- Leave the Title alone (it will already be filled out).
- Enter a Meta Description if one does not already exist.
-
- What is a Meta Description? It appears below your web page’s title in a search engine results page. For example, when someone Googles a phrase relevant to your page, they’ll be presented with your Page Title and Meta Description.
- The Meta Description should be different from the Title field, and should encourage search-engine users to view the page by providing a summary of what kind of information the page offers. Meta Descriptions should also include keywords (i.e., terms that you think users would search for).
- An example of a good Meta Description is: “Learn about graduate programs (MSc, PhD and MScAC) at the Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto. Includes research, admissions and more.”
- In the Body box, you can enter and/or edit content that will appear on the page.
⚠ Tip: Tired of endlessly scrolling? If you’re editing a page with a large amount of content, press Ctrl+F on your keyboard and enter search terms into the bar to help find your content faster.
-
- In general, you can familiarize yourself with all the formatting and content input functions in the Body box by playing around with the toolbar.
- Many functions are similar to the ones in Microsoft Word (i.e., bold, italics, bullet points, block quotes, text alignment, etc.).
-
- When entering or editing content, follow these best practices to ensure your content comes out properly formatted and accessible:
-
-
- You can then go through your newly-pasted content and add any necessary formatting (bolding, headings, etc.).
- If you are still noticing formatting issues after using the Remove Format button, you’ll need to copy and paste into Notepad on your computer, and then copy and paste from Notepad into Drupal.
-
- Headings: Heading sizes usually range from Heading 2 (h2) to Heading 6 (h6), and you’ll see them all listed on this drop-down menu in the content editing panel:
-
- Use h2 for main headings in the text of a page, h3 for subheadings, and so on. Use headings to divide content into blocks and make it accessible. Don’t use any heading sizes for an entire sentence or paragraph; instead, use the “Normal” formatting option for body copy (sentences, paragraphs). Heading sizes are for just that: headings, subheadings, titles, etc.
- When you’ve written a heading, subheading or title, simply highlight it and select an appropriate heading size from the drop-down menu.
- Here is an example of how headings can be used effectively to set up blocks of content:
- Relative links: If your new website is in the pre-launch phase (i.e., your website address looks like https://sitename-pat.iit.artsci.utoronto.ca) and you are linking to any other page on your department’s website, you must use a relative link. This means you’ll leave out the domain name (for example, history.utoronto.ca) and you’ll only use whatever comes after that (for example, /graduate/ma/tuition-funding). The system will automatically fill in the domain name before your relative link. Why is this so important? Because it future-proofs the site against any domain name changes. Otherwise, post-launch, these links will continue to point to your pre-launch website.
- Absolute links: if you are linking to another University of Toronto website that isn’t your department (for example, www.sgs.utoronto.ca) or any other website anywhere on the internet, use the full URL including the domain name (for example, https://twitter.com/johndoe).
- Once you publish the page, you will see that links from your page to another department, entity or organization’s site are clearly identified by the following symbol as a departure from your website:
⚠ Important: Always use descriptive link text that helps your users understand what they’re clicking on. For example:
DO:
“In order to apply, you must download and fill out the 2016 application form.” (In this case, the phrase “the 2016 application form” will be hyperlinked to the form).
DON’T:
In order to apply, you must download and fill out the application form at www.artsci.utoronto.ca/application-form.
- Writing for the web — best practices:
- Most people skim web content, so try to break up content as much as possible (paragraph breaks, bulleted lists, etc.).
- Try to keep your paragraphs to no more than 4 lines.
- Text for the web should be concise, conversational and descriptive.
- Use short, straightforward, informal and dynamic text.
- Avoid the use of specialized jargon.
- Learn more about effective and accessible web writing in the A&S Web Writing Guide.
- The Banner allows you to upload an image that will display above the page’s title.
-
- For most pages, banners will be determined in consultation with your department’s point person. If you need to change a banner, select Browse and then follow the prompts.
⚠ Note: Recommended image dimensions for the banner are 1920 x 220 pixels. If you upload an image taller than 220 pixels, only the top 220 pixels will be displayed.
- Log your revisions and save:
- If you’ve made significant revisions to a page (i.e., anything more than fixing a small spelling error), you may wish to leave a short revision log. Click on the Revision information tab in the bottom-left side of the page, make sure the Create new revision box is checked, and outline any changes you made in the Revision log message. Something succinct like “updated course descriptions” will work.
⚠ Tip: The system automatically creates a back-up copy of the previous version of the page you’ve just edited. Leaving an optional Revision log message ensures that you (or another user) can find the right version of the page, if you ever need to revert to a previous version of the page.
- When you’ve finished making your desired changes to any page and recording your Revision log message (if applicable), click the blue Save button at the very bottom of the page. Your changes will then be visible on the front end of the site.