Page Properties

File Name Guidelines

When creating new pages, or uploading documents, please consider the following:

Use all lowercase letters.
Do not use spaces. If you need to separate two words use a hyphen '-', not an underscore. (e.g. web-classes.html)
Other than hyphen, do not use any other non-alphanumeric characters.
Use descriptive folder and file names. The ideal name will be long enough to be clear in its meaning, but short enough to be flexible. Avoid the over-use of abbreviations and remember that what might make perfect sense to you, an insider, may be complete gibberish to the viewer.

Page Title

When you create a new page, you will have to put in text for the title bar. The title bar is the blue bar that appears across the very top of every window. It is also what shows up when someone uses the search to locate pages. The title should be descriptive and pertinent for your page. The description should also be followed by " | PCC" (e.g. Web Classes | PCC). This will help users who use an external search engine to find your page.

Guidelines

There are two templates for the PCC pages. One has a sidebar for navigation, the other does not. When you create a new page in Contribute, it will have a sidebar by default, however, it is not always needed. Here are some guidelines for using a sidebar followed by instructions on removing the sidebar.

Use a sidebar for upper-level navigation - Just like a list, web pages should be heirarchical. Sidebar navigation can be used to link to the upper-level pages from other upper-level pages and the main page. Bottom-level pages should not have sidebars. From those pages, the user can make use of the back button or breadcrumb navigation (the links above the section title in section 2 of the page layout diagram). For instance, notice that this page has no sidebar. We expect the user to be advanced enough to use the back button or the breadcrumbs to get back to the main page, which does contain a sidebar with links to other documentation resources.
Multiple menus - It is possible to divide the sidebar navigation into multiple menus (for instance, main navigation and important resources). Each new menu section title should use a heading 3. The menu titles should not be links. All list items must be links.

See the About PCC page for an example.

Adding or Removing a Sidebar

Have a page open in editing mode
Click the Format menu and choose Template Properties
A Template Properties window appears, as shown below:
Click the Layout option and in the text box below, you must manually type the name of the template you wish the page to have. You have two choices:
- one-col-fluid (no sidebar)
- two-col-fluid (has sidebar)
Click OK

Link Guidelines

The navigation that you provide in the body of the page is often the most important. Many users have a tendancy to first scan the content of a page, sometimes overlooking other navigational elements. Your links should be clear and well defined:

Avoid adding hyperlinks to images unless there is also linked text to describe where the link is going.
Link text should be descriptive of the page it points to. Do not use "click here" as link text. Re-phrase the sentence if necessary to incorporate the link directly into the paragraph. The paragraph should read smoothly as if there is not even a hyperlink present. Also make sure the the link spans an appropriate number of words to ensure visibility. Usually you should not link only one word in a long paragraph, however, there may be exceptions. Use your best judgement. For example, notice how "allowed file type" is linked below, rather than just the word "file" (or conversely, the entire sentence).
Make links to non-HTML documents obvious. It can be incredibly frustrating to have your browser download a file when you simply expected a new web page. It is even worse when you don't notice the download, or do not own the correct software to open the file. First, check to make sure that you are linking to an allowed file type. Next, include text that specifies what kind of document the user should expect.