Running a service area
News, guidance, documents and pages
Everything written on the site, who may read it, and how a page is arranged from sections.
On this page
Everything written on the site is edited from Content, with files at Documents and page layout at Pages. All of it is yours to change without a release.
Three kinds of writing
| Kind | For |
|---|---|
| News | Something happening. Carries a date and appears newest first. |
| Guidance | Something true. Policies, templates, toolkits, advice. |
| Page | A standing note with an address of its own: how your area works, a local procedure. |
A page is the one to reach for when you want to add to the user guide with something local. The guide itself ships with the software and is not editable, but published pages are listed on its front page under your council's name.
Drafts and publishing
Nothing is visible until published, and publishing is one switch. Withdrawing is the same switch back: the item stops being offered but is not deleted, so a link in somebody's email does not become a broken address.
Who may read it
Three levels: public, signed in, or reserved to a subscription. Reserved items are still listed to everybody with their title and summary, which is how a school finds out that the subscription is worth having; what is withheld is the body.
Where somebody is refused, the page names the service that includes it and links to it, rather than only refusing.
Documents
Upload a document at Documents. The file type is worked out by reading the file rather than from its name, so a spreadsheet renamed to .pdf is refused. Documents carry their own access level, applied to the bytes and not only to the page, so a direct link is not a way round it.
Arranging a page
Pages arranges the home page and each service area page from sections: a banner, written sections, pictures, links, testimonials, and live feeds that pull the latest news, courses or e-learning when the page is drawn.
A feed section stays current on its own — a "latest news" section added in September shows October's news. A feed that finds nothing is dropped rather than drawn, because a heading with a gap under it reads as a fault.
A page with no sections falls back to its built-in layout, so a page you have never opened still works. Where you have arranged one, your arrangement wins.
Two rules about headings
Only a banner carries the page's main heading. If you have no banner the page supplies the heading itself — your area's name on an area page — so a page can never open with "What we do" and never say which area it is.
Pictures
Upload your own or choose from the library that ships with the site. The library is illustration rather than photography, deliberately: a photograph showing an identifiable child needs consent held on file, and stock costs money. Replace any of them with your own whenever you have some.
Not what you were after?
Ask City Council in the bubble at the corner of any page, or open your help conversation in full. It is one conversation that never closes, so there is nothing to raise and no subject line to invent.