Placeholders

In most websites, there are strings or variables that will be used throughout the site. Especially in sites that need to support multiple languages, it is not a good idea to hard code such values. Instead placeholders can be used and managed centrally.

Placeholders can be managed as a spreadsheet that is either in the root folder of the project or in the locales root folder in the case of a multilingual site.

• Name the file placeholders for Google Docs.
• Name the file placeholders.xlsx for SharePoint.

The spreadsheet has to contain at least two columns titled Key and Text.

• The Key column is an identifier that is transformed automatically to be easily accessible via code.
• The Text is the literal text (or string) for a placeholder with a given key.

After making changes to your placeholder spreadsheet, you can preview your changes via the sidekick and have your stakeholders check that the new placeholders are working on your .page preview website before publishing the placeholder changes to your production website. See the Sidekick documentation for more information about switching between environments.

Are you a developer and curious to learn how to use placeholders in your code? Look here.