Your website is made of pages. An about-us page, a page per branch, a thank-you page after an application, a landing page for a campaign: they are all pages you create and manage yourself. If you want your website to match what your candidates are looking for, you create new pages or adjust existing ones.

In Booston you build a page from page elements. These are ready-made blocks, such as a paragraph of text, a row of images or an application form. You pick the blocks, put them in the right order and fill in the texts. The end goal of this article: a new page that is live, filled with page elements, easy to find in Google and reachable from your menu.

After this article you know how to create a page, which layout to pick, how to set the title, URL and meta description, when to keep a page element shared and when to change it for this page only, and how to add the page to your menu. What page elements are and which ones there are, you can read in Page elements: the building blocks of your pages. That article is a good first step if you have not worked with them yet.

Before you start

• You need access to Content → Pages. For page elements and the menu you also need Content → Page elements and Content → Menus. Which role may do what is explained in Users: giving access, choosing roles and logging in through your ATS.
• If you see the message This section is deactivated for your account at the top, this part is switched off for you. Contact Booston in that case, see Need help?.
• If your website has more than one language, you create one page with a version per language. There is no need to create a separate page for each language.
• Images you want to use on a page go into the file browser first. How that works is explained in Images and files: uploading, optimising and reusing.

The overview of your pages

Under Content → Pages you find all your pages, active and inactive. For each page you see the status, the title, the template, the publication date, a link per language and three buttons under Manage: edit, copy and delete. Use the search bar at the top right to find a page by its title.

At the top there are tabs per type of page:

You change the content of a vacancy page or blog page in that part of the dashboard itself, for example under Recruitment → Jobs. See Creating, editing and managing vacancies and Team members: the face behind your vacancy.

Creating a new page

1. Go to Content → Pages and click Create at the top right.
2. Switch on the languages the page should appear in.
3. Under Template name, choose a template. For a regular page that is Default content page.
4. Click Continue.
5. Fill in the Title for each language.
6. Choose a Template layout, see The Content tab: title, languages and layout.
7. Click Save.

From the title, Booston immediately makes the URL (the slug) and the page title for Google. If your page is called "Working in healthcare", the URL becomes /working-in-healthcare. You can change both afterwards, see The wrench tab: publication and findability.

The Content tab: title, languages and layout

After saving, the page opens on the Content tab. It has three parts:

• Page info: the languages, the title per language and the layout.
• Main Settings: an image for the page.
• The sections where you place page elements, from Top elements down to Bottom elements.

In Page info you change what you chose when creating the page: the languages, the title and the layout. At the top right of this block there is a link icon per language, for example NL or EN. Click it and the page opens in a new tab, the way your visitor sees it. Next to it is the bin icon to delete the page.

Choosing the layout

Every layout has three rows across the full width (Top elements, Middle elements and Bottom elements). In between there are two pairs of columns side by side: Main elements with Side elements, and Main elements 2 with Side elements 2. The layout decides how wide those columns are.

The narrow column is always Side elements. On a phone the columns sit below each other. If you only use the full-width rows, the choice of layout makes no difference.

Main Settings: the page image

Under Main Settings you choose an image for the page with Search or upload file. A header image or cover on the page uses this image when the element has no image of its own.

Below that are the sections for your page elements. Before you fill them, take a look at the second tab.

The wrench tab: publication and findability

The second tab has no name, only a wrench icon. Here you decide when the page is visible and how it appears in Google.

Publication

• Publication start date: from when the page is visible. For a new page that is the moment it was created.
• Publication end date: up to and including which day the page is visible. Empty means no end date. After the end date, a visitor gets the 404 page and the page disappears from your menu.

Search Engine Optimization

There are three fields per language:

• Page title: the title shown in Google and in the browser tab. By default it is the title of the page.
• Slug: the last part of the URL. By default it is made from the title.
• Meta description: the short text below your title in Google, up to 160 characters.

Make all three relevant to what people search for. A page title like "Working in healthcare in Zwolle" does better than "About us". A meta description that tells the reader what they will find on the page gets more clicks. More on this in Assessing SEO advice: what really decides how findable you are.

Two things about the slug. If another page in the same language already uses it, Booston makes a new slug from the title when you save. And if you change the slug of a page that is already live, the old address stops working. A menu item linked to the page follows along by itself. A link you placed in a text yourself, or on another website, does not.

Page load datalayer

This block is for advanced users and only appears once the page has been saved. Whatever you put in the Datalayer field ends up in the HTML of the page, exactly as you wrote it, when the page loads. Usually that is a datalayer event for Google Tag Manager, so you can measure a visit to this page separately. Under Available variables you click page data into the text. If you leave the field empty, the page uses the default from its template.

Scripts that should load on every page, such as Google Tag Manager itself, do not go here but under Marketing → Scripts. See Cookies and tracking on Booston websites.

