Create a New Page
Important: All new pages must be created from an existing functional page in your site. The new page will take on all the source page's features, so choose the source page carefully. By features, we mean BreadCrumbs, LeftColumn links, and tab highlight, if any.
Step 1: Browse Contribute to a source page
Use Contribute's browser function to find and view the page you will duplicate to create your new page. Sites often include stationery files you can duplicate for new pages, but you can use any working page that has the features needed for the new page. You can browse to any page file in your site using the "Choose" button to the right of the Address bar. If you can't find a suitable page for your purpose, contact WebHelp to discuss your needs. If you are training in the MedWebTraining practice site, browse to Education, and then Education Subpage Stationery.
Step 2: Create a new page
- Before you create the new page, copy the source page's browser title
- Click Edit
- Find the "Format" menu and select "Page Properties"
- Copy the Page Title (right-click/win, ctrl-click/mac), then Cancel the properties dialog and then Cancer/Discard the draft
- Click the "New Page" button
- In the New Page dialog box, you will be offered some options under "Create new page from:" Use only "Copy of Current Page." A preview is shown of the page you are cloning. Do not use "Blank Web Page," "Sample Web Pages" or "Templates."
- Give your new page a Page Title (browser title)
- paste in the text you copied in step 1
- change the initial terms to reflect your page's specific content
- Click "OK" to create the new page.
The browser title is important because it is key to search indexing. Each browser title should be unique and contain key words about the content of the page and the site, in descending specificity. For example:
This Page's Topic - Larger Topic - Site Name - Stanford University School of Medicine
Step 3: Select existing text and replace it
In a real-world situation, we would select all the new page's text, cloned from the source page, delete it and start over with new text. For our purposes, let's just change the headline.
Step 4: Publish
- When you are satisfied with your content changes, click the Publish button.
- Contribute challenges you with a dialog box about links to your new page. Click Yes to publish the page without linking to it (we'll link to it in a later lesson).
- No spaces or special characters like # $ @ % &, which can cause server problems. Use underscore (_) or hyphen (-) to_break_file-names-up, i.e. "my_long_file-name.html".
- Must be unique for the page's current directory.
- The file extension should be ".html," i.e. your_filename.html Do not use a dot anywhere else in the file name
- Keep it short. Less than 30 characters, ideally
- Real words describing the main topic of the page add relevancy in search engines
- Avoid redundancy. The file name will be the end of the page's URL, so yoursite/education/education_programs.html would be redundant. Just use education/programs.html.
- Next is the Publish New Page dialog box. Contribute compiles a suggested name based on your browser title...but it's way too long. Change it to a simpler, shorter file name.
- Type in "my_page.html"
- By default, Contribute wants to save the new page in the same folder as the page you duplicated. It is possible, but not recommended, to change locations for the new page's file.
- Click the Publish button. Your new page is published and you are returned to preview mode.
Standards for file names:
Step 5: Preview in browser / save URL
- Select the new page's URL from the Contribute Address bar
- Switch to your regular Web browser (IE, Safari, Firefox, etc)
- Paste the URL into the browser's address bar and hit enter to view it
- You should always validate your work in a regular browser
- Leave this window open on this page to save the URL; we will come back for it later
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