Sites which have a large image carousel at the top of the front page are using the Feature slide content type. To create a new feature slide:
- Select Content ⇒ Add Content ⇒ Feature slide from the administration toolbar.
- Complete the information requested:
- Title — this is required, however, it is for administrative purposes so that you can identify the item easily; it does not appear on the slide.
- Image — click Choose File to find the image you want to add, then click Upload. Images must be larger than 1500 pixels wide x 720 pixels tall. If the image does not meet the size requirements, you will not be able to upload the image and will receive a warning. If the image is larger than 1500 pixels wide x 720 pixels tall, it will be scaled and cropped to 1500 x 720. If it does meet the requirements, you will see the image appear (as a small image as well as a larger image). See Working with images for full details on adding images.
- Background Image Description — This is required. Please give a brief description of the image you are using to describe the contents to people who use assistive technology.
- Feature Slide Big Text — not required; however, you can add a large headline for your slide in this field. It is recommended that this be no longer than just a few words.
- Feature Slide Caption — not required; however, you can place text at the bottom of your slide by adding it to this field. This can be longer text, but should not be more than a sentence or two.
- Call to Action Button — not required; however, you can add a link button to your slide with a call to action, such as “View the event” or “Read the article”, and link it to the appropriate page or another website.
- Click Save at the top of the page.
Feature Slide Best Practices
Your home page Feature Slides are often the first things someone sees when they visit your site. As part of the Web Accessibility guidelines, these should have strong color contrast and be completely legible. Other tips for creating effective feature slides include:
- Do not include informative text as part of the image; instead, use the caption field. This is very important as the text content will not be available to people who use assistive technology. Using text as a design element embedded in the image is acceptable (e.g. a word cloud), provided the description adequately describes the contents of the image (e.g. A word cloud showing all of the great adjectives undergraduates use when talking about our program.)
- Keep the caption text short, ideally less than 120 characters.
- Providing a Call to Action Button allows you to keep the caption short and provide much more content and details (additional text, images, PDFs, video, etc.) on the page to which the button links. Note that you can link to any page on your site (such as a course, event, or basic page) or any external site provided the URL is valid.
- Change out the slides as frequently as possible; ideally once every few months.
- Include a Background Image Description for the feature slide image (required). This should not duplicate the caption, but should be a description of the image. For example, if you are using a feature slide to promote an event at Duke Chapel, the description text may be "Duke Chapel in Springtime." while the caption is the title, date, and location of the event: “KISS Performs Live! April 1, 9:00 pm at Duke Chapel”.
Image resources
Finding images that work well in the landscape aspect ratio can sometimes be a challenge. Below are some resources for quality images that are large enough to meet the size restrictions of the feature slide image. Care should be taken to provide a photo credit when required.
There are many other sources for non-Duke images, such as Shutterstock (a pay service) and Unsplash (free, but may require attribution). A list of freelance photographers available for hire can be found on the Duke Style Guide website.