Before creating a page, it's important to understand the CMS's three main Navigation Areas, and how adding a page to each of these areas dictates where it's displayed in your site.
NOTE: If you're not familiar with these concepts, refer to the Navigation Areas Overview section below before continuing.
Navigation areas overview
Pages are organized by a community's three main Navigation Areas:
- The Main Button Bar represents a community's top-level navigation. Adding/removing pages to/from the button bar is how to manage a community's main navigation options. When creating a page, you’ll typically do so under the Main Button Bar and configure it to (a) appear directly in your community’s navigation or (b) as a hidden page you’ll link to from elsewhere, like other pages, discussion posts, emails, etc.
TIP: Nesting pages in the Main Button Bar is how you create drop-down menus in your navigation menu containing additional pages:
- Pages added to Text Links at Top display as links in a community's banner (Contact Us and Terms and Conditions are the default links), and are available across all pages.
NOTE: Text Links at Top is not applicable to customers using our Higher Logic Thrive Community model.
- Pages added to Text Links at Bottom display as links in a community's footer, and are available across all pages.
EXAMPLE: Compare the two images below to see where content added to each area displays in a site.
CMS
Community front end
Create a page
- Begin the page-creation process in one of two ways:
- Drag and drop the Add Page tile into the desired Navigation Area. Where it's placed in the tree structure determines whether it's a parent or child page.
- Click to highlight a page, and then select Add from its ellipses menu. A new page is added to the bottom of the list.
TIP: Nesting pages in the Main Button Bar is how you create drop-down menus in your community's main navigation containing additional pages, as you see below:
In the example above, Moon Management is a "parent" page, while Crater Station and Example Page are its two "children." It's important to understand that parent pages cannot be clickable links that navigate users to a page; they can function only as a dropdown that provide access to other pages.
- At this point, your page is in the Draft state, meaning it won't be accessible in the community or visible in the navigation until it's published. Now, configure the page's properties, which are automatically displayed to the right.
| Property | Description |
|---|---|
| Page Details | |
| Visible in Navigation |
NOTE: See Hide & Delete Pages & Content to learn more about hiding and deleting pages and content. |
| Page Title |
The page's title, displayed as a heading on the page, if the Show Page Title box below is checked. If unchecked, the title is hidden. This title also represents the page in Page Designer. |
| Page Code Name |
A Page Code is a shortened URL (sometimes called a "vanity URL") that is easier to remember and used in order to simplify community navigation and linking. TIP: Assigning a Page Code is mandatory for the creation of a page and we recommend using the same name for URL Name and Page Code Name. Higher Logic recommends using a Page Code (rather than coding an entire URL) when linking to a page (e.g., in a discussion post or an email). This ensures that if the target URL gets changed, the Page Code will still automatically link to the correct page (in this case, to the new URL). EXAMPLE: If a page URL is hug.higherlogic.com/events/ecwest/hlacademy and its Page Code is hlacademy, it can be accessed via hug.higherlogic.com/hlacademy; the full URL is not necessary. Links to this page could point to just /hlacademy. Page Codes are also used to syndicate content on other pages. WARNING: Never change the Page Code for any of your community's default system pages; this will break some necessary functionality. You should only ever change Page Codes on custom pages that were created in/for your own account. |
| URL Name |
This is the page's name in the browser URL address bar. EXAMPLE: If you set the page's URL to ecwest, its URL would be: |
| CSS Wrapper Class Name | You can wrap the page with a class to facilitate CSS style targeting. |
| Tags |
Apply tags to a page to help group similar content, making it easier for users to find via search. See Tags to learn more about managing tags. |
| Search Engine Optimization | |
| Meta Title | The title for this page content. |
| Meta Description |
The meta description is a ~160 character snippet, a tag in HTML, that summarizes a page's content. Search engines show the meta description in search results typically when the searched for phrase is contained in the description. Optimizing the meta description is a very important aspect of on-page SEO. |
| Featured Image |
Link to a featured image. EXAMPLE: http://www.example.com/image.jpg |
| Canonical URL |
This is the search-engine-friendly URL you want search engines to treat as authoritative. In instances where multiple URLs go to the same place, providing a canonical URL helps instruct a search engine as to the primary URL. Learn more about canonical URLs. |
| Additional Meta |
This is where you can add additional meta tags in the page header. Learn more about meta tags. |
| Include in Search Index |
Check this box to have these pages included in the community's internal (page code and page title) search. |
| Advertising | |
| Show ads on this page? |
Specify whether website ads will display on the page. NOTE: See Website Ads to learn how to create Website ads. |
| Syndication | |
| Prevent the content of this item from being syndicated to other pages/sites |
Controls whether this page's content can be syndicated on other pages and/or communities (if you license Microsites); unchecked allows for syndication. Syndication is an excellent way to re-purpose page content. To learn more, see Syndicated Content in Your Community. NOTE: Keep in mind that when a syndicated page is added, its layout (rows and columns) will be replicated on the model community and any subsequent microsites. TIP: As you create pages, check this box for those pages you do not want syndicated so that the Syndicated Page list will be more manageable. |
| Super Admins Only |
This allows you to restrict page editing to Super Admins, which is a great way to prevent Site and Microsite Admins from editing some pages but not others. You can also lock your top-level navigation and individual Content Items on a page. See Lock Pages & Content to learn how to lock your pages and content. |
| Page Permissions | |
| View Permissions |
This important setting controls who can access the page:
EXAMPLE: You might want to hide pages from logged in users if, for example, you have a public page that details the benefits of membership. Logged in don't need this info, so the page can be hidden to them.
NOTE: You can also set View Permissions for content as well (both Content Items and Widgets). This gives you a lot of flexibility, for example, to make a page publicly available but tighten the security on specific pieces of content on that page. |
- When finished, click:
- Save to save your settings and leave the page in the Draft state or
- Publish to save your settings and make the page live.
Next step
After creating the page, you'll want to define its layout and add content. See Build Page Layout & Content to learn how.