Improving names

It's fine to correct or improve names - just bear in mind the temporary consequences.

Internal and External Links 

Renaming things in T4 doesn't usually have any effect on navigating around the UHI and Partner sites. T4 preserves links internally as part of its core functionality, so the sites maintain their integrity. This is conditional on the internal links being created correctly, for both internal Sections (pages) and Media Library images and documents.

External links can be temporarily or permanently broken if particular names are changed. These external links could come from:

• search engines such as Google or Bing - automated indexing, usually updated within a few weeks
• referring sites such as HIE or BBC which are manually managed - no guarantee of any link update or schedule

Changing different types of name

Bear in mind the consequences of changing a name.

Section names

Changing a Section name, or moving the Section within the Site Structure, will change the existing web address (URL) of the page. 

This can have significant wide-ranging consequences for links to that page from external sites. The original page which goes missing will eventually disappear from web search indexes, but may persist as a broken link on other referring sites.

The internal UHI search engine automatically updates overnight so will take account of any moved Sections or changed names the next day - search result links will 'correct' themselves. 

Content Item names

Changing Content Item names has no effect on the URL, so these can be improved whenever necessary.  Content Item names should describe specifically the content within, for ease of locating and editing this.

Headings, Main Body and other text content

Changing text in Content Items within a Section will not affect the URL.

Media Library Items

Filenames

Changing downloadable document filenames (.pdf and .doc files, for example) or image filenames in the Media Library will break the existing URL of the document or image.  This is as wide-ranging an effect as changing Section Names, but usually the linked content doesn't attract as many visits from external sites as HTML pages do, so is less of an issue.

In general we recommend improving poorly-named Media Library item filenames.

Names

The Name field of a Media Library item is a different piece of data to the filename, but should be given the same text for simplicity, with the file extension added (.jpg for example). 

When creating an internal link to a Media Library item, the link Name appears first but should be manually overwritten with something readable in the flow of text, rather than leaving it as the same text as the filename. If this is not done, then changing the Name of that Media Library item later will cause all internal T4 links to be updated to the new Name.