This week both of our Website Support Clinic attendees wanted reassurance while doing their first ever edits to their websites in the Polopoly system.

8 top editorial tips

A number of questions about editing Polopoly pages come up at our sessions on a regular basis so I thought it might be useful to share these together with the guidance we provide about these topics on our Website Support wiki:

1.   Summary sentence

All pages need a summary sentence for the site to successfully migrate to EdWeb.

Page elements editorial reference guide – B2 Paragraphs

2.   Overview pages

All sections need an Overview page (a page that directs the user to all of the pages in that section) to successfully migrate to EdWeb.

3.   Subheading order

Headings should be used in order on the page. Begin with H2 headings, and subheadings within these should be H3, and so on.

Page elements editorial reference guide – B1 Headings

4.   Regular subheadings

Remember to use regular subheadings to break up your content, making it easier to read.

5.   Creating an Include article

The purpose of includes is to be able to create snippets of content that can be shared across multiple pages, for example films or profile information.

1. Ensure that these are created in a folder entitled ‘Includes’.
2. Put the work ‘INCLUDE’ in the ‘Name’ field of the new article.
3. De-select ‘Include in navigation’ and ‘Do not index this page’ in the Properties tab.
4. Publish the article.
5. Copy the article and paste it into the Include page element on the page you wish it to appear.

Page elements editorial reference guide – B12 Includes

6.   Adding a video

Add a video widget by adding the code produced by the video widget tool into a Special HTML include article, or use the IS-hosted streaming media element.

Adding video and audio to your site

Please note, before you can add your film to your page, you will need the embed code from either YouTube or the University media server depending on which service is hosting your film.

7.   Updating the dynamic homepage feature panel

Dynamic subsite homepage guidance (includes ‘Managing the feature panel’)

8.   Adding images/documents to the Media Bank

Each department or unit has a separate folder in the Media Bank (found under ‘Common’)

Guidance for adding images and documents to the Media Bank

Wiki guidance documents

The topics above cover some of the most frequent queries we are asked about but there is extensive guidance on the whole range of Polopoly features on the Polopoly support wiki.

Polopoly support wiki (requires EASE login)

Website Support Clinic

If you’d like some one- to-one support with your Polopoly website, our Clinics run from 12-3pm every Tuesday afternoon. To book a slot email:

website.support@ed.ac.uk