge to use it. Please contact us for information and access and visit Siteimprove's training resources.

Siteimprove reports run weekly and can be accessed here once you establish a Siteimprove account:

These Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) go beyond what Cascade CMS currently offers and answer other web-related topics:

Q: How can I view Microsoft-based digital documents in my browser?
A: Compatible operating systems and browsers support viewing of Microsoft Office documents. Browser plugins for Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Apple Safari, Apple iOS devices, and Android devices also enable digital document viewing.

Q: How can I view Adobe PDF digital documents in my browser?
A: Modern operating systems and web browsers such as Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, and Apple Safari have this ability built in.

New Cascade Solutions

You can now add a Document Library listing to Cascade with some planning and the use of a pre-built Cascade Asset Factory. This new solution allows Cascade users to provide their site audiences with a searchable, filterable, paginated list of documents or links. Learn how to add a document library to any Cascade site.

learn how