Custom pages overview

Find an overview of the options to create custom HTML pages within your CONTENTdm website using the Website Configuration Tool.

The Website Configuration Tool gives you several options to create fully-Custom HTML Pages within your CONTENTdm website. You might use these pages to add more information about your library or your institution, to describe the rights policy for your digital repository, to explain the process for requesting hard copies of images, or to have more control over the look and feel of your home page or collection landing pages.

There are three categories of Custom HTML Pages in the CONTENTdm website:

Custom HTML Home Page

This is the main home page for the site. It is uploaded in the Website Configuration Tool under Page Types > Home Page on the Global Settings tab. The public URL to access a Custom HTML Home Page will be the base URL of your CONTENTdm site, e.g. https://cdmdemo.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/

Custom HTML Landing Page

This is the landing page for a collection. These pages are uploaded in the Website Configuration Tool under Page Types > Landing Pages on the Collection-level Settings tab for each collection. The public URL to access a Custom HTML Landing page will be your base CONTENTdm site URL followed by "/digital/collection/" and identifier of the collection, e.g. https://cdmdemo.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/myfirstcollection.

Custom HTML Page

This is a page that renders at a new URL is constructed from the name of the HTML file you provide. These pages are uploaded in the Website Configuration Tool under Custom > Custom Pages on both the Global Settings and Collection-level Settings tabs. Which tab you upload the Custom HTML Page to will change the form of the URL your end users use to access the page. For example, here is a “global” custom page that results from uploading a file named helloworld.html:

https://cdmdemo.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/custom/helloworld

If this same HTML file is uploaded on the Collection-level Settings tab (under Custom > Custom Pages) for the OCLC Sample Collection it looks like this:

https://cdmdemo.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/oclcsample/custom/helloworld

The only differences are the form of the URL and the global vs. collection context of the page. If you have website administrators who can access only the collection-level settings in the Website Configuration Tool, then this separation gives them a way to create custom pages within their collections.

Note that for the other two types of custom pages (Custom HTML Home page and Custom HTML Landing Page) the name of the file that you upload will not appear in the URL. This is because the Custom HTML Page is acting as a replacement for a page that already exists in CONTENTdm out of the box. Conversely, the Custom HTML Page feature gives you a way to define a custom path within your URL structure. In this case, the path is formed (in part) by the base name of the HTML file that you upload.

To learn more about how to create Custom HTML Pages see Creating a custom page.