Using Template Pages to Build a Guide (dev phase)

Constructing a page can be as simple as putting building blocks together

As LibGuides is built on the concept of reusing information, one of the first steps we’ve taken is to design some basic templates for the core content that most people will want on their subject guides.

It’s difficult to see exactly how all of this will work out – so I’ve used the first drafts of the core pages that we’ve created to make a “template guide”. We can use this to create our first draft subject guides – and thereby get a feel for how all of this can/will work.

So how do you create a guide using the templates?

1. Create Your Guide

Create your guide to start with, beginning with just the home page. This will be your core information – you can include you profile box, and any images or videos you like to make it look vibrant and interesting.

2. Add a Books Page

1. Go to “Add/Edit Pages”
2. Select “Add/Reuse Page”
3. Select “Reuse Existing Page”
4. Select “Page to Reuse: All Guides > .Template by Admin Library”
5. “Select the page you want to reuse…” = “books templates > Books Master”
6. Select the option to “Create a copy of this page…”
7. Click the “Reuse Page” button

Ensure you’re looking at the Books Master page:

1. Go to “Add/Edit Pages”
2. Select “Change Page Info”
3. Change the Page Name to “Books”
4. You can add a description and craft a “friendly” URL if you wish

Now you can edit the boxes as you wish.

The nature of the books page means that using the template for this is necessarily slightly different – these pages will have similar formats, but the basic information (i.e. the example books) will be different for each subject. The rest of the templates, however, have far greater opportunity to reuse content as-is…

3. Add a Journal Articles Page

1. Go to “Add/Edit Pages”
2. Select “Add/Reuse Page”
3. Select “Reuse Existing Page”
4. Select “Page to Reuse: All Guides > .Template by Admin Library”
5. “Select the page you want to reuse…” = “journal articles templates > Journal Articles” (not “Journal Articles Master”)
6. Select the option to “Create a copy of this page…”
7. Click the “Reuse Page” button

You’ll now have a version of the Journal Articles template page, with all the standard content. You cannot edit the standard content boxes – but you can add boxes of your own, to give your users some additional subject-specific content.

Note that if you have a lot of subject specific content, it may be better to create a new sub-page of your own, under the template-driven “Journal Articles” page.

The Three Options for Using Templates

The process of using the Books and Journal Articles templates is subtly different – in fact there are three ways that you can use the templates. Which you use depends on how much (if any) customisation you need to do:

1. Resuse the template page as-is, with no customisation at all: To do this, reuse the “standard” template page.
2. Resuse the template page as-is, with no customisation of the content that’s there, but with the ability to add one or two of your own boxes to the page: Make a copy of the “standard” template page.
3. Use the template page as a starting point, but have complete freedom to edit the template boxes to your own needs: Make a copy of the “Master” template page.

4. Add Information Skills and Referencing Pages

Repeat the process of creating your Journal Articles page – but this time doing it with the Information Skills and Referencing templates.

5. Add Your Own Pages

Now you can add further pages to your guide – either as new top-level pages, or as sub-pages below any of the current tabs.

How you do this is up to you – but we do not want to have tabs on more than one line as this looks really messy. So you need to have a careful balance between the number of top level pages and the length of text on each tab.