SERC > SERC Content Management System > Page Metadata

# Page Metadata

Jumping from an edit link in a module editing page takes you to the editing interface for a given page. Here you can get at all sorts of goodies related to the page as well as make the next jump to editing the actual text (patience, we'll get there). Note that you can also get here by adding 'edit' to the url of the corresponding live page:
http://serc.carleton.edu/edit/serc/about.html
will take you to the edit page for the development version of the page visible here:
http://serc.carleton.edu/serc/about.html

The CMS thoughtfully provides navigation back up the hierarchy, some general info about the page, a link to view the page itself and to replace the live counterpart to this page with this dev version. This "Replace" link effects only this page rather than the entire module. Rounding out the top part of this page are links for editing each of the content elements that make up this page

### About templates

The words you carefully craft in the CMS are ultimately fed into a web browser following rules encoded in the template you've choosen. Normally you choose a template when you first create a page, often just leaving things set to the default (which will vary from module to module). The template determines how many discreet element there will be on a page and how they'll be arranged.

Many templates have only two page content elements: the Main Page Text and the Page Name. In most cases you ignore the Page Name element (pages normally draw their 'name' from the title field we'll get to a bit later). Main Page Text is where all the action is. It's where you'll do the bulk of your work. In some areas of the site folks have wanted a bit more consistent structure from page to page and so have broken the page text into distinct element (e.g. author, description, goals, teaching materials) which are reflected in (and enforced by) the page template. You'll edit each element separately and the page template will take care of compositing a final page. Be sure you're working with the right template and try to use it in the spirit intended.

The next part of the page is devoted to various bits of information about the page: page metadata. Normally you'll only work with the first two fields.

The page title field is a critical one. This text appears across the top of the browser window, in search engines and bookmarks. It is also used in navigation menus as well as (in most templates) being plastered across the top of the page itself. So choose something concise and descriptive with due consideration to all the contexts in which folks will try to make sense of the title.

The url field will default to a reasonable value except it will end in empty1234.html (the numbers will vary to ensure a unique address). Clearly not an appropriately descriptive url for most pages. In general you can just change this ending to something more descriptive (e.g. educator_background.html) and things should be fine. Note that the /dev is automatically added on dev pages and the leading part of the url is set to reflect the current module (and it's relationship to any parent modules). All urls need to be unique, and you should stick to lowercase letters and numbers--no spaces or funny business (underscores are fine though).

It's important (for navigation purposes) that each module have a 'main' page that serves as the starting point for the other pages in the module. The web convention is to give this page the url 'index.html'. We've followed this convention and the CMS assumes there will be an index.html page in each module (well, mostly anyway). In general when you start with a fresh empty module your first act should be to create a new page and name it (and we mean the url here, not the title) index.html. (Of course we're only talking here about the 'end' of the url; if your module url's all start with /introgeo/models then your main page should be /introgeo/models/index.html)

All the rest of the fields on this page are generally set to the correct defaults so you can ignore them unless someone in the know tells you otherwise. Note that when you make a change to any of these fields you'll need to click the "Make these changes to the page metadata" button at the very bottom of the page. It's a common mistake to put in a title and url for a new page and then jump directly to editing the 'Main Page Text' without hitting this button; you'll lose the title and url information every time.

And finally if you actually click the title of one of the Page Content Elements you'll be able to start editing....

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