In short, you now have a page that is active in the languages you want, with a URL based on your title and a page title and meta description for Google. What is still missing is the content and a place in your menu.

Adding page elements

We start with a simple paragraph of text.

1. In a section, for example Top elements, click Add new.
2. Choose how you add the element: - Use existing page element & content: you pick an element that is already set up under Content → Page elements, with the content filled in there. - Create a new page element & content: you create a new element and fill in the content for this page.
3. Click Continue under your choice.
4. Pick the element, in this example a paragraph (Normal Paragraph), and look at the preview to make sure it is the right one.
5. Click Save.

The element now sits in the section where you added it. Click the language link in Page info to see how it looks on your page.

You add more and other elements the same way. Feel free to try different ones: the eye icon always shows you a preview first. In this example we add two more:

• A Branded row: a visual block with images next to a piece of text.
• An Application Form: a form where a visitor can leave an open application.

This is how the page then looks on the website:

Managing page elements: default or custom

Every element on your page sits on a row with a few buttons. From left to right:

Default: shared with other pages

An element marked default uses the content as it is filled in under Content → Page elements. The same element can sit on several pages. Change it there and it changes on every page it is on. Click default to open that shared element.

That saves a lot of work. A contact block or a row of USPs that sits on ten pages, you change once instead of ten times. So use the shared content wherever you can.

Custom: for this page only

If you want the content to be different on this page only, click the closed padlock (Make element custom with custom content). Change the content and save. The padlock opens, the element says custom and the row gets a coloured border. From now on this page is separate from the shared element. Use the pencil next to it to change the content again later.

To go back to the shared content, click the open padlock (Reset to default page element content). Your own changes on this page are then gone.

Moving elements

Use the four arrows to drag an element to another spot, also into another section. That way you move a form from Top elements to Side elements, for example. Then click Save to keep the new order.

In short: start with the shared content. Only make an element custom when the content really has to be different on this page. Then it is the quickest way.

Adding your page to the menu

A visitor will not find a page that nothing links to. There are two ways to link it: a link from another page, for example in a paragraph or a button, or a place in your main menu. This is how you add it to the menu:

1. Go to Content → Menus and click Create.
2. Fill in the Title for each language. That is the text shown in the menu.
3. Under Menu target, choose Item is page.
4. Under Page, search for your page and select it.
5. Click Save.
6. Back in the Menu tree, drag the item to the right place. If you drop it onto another item, it becomes a submenu of that item.
7. Click Save order.

Under Menu target you can also choose Item is url, for a link to another website, or Item is heading for a heading with a submenu below it. An item linked as Item is page follows the page. If you change the slug later, the link in the menu still works. And if the page has an end date, the item disappears from the menu by itself on that day.

Managing pages: copying, switching off and deleting

You find all your pages again under Content → Pages. Click the title or the edit icon and you are back on the Content tab, with everything described in the previous chapters.

• Copying: the copy icon creates a new page with the same settings and elements. The title gets "- Copy" added to it. Save the copy first, after that you can edit the elements. Default elements stay shared, custom elements get their own copy. That way you do not have to rebuild a page that looks like an existing one. Do change the title, the slug and the meta description, otherwise the two pages look too similar to Google.
• Switching off: the switch under Status takes a page offline without losing it. See Frequently asked questions.
• Deleting: the bin icon throws the page away. If in doubt, switch it off instead.

Frequently asked questions

Will Google find my page?

Yes. Every published page is in your sitemap, on your own domain under /sitemap. Your robots.txt (on your domain under /robots.txt) points search engines to that sitemap. A page that is switched off, has not started yet or is past its end date is not in it. If Active Robots is switched off in your website settings, your robots.txt keeps all search engines out. That is deliberate on a website that is still being built. More on this in Google for Jobs: your vacancies in Google's job search.

How do I take a page offline for a while?

Switch off the switch under Status in the overview of Content → Pages. Visitors then get the 404 page. You can still view the page as long as you are logged in, with a message at the bottom saying the page is not published.

I switched the page off, but it is still in the menu. Why?

The menu hides a page by itself when the start date has not been reached yet or the end date has passed. The switch under Status does not do that. Remove the menu item under Content → Menus as well, otherwise a visitor who clicks it ends up on the 404 page.

Can I let a page go live on a set date?

Yes, with Publication start date on the wrench tab. Do read the note in The wrench tab: publication and findability.

Why can't I create a new page under Job pages?

Booston creates vacancy pages, recruiter pages, branch pages, blog pages, job group pages and story pages itself, from the part of the dashboard they belong to. So you add a vacancy, recruiter or blog, and the page follows by itself.

Need help?

Stuck, or not sure how best to build a page? Email support@booston.io or call 085 0044 215 and mention:

• the name of your environment;
• which page it is about and what you want to achieve;
• the message you see, if there is an error.

Would you rather go through your pages together? Book a free 30 minute online demo, and we will go through it with you. Job Done!