What Content Can Go Into Blocks?

Content blocks can contain many types of CHSSWeb content—pages, people, documents, links, and more. What does this mean for you as a site editor? How is each content type useful?

Pages

If you add a page to a content block, that page will appear as its title, linked to the page itself. If the page is a redirect page, the link in the content block will go to the appropriate redirect destination. Changes to the page will always be automatically reflected in the block, so you can retitle the page, change its destination by moving it or by adding a redirect URL, and the block will reflect those changes. If you delete or unpublish the page, it will disappear from the block.

Pages do not have variants at present.

See the example at the bottom of this page.

People

We offer several options and variants when you add people to blocks. You can add:

• The person themselves. In this case, they will be linked to their bio on their originating site.
• Their title on a site. In this case, they will be linked to their bio on the site on which they have that title.
• Their title on a program. In this case, they will be linked to their bio on the originating site of that program. If their bio is not on that site, clicking on their name will ultimately lead to their bio on their originating site.

That may seem complicated, but it matches the complex realities of the roles people take at the university and how we must represent those roles on our sites.

This same complexity is reflected in the variants available when displaying people in content blocks. You may want to show only the person's name, their name and contact information, their name and title. You may want their photo displayed. There are variants to cover most of these combinations.

See the example at the bottom of this page.

Programs

When a program is added to a block, it appears as the full name of the program linked to the program brochure on its originating site.

See the example at the bottom of the page.

Documents

Documents are a resource type which allows you to upload PDF, Word, or other types of documents. It provides a URL you can use to manually build links for downloading a document or, more powerfully, flexibly, and maintainably, it allows you to add those documents to content blocks.

See the example at the bottom of the page.

Links

Links are a resource type which allows you to maintain and tap into a library of links to locations anywhere on the web. Links appear in content blocks as the link's title linked to the destination. Before our move to content blocks, editors often used links to add people, programs, or other content types to resource groups. Links are somewhat less useful now but are still handy if you wish to send users outside of CHSSWeb. This is the resource people are most tempted to skip. It's much easier just to manually type a link into a text field. But if you use the link resource, you get all of the benefits of content blocks and you only have to update your link in one place.

See the example at the bottom of the page.