Branding Guidelines

1.  Templating

All pages in The Vistua Hub use the same template, Vox III. The exact version number of this template appears at the bottom of each Hub page and the details of the template may vary from time to time.

Most aspects of the template cannot be changed except by the Administrator. There are, however a few things that can be done to influence the template.

1.1  Sidebar

The sidebar is customizable, except that the "Actions" cannot be changed. The default sidebar is located at Main.SideBar. Each page will show a side-bar unless the (:noleft:) directive is specified, unless a very good reason to do so exists, this directive should not be specified.

Each page's sidebar can be found in (WikiGroup).SideBar, for example About.SideBar, Wiki.SideBar, etc. Some sidebars may require a password to chanage. The "Actions" can be suppressed by specifying (:noactions:), however the actions remain available and can be activated by modifying the URI.

1.2  Titling

The title is the PageName, by default. However; the title can be (and often should be) overridden, this is accomplished with the (:title :) directive. Specify the title after title and before the :).

The title should be overridden when the PageName is a camel-case word like BrandingGuidelines, or is a short slug for a long article title. Knowledge Base titles should normally not be overridden.

The title can be suppressed with the (:notitle:) directive. This should usually be done on pages with a header graphic, such as Support.HomePage

2.  News & Notes

2.1  Titling conventions

News and Notes stories PageNames must begin NodeXXX, where XXX is a serial number. The second part of the PageName should be a slug. For example an article titled "Major Version Upgrade" could be named "Node123MajorVersion"

2.2  Style Guidelines

In addition to the general Style Guidelines, N&N should be longish and should have a formal tone, they should contain all technical argumentation, and laymen's explanations.

3.  General Stylistic Guidelines

3.1  Person

3.2  Illustrations

Most illustrations should be floated left, or right, in a frame (lframe or rframe wikistyles can do this) with a caption.

Images that are referred to directly in the text, as in "As shown in the following image" should be center-aligned (center wikistyle) and have a caption.

3.3  Links

It is strongly encouraged for pages to link amongst themselves, and to appropriate external sites. In News & Notes, and the Knowledge Base, external links should normally be collected in alphabetical order under a level two heading, after all the body text.

It is best to use in-line links, where the most important words in a sentence are the link, under no circumstances should generic phrases like "click here" or "see this site" ever be used, they are insulting to the blind and cause usability problems, the W3C Quality Assurance Activity has published advice on link semantics.

On The Hub, because of it's "WikiNature" it was formerly acceptable to put a notice such as this one, at the top of a page.

That notice must be left aligned and italicized. However, it is preferable to write like this, and whenever possible this new guideline should be used. All pages with the old guideline should be transitioned to the new one.

You can also do this under a heading, either instead of a paragraph, or include a summary paragraph but put a "see also" above it.

Although we want to avoid bare Names in inline text where possible. It is acceptable to use bare PageNames if there is no way to construct a natural sounding sentence, if you must do this do not put a verb in the link, "See: Support.AudioMixing" is wrong.

3.4  Tables of Contents

In very long multi-section articles and FAQ articles, it is normally desirable to use a table of contents (use the (:toc-float:) markup).

Tables of Contents should never be used on News and Notes pages, even if they are very long and sectioned.

Do not put a "back to top" or similar link at the end of sections, even if you use a TOC.

3.5  Organizing Text

Use level two and level three headings to organize text. Please refrain from using level one headings as they have a special meaning on the VOX III template.

Unordered and ordered lists should be kept short, tables should be used to present information that can be tabulated, do not try to render complex statistical information as prose!

4.  Grammatic Issues

Standard U.S. English grammar, spelling and orthography are to be used on The Vistua Hub, with a minimum of technical jargon. Jargon is acceptable if plain English words for a thing do not currently exist.

4.1  Acronyms and Abbreviations

Acronyms and abbreviation should be used cautiously, whenever an acronym is first used, if it is not a common one such as FBI or CBS, it should be immediately defined. Periods are not to be used, prefer "FBI" to "F.B.I.".

It is normally correct to spell an acronym or abbreviation in upper case, however some acronyms spell out an English language word, for example "Gnu Network Object Model Environment", it may be spelled "Gnome" or "GNOME" depending on taste, if an acronym does not spell an English word it must be in upper case, prefer "AT&T" to "at&t", even though the company literature renders it in lower case. "Etc" should be in all lower case (except at the beginnings of sentences...).

Take care to avoid accidentally creating pleonasms, prefer "Your Problem Report ID Number is XXX" or "Your PRIN is XXX" to "Your PRIN number is XXX". ATM, PIN, RAM and numerous other abbreviations can cause this problem.

4.2  Miscellaneous Orthographic Conventions

• DO NOT use two spaces after a period. This practice is obsolete and only made what little sense it did, in the context of typewriting.
• Commas are to be used only when needed. Omit the serial comma unless the omission could cause ambiguity of meaning. Serial commas, except when needed for disambiguation, are an error, not an "Americanism" the only time you should always use a serial comma is when writing for publication by Oxford or Harvard University.
• Do not use two hyphen -- as an ersatz em-dash, the "—" character should be used for this, the dead key sequence to enter this is "[compose] ] [ [-]", the compose key and three hyphens. You may need to activate dead keys on your account.
• Do not use "(C)", "(R)", "SM", "TM" as ersatz copyright, registered trademark, service mark and trademark characters. the "©", "®", "™" and "℠" characters are for that purpose the dead keys can be used to generate them ([compose] [o] [c] or [r], [compose] [s] [m], [compose] [t] [m]).

5.  Referring to The Vistua Network.

The Vistua Network is a definite article, the word "the" is to be included, "The Vistua Network System" refers to actual technology and "The Vistua Network" refers to the organization. The acronym "VNS" may be used like this, "Due to technical restrictions of VNS software". Do not say "VNS System", that is a pleonasm.

Do not put a ™ after Vistua, it is not legally required because Vistua is spelled with a capital V.

Although the official Vistua Logo shows the name as "VISTUA", please do not spell it in upper case, only with initial capitals.

6.  Wiki-specific Conventions

6.1  CamelCase

All PageNames and wiki-terms should be in CamelCase because PageNames cannot contain spaces due to technical restrictions and because wiki-terms have historically been CamelCased (including the word CamelCase itself). The first character of a PageName must be in capitalized, also due to technical restrictions of how the server processes URI requests.

However, all pages the PageNames of which are in CamelCase, should have thier PageTitles overridden.

6.2  System Messages

There are a number of standard "message" templates that can be included on a page using this syntax: (:include Messages/SomeMessage:). Please refer to the the list of standard system messages to find their pagenames.

6.3  Custom Messages

Custom message-boxes can be created by using a division with the "tip", "important" or "caution" wikistyle. Please use with caution.

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