LibGuide Sustainability & Troubleshooting

What's in a guide?

Guides are like mini-websites on a topic. They can be as large or small as you need them to be, based on the content you need to share. (Of course, just because they can be large, that doesn't necessarily mean they should be.)

You can have as many guides in your LibGuides site as you like, so don't think one has to do it all! In fact, it shouldn't. As guides grow, they become more complex, which can make it more difficult for your users to navigate them.

Create focused guides.

If you find your guide getting unwieldy - you have a bazillion pages and are wishing for sub-sub-pages, for example - maybe it's time to break it up. Narrow the focus of your guide and create a separate guide with the other info.

Reuse!

You can reuse guides from your own system or from the larger LibGuides community, so take advantage and make it easier to create! Set up guide templates, peruse the Best of site for guides you can freely copy, find inspiration in the community and ask permission to copy someone's guide. The possibilities are there - take advantage!

Check out Using Guide Templates for more on general concepts, and Copying an Existing Guide for the "how to" piece. Looking for inspiration? Check out our LibGuides Community site!

Guide Names & Descriptions: Keep it simple

Keep guide names to the point and descriptions focused; use language your users would use vs. jargon (unless they'd use the jargon, too - then that makes total sense ;).

Use Friendly URLs

Make it easier to share URLs for your guides and have folks remember them with Friendly URLs.

• For example, the original URL for this guide was: https://library.fiu.edu/c.php?g=22.
  • Adding the friendly URL of libguides makes the URL: https://library.fiu.edu/libguides
  • Way easier to remember!
• Also by renaming each page, you can direct to a specific topic, resource, or content item
  • https://library.fiu.edu/libguide/bestpractices