Those who create content and maintain pages in the Canisius College wiki should follow a consistent set of guidelines for organization and page style. Visitors - students, faculty, staff, and outside clients - should encounter a consistent experience wherever they are in the wiki. For example, if you neglect to add menus, use headings, follow good practices for linking file attachments, and removing out of date content, your intended visitors may fail to find, or worse, find the wrong information in your wiki pages.

Happily, the tools and practices described below are simple and easy to follow.

Tools Available to Users

Headings

Headings are pre-defined styles of text common across word processing and web development applications. Employ headings for the titles of sections, to create a nested outline of topics.

In Confluence, headings help users identify different sections (and subjects) clearly. Then, using the Table of Contents Macro, you can rapidly create a self-updating, hyperlinked table of contents on a page. This page has a good example of this.
In most other applications, headings do the same things. For example, try them in Microsoft Word, where you can also install an automated table of contents.
In all places, headings are used by technologies for the visually impaired, and so are essential for accessibility.

Headings should be used sequentially (Heading 1, Heading 2, Heading 3, and so on.) Start with Heading 1, and don't skip heading styles as you build your outline. You can see an example of headings, and how they interact with a automated Table of Contents builder called a macro, here.

See this tutorial video for how to Install Headings and the Table of Contents Macro, for ideal page organization.

Tables

A simple element available in the main page editor toolbar are tables. These can help organize information better than simple paragraph text, and are easy to install.

Click Table icon in the toolbar, and the wiki prompts you to choose how many cells you would like. You can add or remove rows and columns later. By default, the wiki highlights a header row, but you can avoid that by holding down the shift key when you select your cells.

Once you install a table, Confluence provides another toolbar level with tools specifically for tables. You can activate this toolbar at any time in the page editor, by clicking within a table cell.

You can experiment with the various table options, to see how they work. A nice accent is to select each cell, row, or column, and use the color picker menu (second from the right) to choose various pastel colors. Obviously, Blue and Yellow are appropriate!

Another helpful tip: you can use a single Table cell just to act as a highlight box for particularly important text. For example:

Your Readers are more likely to notice this, because it is in a single table cell.

Macros

We recommend two macros for use across the wiki.

The Table of Contents Macro lists text formatted in Heading Styles, in numerical, nested order, on pages. It is configurable, but even the default macro will improve any lengthy page. Here's an example:

You can see how the Table of Contents macro interacts with headings in more detail, here.

See this tutorial video for how to Install Headings and the Table of Contents Macro, for ideal page organization.

Children Display

Lists any child pages of the pages on which it is posted. Recommended the home page for each space, as well as parent pages for offices. "Page Tree" purports to do the same thing, and we used it in the past, but it is not visible in the mobile browser version, so it should be replaced. Here's an example of child pages listed by this macro:

Tutorial Video

Adding Navigation to your Confluence Pages

00:00 Do Not Rely on the SideBar Menu

01:21 Children Display Macro

03:49 Adding Internal Links Manually

06:38 Add "Back" Links to Wiki Pages

Verify that these two work on mobile.

Horizontal Rule

Although not essential, you can install simple lines between paragraphs or headings that help set apart different subjects or topics. There's examples above. Here's another:

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