How to set up a customized LibGuides home page with subject categories

I recently received an e-mail from someone at another library who wanted to know how we set up our LibGuides home page here at Grand Valley, as we did not use their default page. I figured others might be curious about how we did this, hence this post. I should note, however, that we’re likely going to change how we display our guides in the coming months, due to the feedback received in the survey we conducted a few months ago. I promise to post a how-to once we figure it out.

That said, here’s what it looks like now:

First, set up subject categories by going to the System Settings tab and clicking on Subject Categories. (They won’t actually be “subjects” – this is just how we manipulated the system.) There should be a text box and a button right next to it that says Create Subject Category. We created one category called Subject Guides, another called Course Guides, and you get the idea, I think.

Second, you want to add existing guides to their appropriate categories. There should be a green plus button with the text next to it that reads Associate a guide with Subject Guides. (Or Course Guides, etc.) It might be easiest for the admins to go through and add the existing guides to the appropriate categories, but there is a way for individual guide maintainers to do this. (I recommend you teach your guide maintainers how to do this, so that the admins are not stuck categorizing every new guide.) Instructions are below.

After this is done, you need to decide how you want this all to look. Will you have 4 boxes on one page? A separate tab for each type of guide? (We used the latter option.) Create a new guide – this will become your home page.

This is how to go about getting an A to Z list of all guides.

I recommend opening two windows. In one, you’ll want the API page. You can get to that from the LibGuides admin menu. Click on the tab that says Widgets & API – then select API Utility from the menu.

In the other window, you’ll want to open the guide you’ll be using for the home page.

Go to the API Utility window. You actually don’t need to do very much on this page. Just select the first option, which reads List of guides/pages with links. Go to the box that says Number of Results and select the button next to Hide “More Results” Link. Then scroll down to the box that says API Request Format and select the button next to Show me the JavaScript include code.

You should see the words that read Here is the URL, HTML, or JavaScript for your API call – copy the text underneath that.

Now switch back to your guide, and create a new rich text/dynamic content box. Once you’re editing that box, you should see text at the very top of that box (it’s the second bullet point, I think) that reads If inserting JavaScript code you must use the plain text editor. The words “plain text editor” should have a link you can click on.

Once you’re in the plain text editor, paste the text you copied from the API page, and then Save Changes. Refresh the page, and you should see your A-Z list.

The process is very similar to get the list of guides in a specific category. Go back to the API page, and go to the second box on that page, which is titled Display Filter. Select the button that says Return links to guides within categories containing this term. Start typing in the category name – you won’t even need to type in the whole thing. You could just type course or subj or oth. (If you had two similar category names, like biology and biomedical, you’d need to at least provide it with enough letters to distinguish between the two. So you’d have to do biol or biom – bio wouldn’t work. I digress, but this is good to know.)

Then scroll down to the API Request Format box and make sure it still has Show me the JavaScript include code button selected, and again, just copy the text provided. Then all you have to do is put that text into a content box, as I outlined above.

Repeat as necessary for your other categories (Course Guides, Other Guides, etc.).

That should be it! One thing – once you are done making the guide that will be your home page, make sure to let the folks at Springshare know. They will fix it in the system so that it acts as the home page for navigational purposes.

Now, I mentioned above that individual guide maintainers can change the category their guides are in. This is how…

(1) Maintainers should go to the guide the want to change.

(2) Go to the yellow command bar at the top of your screen and click on Status, and then Change Guide Status.

(3) After you click on that, you should get a pop-up box. In the middle, you should see the heading Subject Categories. Click on the drop-down box next to Associate with: and select the category you want your guide to be in. Then click the Associate button.

That’s it.

Let me know if you have any questions, or if I can clarify anything.