How to create a path listing

Above, you see a typical path listing. It has an image (or a blank image), a heading, one paragraph of description, and (if there is an image) a paragraph in italics captioning the image.

First, if you have an image for the listing, check whether it is already in the media gallery (that’s the Media option on the main left-hand menu). If it is not, add an image to the gallery. Make sure that you do not duplicate images in the gallery.

Adding a new walk

Open one of the pages where you will add the walk (probably one of the regional pages), and find the point in the alphabetic order within the relevant list

• a sequence of walks in a collection — normally a long-distance path
• a one-day linear walk
• a group listing

Click on the plus sign in the middle of the line separating the entries above and below your target location, and select Media and text from the list of block types. If you do not see it in the panel of block types, just type the block type in the search box above the set of options. This will give you the new block template (below).

Use Select media on the left to bring up the gallery. Select the image (or the blank), and insert it.

Now there are two adjustments to be made to the block layout.

• Select the “thick sandwich” icon (fourth from the left) on the hover menu, and choose wide width: this lines up the listing with the same margins as the rest of the page.
• Shrink the image area to 30% width as shown in the right-hand “block” menu: you may adjust the number or slide the circle which you will see between the image and content areas

Now click on the word “Content”. Type your heading, press Enter, then type your walk description.

Change the heading type to size H4 and centre it.

• Choose the pilcrow (backwards-P paragraph symbol) and then choose Heading.
• Change H2 to H4 and choose the alignment option (three horizontal lines) immediately to the right of H4.
• Align the text to the centre of the space by choosing the appropriate option.

If you have an image, caption it

• Click at the end of your description, and press Enter.
• Type “Image: ” followed by your brief image caption.
• Highlight the entire paragraph (Ctrl-A) and use the italic option (it looks like a forward slash, but it is actually a capital I) to italicise the whole paragraph.

Add text justification to the description.

• Click within the description paragraph, then use the down-arrow icon over to the right of the hover menu.
• Choose Justify. The down-arrow changes colour. Depending on your choice of browser, the text may re-appear neatly justified, or may not change at all. The key evidence that the text is justified is the reverse-video icon.

Now, add your link to the path’s information. First, capture the link’s URL.

• In a separate tab, navigate to the most authoritative source of information (ideally, the right page on the website of the developer or guardian of the path, but it may be the publisher’s page for the guidebook which contains public transport pointers).
• If you are linking to the webpage, copy the URL from the address bar.
• If you are linking to a PDF file, go back to the webpage which cites the link, right-click on the link text, and “save link address”.

Now, highlight the entire title text and use the link icon (to the right of the italic icon) on the hover menu.

• Click on the link icon and paste the URL into the search box.
• Click on the link text which comes up beneath the search box, and press Enter.
• If you need to revise it, highlight the whole title text, use the link micon (which has become an unlink icon) to unlink, then repeat the linking process from scratch.
• Click on the image, and select the link icon.
• Paste the URL into the search box and press Enter.

You have now completed the process of adding a path to a list. Next, you need to capture the listing block as a re-usable block. This will enable us (what’s coming is really obvious) to re-use the block to add it to other relevant listings (the other regions through which the walk passes, or the relevant hub lists). Even if you do not need to re-use it today, give the block a name.

• If the listing is for a collection (sequence) of linear day walks which make up a long-distance path, your block-name begins with seq- (e.g., seq-gritstone)
• If the listing is for a standalone linear day walk, your block-name begins with walk- (e.g., walk-wandle)
• If the listing is for a group offering walks (whether or not guided), your block-name begins with gg- (e.g., gg-swc)

Be terse in your block-naming: as with captions, we don’t want short essays. So, for example, the Don Valley Way becomes seq-donv — at least until Aberdeen creates one on their Don (but that would probably be called the Donside Way, using the local parlance).

Adding a walk from a re-usable block

Here’s where the simple act of naming a re-usable block bears fruit. For each of the rest of the relevant lists, all you have to do is

• Select the location for the listing to be added, and click on the plus sign
• In the block-type search box, type a targeted part of the block-name (e.g., grit for the Gritstone Trail).
• Select the correct block from the options

It takes seconds. And that’s just the start of the benefits. Your listing text looks as if it is part of your page (and always appears so), but it is really just an instruction to “put the block here”. The content is in the block, and so if you change the content in one location where it appears (any location — it does not need to be the location where you first created the block), the changes ripple through all the locations automatically.