Content Transfer Improvements Part 2: Importing Bios
May 8, 2012 by Alana DysonIn part two of this three-part blog series, I will demonstrate how our new tool lets you bulk import bios. These bios can then be used to populate sports rosters as well as staff and administration directories. This builds on the ways to import your archived content that were discussed in importing archived releases.
Using "Bio" tags to import bios
The new bio importer tool will allow our users to import bio pages using a simple HTML document structure. This allows for easier review of your bio data and does it in such a way that makes it possible for our system to change that HTML into a bio page.
Any tag within the page body can be used as long as the fields that are to be included are inside a tag with the "bio" attribute set using the field names displayed in the chart below:
| Bio attribute | Description | Bio attribute | Description | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| highschool | High School | |||
| nickname | Nickname | college | College | |
| first_name | First name | position | Position | |
| last_name | Last name | draft | Draft | |
| title | Title | number | Number | |
| organization | Organization | major | Major | |
| city | City | team | Team | |
| state | State | custom1 | Custom 1 | |
| zipcode | ZIP Code | custom2 | Custom 2 | |
| country | Country | custom3 | Custom 3 | |
| phone1 | Phone number 1 | custom4 | Custom 4 | |
| phone2 | Phone number 2 | custom5 | Custom 5 | |
| email_address | Email address | custom6 | Custom 6 | |
| born | Born | custom7 | Custom 7 | |
| height | Height | custom8 | Custom 8 | |
| weight | Weight | custom9 | Custom 9 | |
| year | Year | custom10 | Custom 10 | |
| hometown | Hometown | synopsis | Bio synopsis |
Here is an example of how an HTML bio page would look when including the appropriate "bio" tags:
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="loki/bio; charset=iso-8859-1">
<title>Alana Dyson</title>
</head>
<body>
<table>
<tr>
<td>First name</td>
<td bio="first_name">Alana</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Last name</td>
<td bio="last_name">Dyson</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><img bio="headshot" src="
data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAUAAAAFCAYAAACNbyblAAAAHElEQVQI12P4//8/w38GIAXDIBKE0DHxgljNBAAO9TXL0Y4OHwAAAABJRU5ErkJggg==" alt="Red dot">
</td>
</table>
</body>
</html>
Create a ZIP file to bulk upload bios
And just like releases, bios can be bulk imported using drag-n-drop or uploaded using zip files. As long as the paths of the zip match the paths of our system, the bios will automatically upload into the correction section.
With the improved bio importer, bio information will be easier to review and edit and will assure that all of your bio information will transfer over during the import process.
Part three of this blog series will explain how images and headshots are imported using a part of the original HTML standard that Chrome and other recent browser versions use to embed images into HTML: the data scheme.