CMS Guide

Your site's navigation will most often contain links to pages within your own website. Occasionally, you might need to include a link in your navigation which brings users to another website. Learn how to do that with an External Link asset.

Within the text on your page, you can add links to other pages and files. Links in text can be one of two types, depending on where they point: internal and external.

• Internal Links are for pages or files, including PDFs, that you have access to within Cascade CMS.
• External Links are for other sites on the web, including other Brandeis sites.

1. Navigate to the page on which you want to place your link and click Edit.
2. In any content type that uses the WYSIWYG toolbar, select the words that you want to serve as a link. Then click the Link icon on the WYSIWYG toolbar. (It looks like several links of chain.)
   
   A small window should pop up.
3. For Internal Links follow the instructions in 3A. For External Links, please skip to step 3B.
   
   A. The Internal option should be checked by default. Click on the Link Source: Choose File, Page, or Link button. The Chooser Panel window will open on the right.
   
   The Chooser Panel will allow you to link to a Recent page, or Browse, or Upload an asset to link to. Please see our page on the Chooser Panel if you need assistance.
   
   Once you have selected the desired asset, click the blue Choose button. After you confirm, you should see the full path to the asset you selected  below the Link field. 
   
   (To continue adding an Internal Link, please skip to step 4.)
   
   B. For External Links, choose the External button. In the Link Source field, type in the full URL of the link (including https://).
   
   
4. For both internal and external links, in addition to assigning a link, you will see additional fields:

• Anchor, learn more on the Inserting Anchors page.
• Target, which determines whether the link opens in the same or a new browser window/tab. For accessibility purposes, this should be set to None, even if users are being directed to a different website.
• Title, which will display if a user hovers over the linked text. Not required.
• Class, which can be ignored, unless you are creating a button.

5. Click Ok when you are done.
6. If you added an external link, and you put in a URL that used http:// (as opposed to https://), you will receive a system message indicating that you may want to consider adding a link that uses https//. You do not have to update the URL to https://; click OK and you will be able to continue editing the page.
   1. If the site you are linking to has a secure version (i.e., works if you use https://), you can edit the link to update the link to https://.

You can create a link to an email address in any Content Type that has an external link field, including the sidebar.