What should you use the Basic page content type for?

It's the most versatile content type. The Basic Page content type is intended for content that doesn't change often, such as informational pages or pages regarding administrative policies. Basic Page is the only content type that allows Layout to pull in custom blocks. Basic Page can utilize the custom block components such as article previews, accordions, tabs, and calls to action. Layout also gives this content type the flexibility to allow for column layout changes. 

How to Create a Basic Page

1. Click on or hover over Content in your admin panel
2. Click on or hover over Add Content 
3. From the list of content types, select Basic page.
4. You are then presented with the Edit section of your Basic page. 

There are a total of five administrative tabs for a basic page: View, Edit, Delete, Layout, and Revisions (will show up once there is at least one save). 

Edit tab of a Basic Page

Title - Text entered will be used as the title of the page, included in the breadcrumbs, and become the page's URL unless otherwise configured. The title of this page is "Basic Page Content Type". 

Main Body

Summary - Search engines will use this summary to display as the description of the page. It is the meta-data that displays in web crawlers. Enter text you would like to use as a brief description of the page OR leave blank and the system will use a trimmed segment of the body text instead. Summary for a basic page does not get printed on your page.

Body - This is what is displayed on your page. A WYSIWYG interface provides you the means of adding in your main content. This is where you'll enter text, images, lists, and even tables if you need them. For many pages, this may be all that is necessary to use when creating a page. Please note that you are not able to pull in custom blocks such as accordions or call to actions into the body; those things need to be added separately. Learn more about the WYSIWYG Editor and how to use it. 

Header Options

This is optional. To display a header image on the page, use Header Options. This header will display below the menu without any margin on the sides, so it is full width content. The title of the page will magically be pulled up in an overlay on the header image. The image automatically gets placed in the Hero Panel Content region of your site. When using an image, please keep in mind that depending on the screen size, the image will crop and scale. It is best to use a landscape type of image. While video can be added, it is best not to add videos to many pages, perhaps maybe just the home page. Keep in mind, too, that only videos with an mp4 extension can be added.

Social Options

This is optional. Let's say someone wants to share the link of your page on social media, some types of social media auto add an image as a thumbnail. The image that you select under Social Options will be used as that thumbnail when shared. 

Workflow: Save and Publish

Found at the bottom, there is a current state, change options, Save and Preview buttons, and a Delete link. Current state will show which part of the workflow you are in. You are able to schedule out changes that you make to the body content. Please note due to cron and caching that to the minute changes will not be honored, it will be by hour. 

States

• Draft, could mean two things...
  • When your page has never been published, keeping in draft will update the page for authenticated editors but visitors will be given a 403 error and won't be able to access the page.
  • If your page has been published, switching to draft before saving would mean that any changes you made during that iteration will be in draft form, only seen by authenticated editors, but your visitors will continue to see the older information that was in the "Edit" tab. 
• Published - Your saves are pushed out to the public to be seen by visitors. 
• Archived - This will archive the page so that it is no longer published and no longer accessible to visitors, only accessible to authenticated editors. 

Side Menu 

• Menu Settings - Displays whether or not this page is in the main navigation menu. You can add a menu link using this option, however, it won't give you a visual representation and will default to the end of the parent link. 
• Meta Tags - All basic tags should be left with the default input to properly function. The Advanced section can be used to update "robots" which can change the way your page is indexed by search engines. 
• URL Redirects - Displays whether there is a redirect on the page or you can create one here. Best practice is to use the Redirect Module. 
• XML Sitemap - By default, pages are included on the sitemap with a weekly change frequency. This can be updated if so desired. 
• URL Alias - If you do not want the automatically generated URL alias that takes your page title as the path of the URL, you can change it using the URL alias input. Make sure you start with "/". This can also be used for breadcrumb pathing (example for this page is using: /training/basic-page-content-type)
• Content Keywords - This is something only editors will see, but it is a way to organize your content. May be necessary if your site has quite a bit of pages and those pages can be clumped together someone. Make sure you enter one keyword per entry and add another item if necessary. Also keep in mind that keywords are case sensitive; you don't want to double up on POLICY vs policy for example. 

Be sure to Save your page!

Layout tab of a Basic Page

Now that you have Saved your page, we'll talk about the Layout. This is where you'll add custom blocks and other additional content to your page! This is also where you can customize the layout for your desired look and feel.