Frequently asked questions (FAQ)

Frequently asked questions (FAQS) are created and edited using content types. You must have permissions to be able to access content types as it is not part of the normal CMS editing process. Please contact your local friendly CMS administrator if you think you need permission.

Anatomy of an FAQ

An FAQ consists of two parts – the FAQ item (the question and answer), the FAQ group (a collection of questions and answers). Optionally, there is also an FAQ group collection which is  a collection of groups, see below for more details on this.

Start with the FAQ group and work down

Everything that you could ever wish to do with FAQs you can do at the group level. This includes creating the group as well as creating/editing or deleting items. As such, we recommend that you always work at the group level and these notes will assume that you are.

Creating an FAQ group

When creating a new group in content types, click on the green button on the top right

FAQ group new entry button

and then select FAQ group from the list.

FAQ selection list

You will then be presented with the FAQ group screen and you will need to fill in some basic details.

Title
This is for internal use only. The title should be what the FAQ group is called and it would also be useful if you added the date in front of this so we know when it was last updated.

For example: 2023-09-09 – House hunting questions

Heading
This is the actual title of the FAQ and can be displayed on the web page.

Explanatory
This is a sentence describing the FAQ. It is optional but can be useful if there is anything that readers should know that is not explained anyway else.

FAQ Items
This is actually where you create, edit or remove FAQ items. See below for more details.

Once you have finished creating the group, you can click Save and then publish. Once you press publish, the FAQ group is live. Note that publishing the group will only publish the group, not any individual items.

Editing an  FAQ group

If there is an FAQ group that already exists that you wish to edit, then you need to find it first. You can either type in the name (or part of the name) in the Keywords box or you can select FAQ group from the content type box. This will then bring up a relevant selection on the right side of the screen and then you can simply click the group you wish to edit and you will jump to the FAQ group screen where you can edit the group or the Items. Remember to save and publish!

Creating FAQ items

Creating a new FAQ item is easy, simply click the ‘Create a new FAQ item’ underneath the green Select an FAQ item.

Creating faq items

This will bring up the FAQ item page (see Editing FAQ items below).

Editing FAQ items

From the FAQ group simply click the pencil icon FAQ item that you wish to edit.

Editing FAQ item

The first time you edit an item it will ask whether you wish to edit a linked entry. You will need to click OK but you can also check the box to not sure this message again.

First time FAQ edit

You will now have the ability to edit the FAQ item.

Title
This is the internal title of the FAQ. It should consist of the FAQ question and also the date that the FAQ was last updated. This is important so that we know how up-to-date a particular question is. Please edit this date whenever you update the item.

Question
This is the FAQ question as it will be displayed on the webpage.

Answer
This is the answer to the question and it will be displayed on the webpage. You do have some formatting options but note that unlike a normal CMS page what you see here may not be how the question is displayed. Please follow all normal CMS editing rules – use header style for headers and not bolded text, no italics, no bolded words and so on. You cannot insert images.

Links are slightly special.  When adding a link to a page, all links must be entered in full, there are no CMS links. This is important as due to this, if the destination page moves or is deleted, the link in the FAQ will fail.

Email links are treated as normal links but you must add mailto: and then then email address. For example

mailto:d.adams@brighton.ac.uk

Once you are happy with the FAQ item, you should save and publish.

It is important to know that once the item is published, it is live. Thus if you are editing an existing FAQ group, the question in that group will have now updated.

Once you have finished, pressing publish will return you to the FAQ group or you can press the x in the top left corner to stop editing and return you to the FAQ group page.

Re-ordering FAQ items

On the FAQ group you may decide that you wish to reorder the item list. This is very easy, simply click and hold the dotted items on the left and move the item to where you want it.

Reordering FAQ items

Removing FAQ items

If you wish to remove an FAQ item, simply click on the three dots to the right of the item and select remove entry. This only removes the item from the group and does not delete it should you wish to re-add it again later on.

Removing FAQ items

Adding FAQ items

If you wish to add an existing FAQ item to an FAQ group (possibly because it had been removed earlier) then from the FAQ group click the green Add more button.

This will then display a long list of EVERY FAQ item so hopefully you have remembered what it was called.  Type in what you remember and it should appear on the list.

FAQ group collection

An FAQ group collection is, as the name suggests, a collection of groups. On a webpage it will be displayed as a list of groups with a menu at the top of the first group so the user can jump to any of the groups in the collection. The FAQ group collection does not get used much as there is not usually too much need to add several different FAQs to a single webpage. Another reason is that you cannot add content between the FAQs in the collection, so the more common usage is to several several groups instead. However, if you do need several FAQs all split by a title then an FAQ group collection may be for you.

Creating an FAQ group collection is very similar to creating a group except that instead of adding items to a group, you add groups to the collection.

If you wish to create an FAQ group collection then instead of starting with a group, start with the collection. From here, you can build groups and items as normal.

Putting a group on a CMS page

Creating an FAQ group is only the first step in making an FAQ available for the web. The second step is to actually put it on a webpage. To do this, you need to have a webpage created (or have an existing one which you want to add the FAQ too) and a panel ready for the FAQ. We recommend that you use a full width panel for the FAQ, headers are not usually required on the panel as the FAQ has one built in.

Once you have the page prepared, inserting the FAQ is done by using a webcontrol. You’ll find them under UOB FAQs and you’ll want either FAQ group display or FAQ group collection display if you are using FAQ group collections.

FAQ webcontrol

You have three options withe FAQ groups – whether to display the heading or not (and what size for the heading, stay with H2), whether to include the Explanatory sentence or not (if you have one), and finally what FAQ group to actually include on the page. Just start typing part of the name of the group and the search should bring up the FAQ you are looking for.

faq group webcontrol display

On the webpage, the FAQ will show up as follows.

webcontrol on web page

The FAQs will appear in preview.

Please note that you cannot place individual FAQ items onto a page, only FAQ groups