Knowledgebase Presentation Options

There are many different ways you can choose to present the Knowledgebase content. One of the core benefits of the Webvanta approach is that how you present the information is entirely separate from the information itself, you can evolve you presentation easily.

There are two different presentations that are part of the standard pages provided with your initial Webvanta site:

• A single Resources page that combines information from all categories
• The info portal pages, which include Category, List, and Item page

Resources Page

If the Knowledgebase contents are an ancillary part of the site, rather than its core, you may want to use a single resources page, especially if you don't have a lot of categories or a lot of items in each category. There are many choices in how you present the resources page. Our default resources page takes the following approach:

• Each category is presented separately
• Within the section for each category, items are grouped by item type
• For articles, the excerpt is shown, with a link to the item page for the full article
• For all other items, the name and description are shown, linked directly to the external site

Item Pages or Not?

The single-page design does not provide opportunities for visitors to comment, except on articles (which are presented on item pages). Another approach (used in our information portal design, as described below) is to link to an item page for every link. This is, in some ways, a hindrance to visitors who just want to get to the external site, since they then have to click through the item page. The advantage is that now comments can be added to any items, and there is an opportunity to show related resources (and ads, if your site has advertising).

Information Portal

If you have a lot of categories, or a lot of items in each category, a single resources page gets out of hand. It can get very long, and from an SEO perspective, it's not as effective as a set of pages, one focused on each category. We call this design approach the Information Portal, which consists of Category, List, and Item pages.

Resources Drop-Down

A variant on the information portal structure is to have a single Resources item in your navigation, with a drop-down that lists all the categories. This approach allows you to use the full information portal structure within the context of a site for which you want to preserve most of the navigation for other purposes.

To implement this design, create a standard page called Resources, and then make the Category page a sub-page of the Resources page (drag the category page into the menu section, just below the Resources page, and then drag a little to the right to make it a sub-page). The category page will magically create a menu entry for every top-level category (except for categories that are marked as "Special", which is an indication to leave them out of the information portal navigation).