New public site manager? and what happened to tabs?

I have received the iTunes U activation email and I am about to start building our iTunes U site. When I went on the iTunes U course a few months ago the layout was very different. I understand there is a new layout and that this has something to do with the 'Public site manager' - could someone explain?
My big concern is that I have multiple rss feeds for our public lecture series. We have over 1000 public lecture podcasts, videos, slides, transcripts etc. Since they're basically all the same 'course' I have multiple rss feeds for each media type e.g. audio, video, slide-audio, transcript(pdf) and slides(pdf). The rss feeds are split by year and there's another bunch of feeds for the latest 50 items. I was planning to create a course for each year and the latest 50 items and use the tabs to display the different media types. How can I do this using the new layout? It feels like I have fewer options in the new layout. The course titles are truncated on the homepage so how can I differentiate so many different feeds that are essentially the same 'course'. The only option I can see is to use the cover art to somehow display the year and media type for each feed else I'm just going to get a bunch of icons and titles that look identical.
Any help or advice would be much apprciated.
Tom

Please ignore these questions - I have now watched the public site manager video webcast and I'm now up to speed. http://deimos3.apple.com/WebObjects/Core.woa/Browse/new.duke.edu.1302914143.0352 7899686.4285944238?i=2057081390
I have to say I am not happy, not happy at all. We've just spent six months building a media CMS and publishing system much of which was built with the 'old' iTunes U layout and information architecture in mind. We're now going to have to do some major revision work before we can launch.
Specific annoyances -
1. The tabbed layouts we’re great for bunching together different media types and while I understand the logic behind ditching the tabs the new layout doesn’t really work for me. The collection titles are truncated on the homepage, how are people going know what the collection is let alone distinguish between variants for video, audio and hd video?
2. pdf documents are now supposed to go in with the relevant podcast or video feed. It is virtually impossible for us to do this using our media CMS. We can publish pdf's as a separate rss feed for each collection and/or we can bunch everything together (audio, video, pdf etc) into a single rss feed but we can't put the pdf's into a the rss feed for audio, and video and hd video.
3. The ability to upload images for individual collections rather than pulling the image from the rss feed was a really useful option. With the truncated collection titles on the homepage and the lack of tabs, the collection images become even more important because they're the only place where you can display the media type or collection variant (year, term etc) on the homepage. Our media CMS will put an image in an rss feed but if we publish variants of that feed e.g. for a particular year, term or media type it will use the same image for all of them. So now instead of a unique image for each variant of a collection we're will have to use a stock image making it impossible for users to distinguish between variants of a collection.
3. Is possible for the speaker/author name appear in the individual podcast/video listing? All the listings I've seen that use the new layout omit this information. This assumes that every item in a collection is presented by the same lecturer/speaker . Our public lecture series has a different speaker for each event, some of these are very high profile people and users will be looking for the name of the speaker not necessarily the name of the event.
These things combined really limit our options, in fact I'm scratching my head wondering how we're going to get around some of these problems. Grrrrr. </rant ends>

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ITunes U Public Site Manager and adding new content

Probably just me missing something, but I am in the iTunes U Public Site Manager looking to add content to an existing collection. Since the update, I can't seem to find the "add to collection" button that used to exist. Can anyone help? Thanks.

Duncan,
I appreciate your willingness to help. The site can be found here:
http://deimos.apple.com/WebObjects/Core.woa/Browse/education-maine.gov
I am the site administrator, and I want to add content to an existing collection. I have been adding content to existing collections since the site was created several years ago, but since the recent June 1 update to the Public Site Manager things have obviously changed and I cannot seem to find a way to add content. Maybe I am missing something obvious, but I can't seem to figure out how to do this.
As a work around, I created a new apple ID and added it as a "user" and then as a "contributor" to the collection I want to add content to. I then logged out and then in again as this new contributor, and I was able to add the content as before (the update). I was hoping that I would be able to log in as the administrator and upload content without having to use another login.

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I'm currently working on transitioning our school's site using the new Public Site Manager. I understand how tagging works, building collections, categories, and tag lists. However, I've been unable to create custom categories so I'm able to best organize our content. I've read the admin guide. I keep coming back to 'How to Categorize Content' and 'Specifying an Initial Category and Sub-category', however, can't seem to find how to create my own categories. Am I overlooking instructions for customizing categories so I can properly tag our content? Any assistance in getting to this point would be amazing.
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I am with Grand Valley State University.
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Launch the Keychain Access application and search for the server name.

Once an administrator adds an apple id as a contributor in the public site manager, what is the URL for Course Manager ?

once an administrator adds an apple id as a contributor in the public site manager, what is the URL for Course Manager ?

https://itunesu.itunes.apple.com/coursemanager/
Although is appears that a lot of users are currently having trouble signing in.

I cannot Publish my site after using the Publish Public Site Manager. An error, with no explanation is returned.

The problem we’re having has to do with transitioning our existing Easter I Tunes U site over to an iTunes U Public site as the instructions below tell us to do.
-          I can access the itunes U Public Site Manager fine with my ID.
-          I was able to make some changes to our existing site to get it ready for publishing it to the iTunes U public site format.
-          I can preview our existing site as a new Public Site fine from within the Public Site Manager application.
-          However, when I try to Publish it I get an error that says :   An error has occurred during the publishing of your content. Try again
Looking for some support to tell me what we’re not doing correctly to migrate our existing site over.
Nick
From: Jay McSweeney [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Monday, October 10, 2011 9:07 PM
To: Messina, Nicholas A. (Media Services)
Subject: Re: iTunes U
Nick
Here are the answers
Eastern CT State University is no longer in the iTunes U directory .    r
The have not migrated their site to iTunes U Public Site Manager. Starting June 2010 we notified all iTunes U site administrators for any site in the iTunes store that they would need to migrate their existing site to iTunes U Public Site Manager in the future. In Feb. 2011 we notified them that the deadline for migration would be April 2011 and that if they had not migrated their site would no longer appear on the list.
For Eastern CT State University to return to the list, they just need to transition over to an iTunes U Public Site Manager based site. Information on how to do so can be found here -http://deimos.apple.com/rsrc/doc/UsingiTunesUPublicSiteManager/CommonQuestions/c hapter_14_section_2.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/iTUPSM-CH5-SW2

Nick Good ?uestion!
I am the New Admin for The University of New Orleans, and after reading the response to your initial question I think we fall into the category of needing to migrate to Public site manager. But looking at the tutorial which is mainly text, I cannot follow the instructions. Do you have a screen shot of what step two because I cannot find the " iTunes U Public Site Manager in the Tools area."
Thank you!
Message was edited by: LimonNoire

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Found the answer
http://deimos.apple.com/rsrc/doc/UsingiTunesUPublicSiteManager/CommonQuestions/c hapter14_section4.html
iTunes U Public Site Manager copies course images from your original course pages, *except for feed groups*, and displays the images in your new collection pages as collection art. For collections created from a feed group in your original site, include image details within the feed itself. iTunes U Public Site Manager uses elements within the feed to populate your collection page.
Message was edited by: rsb123
Message was edited by: rsb123

Odd Behavior in Public Site Manager

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Tennessee State Department of Education
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New public site manager? and what happened to tabs?

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