faq.coronavirus.gov

A Coronavirus FAQ for the United States of America.

API

A JSON API is available for site content. See the API documentation.

Technology overview

This website is developed using the U.S. Web Design System, is deployed on Federalist, search is provided by Search.gov, and analytics are provided by the Digital Analytics Program. This code uses the Jekyll site engine.

You may want to familiarize yourself with:

• Jekyll - The primary site engine that builds your code and content.
• Front Matter - The top of each page/post includes keywords within -- tags. This is meta data that helps Jekyll build the site, but you can also use it to pass custom variables.
• U.S. Web Design System.

Getting acquainted

The _categories folder contains the question groups, or categories, which are displayed on the site. Its title property is what is visible on the site.

In the _content folder you’ll find a folder which matches the name property of a category for each category. Inside that folder is a file representing each question in that category, which has a categories property which also matches the category’s name property. Each question may belong to multiple categories, but the first category is considered its "primary category", which should correspond to its directory.

For more detailed coverage, see the Content management guide.

How to edit

Content on this site is generated by federal government agencies who submit FAQ content to our team for publishing. To ensure we’re all using consistent voice and style, we have a content strategy guidance.

Adding an urgent alert

On the index.html you can add an urgent USWDS-style banner by changing the front matter. Turn the banner.display key to true to display the banner.

Icons

Adding an top questions icon - if you need to add an additional icon add it to the _assets/images/icons directory.

And then if you'd like to use in a top question - add it in the _data/homepage_promotion.yml.

Editing by downloading and running the source code

The easiest way to get started locally, after the repository is forked, is to use Docker. After Docker is installed and running, run:

docker-compose build
docker-compose up

This will build and install all required dependencies, then compile the site, and finally start a development server which is accessible at localhost:4000. The server will recompile the site automatically as files change. Use CTRL + C to shutdown the server.

Do not edit files in the _site/ folder. These files are auto-generated, and any change you make in the folder will be overwritten.

Running without Docker

To run without Docker, you’ll need the version of Ruby that’s specified in .ruby-version. Then, to install dependencies:

gem install bundler
bundle install
npm install

Finally, to start the site, run:

npm start

Open your web browser to localhost:4000 to view your site. The server will recompile the site automatically as files change. Use CTRL + C to shutdown the server.

Automated testing

Tests are automatically run on commits and pull requests by CircleCI. They can be run manually:

npm test

The test suite includes:

• HTMLProofer, which looks for some basic accessibility issues, for broken links, and more. We’ve also extended it to check for well-formed links.
• jest, jest-puppeteer, and puppeteer for custom integration tests. See what’s tested in the test directory.

Initial localization support

The jekyll template has a feature to support localization.

Languages supported will be added to the i18n portion of the site config in _config.yml.

To add in localization back into the hero component, uncomment the comment in the _includes/hero.html around the i18n-controls paragraph tag.

The plugin for parsing a the language of a file can be found in _plugins/jekyll_parse_language.rb

Adding localized content

• Append .lang-{2 character language code} to _content files to indicate their language.
• This creates a /{2 character language code}/ output directory in the site folder.
• We can use {{ post.lang }} in files to reference the current language and link to the right language in URLs.
• The default language is en for files without the suffix.

This approach keeps each translation next to each other in directories, and allows us to filter based on page.lang on pages.

Maintaining a secure codebase

See SECURITY.

Contributing and how to open, merge, and deploy pull requests

See CONTRIBUTING.

Public domain

This project is in the worldwide public domain. As stated in CONTRIBUTING:

This project is in the public domain within the United States, and copyright and related rights in the work worldwide are waived through the CC0 1.0 Universal public domain dedication.

All contributions to this project will be released under the CC0 dedication. By submitting a pull request, you are agreeing to comply with this waiver of copyright interest.