Each lesson links to material that helps the teacher teach the lesson. In WordPress to create a link from the lesson to the related material, you first need to create the related material so you can copy its URL for the link.

Types of Linked Lesson Materials

There are several types of linked lesson materials:

1. web pages that exist elsewhere in the American Centuries site such as Essays or Collection Items
2. web pages that exist on other websites such as the Library of Congress website
3. web pages that are exclusively for the lesson in question and don’t yet exist on American Centuries
4. PDF files

1. Existing Centuries Pages

For example: Essays, Collection items, activities, etc – Copy the title of the item from the related materials list; next, highlight the text for which you want to make the link, choose the Link Tool from the editing tool bar, and paste or type the title of the page you want to link to. A dropdown will show pages that match–choose the one you want, and WP will fill in the URL for the link. Even if the page is not yet published, it will appear in the dropdown and the real URL will be saved in the link. All without leaving the lesson editing screen. See example below:

2. External Websites

First check to make sure the link is working and up-to-date; if not, try briefly to relocate it using a search engine; if the page no longer exists, remove the broken link but leave the link text with strikethru text formatting so the reader can see what used to be there.

3. New Lesson-only Centuries Pages

1. from Dashboard > All Pages, click the “Add New” button to create a new page;
2. copy/paste in the title from related material page in old Centuries;
3. copy/paste the contents of the old page into the new page
4. in the right hand column, use the following settings:
   • Template: Default Template
   • Category: Lesson
   • Parent Page: the lesson the related material is linked from
5. publish the page, then copy the URL which is found in the upper right column;
6. return to the lesson and paste the URL into the link field.

4. PDF Files

Related material that’s clearly intended to be printed such as a worksheet should be made into into PDF files and uploaded to Media Library. The easiest way to do this is:

1. browse to the linked page in old Centuries;
2. print the page but save it as a PDF from the print dialogue box;
3. name the PDF file with the following convention: “curricula-[name of curricula]-lessonX-[name of worksheet].pdf, e.g. “curricula-1704-lesson2-worksheet.pdf”;
4. after saving the PDF to your computer, go to Dashboard > Media Library and upload it; you can copy the url from the Media Library upload page;
5. Return to the lesson and paste in the URL, PDFs should open in new tab.