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LibGuides Tips & Tricks for Librarians: Creating Boxes

This guide is intended for the authors of libguides, not the general users of the content.

The No Boxes Option

If you create subpages and don't put any boxes on the page under which the subpages are grouped, a linked list of the subpages will automatically display on the page. See an example listing that is automatically generated, and compare it with a manually created page directory that is re-used on each of the subpages.

Why Change the Box Type?

The default setting for box type is "Rich Text/Dynamic Content/Scripts", which is supposedly the most versatile box type, BUT...

  • You can't track the usage statistics (outgoing clicks) for the links
  • You can't just "Add a new link"
  • You have to cut-and-paste to reuse a link or to change the order of links in a list

By changing the box type to "Links and Lists"

  • You can "Add a new link" to the end of the list
  • You can reuse an existing link
  • You can easily reorder the list of links
  • You still have the option to put coded text in the box ahead of the list of links

Create One Box and Reuse It

See also Copy an existing box

A lot of the content will be re-used over and over on various pages and guides. Instead of cutting and pasting the content from box to box, consider putting common content into a box such that the entire box is linked or copied. You might break up a long list into two or more boxes so that a portion of the list can be re-used by linking to one box without including the less-common items from the other box.

If you're going to re-use a box on a lot of guides, consider creating a short guide to store it on with only a small handful of other boxes so that you don't have to scroll down through a long list of boxes to find the box you want to re-use.

"Link to another box in the system" if you want to create a box that will be automatically updated whenever the source box is updated.

"Copy another box from the system" if you want to re-use some of the links and the structure of the box, but need to change some of the information.

Linking to Other Boxes

If you create a page directory linking to boxes within a page, consider including more than just the #box id in the link (e.g., "/content.php?pid=00000&sid=00000#00000") so that you can reuse the box on another page to link back to the specific sections of the original page.

To retrieve the link for a box, select "edit" on the right side of the box's title, and select "Change Box Title/Type". The display will include a line such as:

URL to link to this box is http://libguides.lib.ucf.edu/content.php?pid=40520&sid=334799#1017178

Within UCF's libguides system, you can use the relative URL, dropping off the first part of the address.
For example, from the above URL, just use

/content.php?pid=40520&sid=334799#1017178

Box Titles

Because the title for the page gets a bit lost between the tabs and the boxes, consider including some additional descriptive information as part of the title for the largest top box on the page to help users orient themselves.

If you create a linked box, you can change the title as it displays on the page without affecting the original content within the box.