External Links
The external link content type allows you to add a link to a site/page outside of the UNK website or outside of your department site. This also adds the link into the navigation for the folder. When this link is clicked from the menu it opens the link in a new window.
External links are also helpful for linking to external items that you link to from several different places. If you setup the link individually on pages with the standard link insert, if that link changes you have to change it on all pages it appears on. If you setup an external link and link to the external link from your pages you only have to update the external link if the link changes.
To insert an external link you will want to select the folder you want it placed in and click on the "add Content" menu. From the add content menu click on “Default”. This will give you two options, choose “External Link”.
Setting up the external link is pretty basic. Simply fill in the system name, Title, and Link then click submit. See the example below.
References
References are similar to external links except they are specifically used to create links to your own files that are located in different folders. Since menu’s are dependent on the folder you can only display pages in the current folder in the menu. References allow us add links in the menu to other pages in parent and child folders. For example ITS has subfolders for Instructional Technology, HelpDesk, etc. They have created references to the ITS homepage in each of these folders so that the ITS homepage shows in the menus for each of these folders. These links open in the same window unlike external links.
You can add a reference in two ways. The most direct way is to hover over the page you want to create a reference for. When you hover over a page you should see an arrow pointing down. Click on the arrow and you should get a menu. From this menu select “reference”. The other option would be to click on the page and the select the “more” tab and then select “reference”
After you click on reference you will get the reference setup screen. From here fill in the system name and select the folder you would like the reference placed in then click submit. The reference will be placed in the folder you selected and appear in the menu for that folder displaying the title of the page being referenced.
In the screen shot below you can see there is one page in the test folder, but two links are showing in the navigation. The gallery page and website training materials page are coming from the reference called image gallery and training home, which are referencing those pages from the main training folder.
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