Santa Clara University

How to create a new page 

(Note: You have to be an authorized user before creating pages in CommonSpot. If you have any questions about the permissions in your site, see your site administrator.)

• Login to CommonSpot (see login information)
• Click on the center editing icon at the top of the page (the eyeglasses)
• Select 'author' from the list
• Click on right-hand editing icon at the top of the page (the small lock)
• Select 'create new page'
• Find your site (and folder if appropriate) in pull-down list as "Destination Site"
• Click on 'SCU Templates' to expand template list
• Find your site Template
• Click on your Template
• Answer 'Create New Page' questions to position your page in the database. 

1. Select a category, 2. Enter the site name: Name = the URL extension for the page.  Use all lowercase and no spaces in the site name.  Examples: 'about', 'contact', or 'staff'. Important: some pages, such as a Web site's homepage, will be given the name 'index'.  It is important to remember that each subsite or folder created will need one page created called 'index'.

3. Title - A short description of the page content. In most cases this would match the header used in the content well on the page. The "title" content is used in the breadcrumb trail and page index elements.

4. Title Bar Caption - In most cases this will be the same as the 'Title'.  It is the text used in the page's title HTML tag and is displayed at the top of the browser window. In CommonSpot, the Title Bar Caption will be appended to any "page title prefix" text defined for the subsite. The text within the <title> HTML tags is used by external search engines when indexing content.

Note: the 'title' and 'title bar caption' fields would likely use the same text, although there may be some circumstances where people would want to modify this text - for example, the title in the "Title" field displays in the horizontal breadcrumb trail, so it might be desirable to abbreviate this title or use acronyms.

5. Description - A full description for the page content. This text is used in the page's META description, and is indexed by external search engines.  The description should provide some context for the page content; for example, instead of "Faculty Listing", the description should be "Faculty in the College of Arts and Sciences at Santa Clara University".

6. Keywords - This field might be left blank (if the subsite has keywords defined already), but it's the appropriate place to include page-specific keywords. For example the page for the Office of the Dean in the College of Arts and Sciences might include "Atom Yee" in the keywords field.  These keywords appear in the META keywords.

Note: meta tags include content that does not display in the web browser, but can be read by search engines or other page indexing systems. Their role in influencing search index results placement has been overstated (a few years ago, search results were manipulated by mis-use of META content), but they still serve a useful purpose in describing page content.

• When your new page opens, click to Insert new Element (in center well, or right-hand column)

For more information go to the Elements page.