How do I edit Vet Center featured content?
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Veteran-centered purpose
"As a Veteran, I want to know how this Vet Center's groups, events, and activities create a warm, friendly, and inviting environment so that I understand how it is different from other VA facility types."
Content intent
We designed the Vet Center featured content area so that Vet Center editors can showcase up to two short, local "spotlight" items such as events, activities, or specialty groups. The spotlights are designed to help Veterans understand the unique, personal nature of a Vet Center and how they are different from a VA Clinic or VA Medical Center. Every Vet Center page will also display the same national spotlight.
The content for these spotlights is required to be short so there are restrictions on the fields.
- Short titles (plain text, max 80 characters, including spaces)
- Short paragraph content (limited rich text, max 240 characters, including spaces)
- Optional "Call to action" link (URL and plain text, max 40 characters, including spaces)
Before you start
Before you add or edit a spotlight you must
- Have an account in Drupal
- Have permissions to edit content on a Vet Center
We also strongly recommend that you read the Best practices section of this document so that you create a great experience for Veterans visiting your site.
Instructions
- Log in to view your Vet Center dashboard.
- Find the Featured Content card and click Go to Featured Content.
- Find the item you want to edit and click Edit.
- Edit the Section Header.
- Edit the Description.
- If you want to add an optional Call to action button, click Add Call to action.
- Enter Button Link - this is the URL that the Call to action will link out to
- Enter Button Label- this is the text of the Call to action. It's important that the text of this link is 508-compliant. See the VA.gov Content Style Guide for how to write correct link text.
- Click Collapse so that your Call to action content is saved.
- Scroll down to Editorial Workflow.
- Click to select a Save as state and enter a Revision log message.
- Click Save.
- Preview your content to be sure that your content is not too long and you are creating a good web experience for Veterans. Learn how to Preview a Page.
Best practices
When you create a spotlight for your Vet Center you should be shooting for about 6-8 lines of text as you view it from the Veteran's experience. If the content is too long, Veterans may not scroll down to view the services that your Vet Center offers.
- Preview your page to view the web experience of your page so that you can be sure you're creating a good web experience for our Veterans
- Use Plain Language and the VA.gov style guide for your content
- Keep the content short and easy to read/skim
- Try not to have more than one link in the spotlight. Keep the Veteran focused on the Call-to-action.
- Use appropriate Call-to-action link text for 508-compliance (if your content has a call-to-action)
Example
We want to ensure that the spotlights don't push the "meat" of the page - the list of services and their descriptions - too far down on the page. We also need to remember that over 50% of our Veterans are using mobile devices to access our websites.
Too much content
This first image is an example of some great content for Veterans, but it's a bit too much for the purposes of this spotlight.
Edited for better presentation
We edited the content above in this second image so that you can see how we made some content decisions to better align with the best practices. In particular we focused on:
- Limiting the number of lines of content in the bullets
- Focusing on one event rather than a long list of events
- Use strong call-to-action text
- Most important: Using the Preview function to view the site from the Veteran's perspective to be sure it isn't too long!
We are trying to highlight things that make your Vet Center unique from other VA facility types and other Vet Centers. Sometimes less is more!
