Adding external links from service landing and sub landing pages

[willguv]

Service landing and sub landing pages only support child pages that are part of that LGD install. It's not easy to link from these pages to third party sites

• How often do councils need to link out to third party sites in this way? (it's common, see examples below)
• How do we make this easy for content designers and consistent with other architectural decisions?

Slack discussion: https://localgovdrupal.slack.com/archives/C020SJRQX2M/p1721396960717119

Council examples

https://www.ipswich.gov.uk/services/housing ('Gateway To Homechoice' link at foot of page)

https://www.west-lindsey.gov.uk/jobs-volunteering-employment ('Current vacancies')

@benhillsjones I know you have a few examples - could you post them in this thread please? Thanks

[willguv]

I think we need to:

• Change the link page component type to include a summary
• In service landing and sub landing pages, allow content designers to search for and select external links

[willguv]

Ryan at H&F has created a new 'external link' content type

Maria at BF has done some custom work to overcome this

Andy at Brighton's solution is to replace all of this with paragraphs (find out more)

We need to agree:

• the best way to architect this
• whether to show something is an external link

Let's have a one off meeting about this

[andybroomfield]

Eg. https://www.brighton-hove.gov.uk/fostering-brighton-hove

Uses a new paragraph type called tiles

Which is used to build out new style landing pages.

[andybroomfield]

I think in general the landing and linking structure needs a rethink, as it was based on landing -> sub hub -> service page. That has evolved considerbly since it's initial inception (2018)?

Theres also a duality between the landing pages which just uses entity references, and the sub landing pages which uses link fields and can have external links, but becuase of the way the link fields renders if its an internal link it will get the title and summary, whereas if it is an external link or a link to a non node page, it will just display the title and look out of place (hence of lot of workarounds with redirect pages). It also means changing a link title or description isn't possible as changing it in the link fields doesn't effect the rending in the front end.

The sub landing pages are also included in a paragraph topic_list_builder which has options for a header and taxonomy link. This is a holdover from sub landing pages which would split into many sections though I think it's only BHCC that makes use of them, and that is on leagacy pages.

Proposal

• A new navigation type (possibly a paragraph or a custom entitiy)
• This contains Link, title and description text
• Option to set the title and description to update from the linked page (if a node)
• As it would then be fieldable, councils could add the image if they wished.
• Could be contained within a listing type paragraph for those that need them and still want the sectioning ability. I would suggest there is a default one open that hides the title and taxonomy fields by default, and an advanced one that can add them or have them behind a toggle.
• Option to autowire / populate this from linked pages or use the what links here widget at the top.

Above would replace the current landing / sub-landing link structure, so would need to handled in an update hook. Has possible implications that it makes a major version change.