Tutorial:Creating a theme entry page

Using an alphabetical category page to provide an overview to a statistical subtheme and access its articles efficiently, is only possible if the number of articles is not too large, with a maximum of plusminus 10. For larger sets of articles, a more user-friendly and structured entry point is needed: a theme entry page.

A theme entry page is a logically organised and user-friendly entry portal page to all Statistics Explained content on a particular subtheme (such as Structural business statistics, Environment or Labour market).

Size and levels

Theme entry pages should be as short as possible to serve as an efficient portal for users, and not longer than one screen view (so they can be overseen without scrolling);
if one screen view is not sufficient to organise direct access to all pages of a subtheme, intermediate pages at deeper levels have to be created for a subset of articles; these should also be one screen view at most; the number of levels of intermediate pages has to be minimal, in fucntion of the number of pages to be accessed;
the overall architecture of a subtheme's set of theme entry page plus intermediate pages depends on the total number of articles within that subtheme and their number within each of the headings of the theme entry page.

Page names

The theme entry page name for a subtheme is the name of that subtheme in the hierarchical theme tree.

Names at deeper layers start with the subtheme name and are further specified:

Subtheme by topic;
Subtheme by perspective;
Subtheme by sector;
...
Subtheme - detailed studies;
Subtheme - background articles;
Subtheme - Sigma articles.

Structure of theme entry page

The theme entry page (at the first level) has the following internal structure:

a first split in articles between on the one hand statistical articles presenting data and on the other hand all other 'metadata' pages, is mandatory, as is the use of 'Statistical articles' and 'Methodology / Metadata' as level-2 headings;
within 'Statistical articles' the first category contains one general article (or at most a very limited number) - in this case a second layer should not be necessary, nor a subheading; other articles, ranging from more specific to very detailed, should be organised either by level of detail or subject ('topic', 'perspective', 'sector' etc.); a second layer may be needed here, if the number of articles is too large to be accomodated on one screen view;
within 'Methodology / Metadata' the subheadings 'Background articles', 'Glossary' and 'Sigma articles' are mandatory; 'Glossary' links directly to the subtheme glossary; 'Background articles' and 'Sigma articles' head a list of articles, either on the same page if there are not too many, or on a second-layer page;
if a heading or subheading (for instance 'Sigma articles') has no content, it should be taken out.

Model

A model for a theme entry page (theme navigation page on first level) is available; it contains all necessary headings and links, to be modified as required.