Understand the Resource library

The White Fuse content management system contains a special feature referred to as 'Resources' or 'The resource library'.

What is the resource library?

The resource library is designed for storing lots of information in a flexible but organised way. It consists of a list of individual resources and a set of categories with which each resource can be 'tagged'.

Pages vs Resources

When adding large amounts of informational content to your website it's important to think about the structure. The key thing to note is that Pages and Resources are different content types. Pages cannot easily later be 'converted' to resources or vice versa. They are each structured a little differently so it's important to understand the differences and make a call on which way you want to go in terms of adding content.

What's the same?

You can add the same types of content blocks to both
You can attach files to both
You can embed videos in both
Both can either be public or member-only
Both display 'teasers' of member-only content to non-members (i.e. title, introduction and image)

What are the main differences?

Pages are structured hierarchically whereas resources are categorised
A page can only be in one place in the menu structure
A resource can be in multiple categories at once
Pages can have sub-pages are displayed as a grid-style menu
Resources are always displayed as a single list and can't have sub-pages
Resources contain a date field and are sorted by date
A view of related resources can appear at the bottom of each resource
Up to 4 resources can be automatically promoted to the home page
Non-members can view all resource teasers
Non-members will not be able to see any sub-pages within a member-only section

When should I use pages?

Use pages if you:

Don't have lots of informational content (less than 50 items)
Want to keep the content completely private for members only (no teasers)
Content is very siloed, i.e. not cross-cutting

Pages are organised hierarchically. You can create a page for a top-level menu item and can then create up to two levels of sub-pages beneath this. While there is technically no limit to the number of sub-pages you can create we usually recommend no more than about 7 at each level. So, for a hierarchical menu section to be nice and usable, you would have a maximum of 7 second-level pages and each of those would have a maximum of 7 third-level pages nested beneath.

The 7 second-level pages could be mini overview pages and the resulting 49 unique third-level pages could contain your informational content. If this feels like more than enough then this method is a good way to go. It allows you to move pages around quite easily and add extra content to the second-level overview pages to introduce each section.

A page can only appear in one place in the menu structure so this works best when each page has one obvious place to reside.

When should I use resources?

Use resources if you:

Have lots of informational content (more than 50 items)
Want to display all teasers to non-members
You have multiple cross-cutting themes

Resources are not organised hierarchically but by category. All resources are added to one 'resource library' and appear in a long list. 20 resources are displayed on-screen at once and users can paginate through these screens sequentially. Each resource can be added to multiple categories and users can browse these categories to view lists of resources. There is no technical limit to the number of categories you can have but the list tends to accommodate 20 or more terms quite comfortably, more than the recommended 7 second-level pages mentioned above. A useable category tends to include up to 20 resources, i.e. they will all appear on screen at once with no pagination required.

The result of this is that the resource library can comfortably include around 400 individual resources.

Remember, each resource can be included in multiple categories so if your themes are very cross-cutting or inter-related the resource library works well.