Guide pages
Guides are useful when you want to group together a collection of connected pages. You should use the guide format if the content:
- does not follow a strict, linear process (use a step by step for this)
- is too long for one page
Examples of guides include:
The user does not have to click through each page in order, like they do in a step by step. They can move through the pages using the 'Next' and 'Previous' buttons at the bottom of each page. They can also click on a page title from the menu at the top of each page and go directly to it.
There are 2 elements to guides – guide overviews and guide pages.
Overviews and pages
When creating a guide you create the guide overview page first. You can then create guide pages and link them to the overview. The overview is the parent page and the guide pages are child pages.
Title and guide section title
When you create a guide overview or page you'll see there's a title field and a guide section title field.
The title appears in search results so it must clearly state what that page is about. The section title can be shorter and less specific. So:
- title: Who should pay Council Tax
- section title: Who should pay
Heading levels
Guides have a quirk, in that the H2 is the guide overview page title. Because of this we must use H3s and H4s in the overview body text.
On guide pages, we can use H2s and H3s as normal.
Tutorial
Creating a subject guide. A how-to-video for content designers and editors.