# Docs.openreferral.org and signposting to individual Profiles

**URL:** <https://forum.openreferral.org/t/docs-openreferral-org-and-signposting-to-individual-profiles/459>\
**Category:** Technical\
**Created:** [November 9, 2023, 2:30pm UTC](https://forum.openreferral.org/t/docs-openreferral-org-and-signposting-to-individual-profiles/459 "2023-11-09T14:30:26Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![mrshll](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/57b2e6/32.png) [@mrshll](https://forum.openreferral.org/u/mrshll)\
**Post date:** [November 9, 2023, 2:30pm UTC](https://forum.openreferral.org/t/docs-openreferral-org-and-signposting-to-individual-profiles/459/1 "2023-11-09T14:30:26Z")

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A recent email discussion w/ @MikeThacker-iStandUK , @Dan-ODS and @bloom highlighted to me that we perhaps lack clarity on how we want to signpost and link to individual Profiles from the [docs.openreferral.org](http://docs.openreferral.org) site. I was wondering if the community had any takes on this?

At the moment we have the [ORUK Profile](https://docs.openreferraluk.org/en/latest/) active/released and I think we’re expecting a 211 profile to emerge sometime in the not-too-distant future. It’s reasonable to expect even more to emerge in various states of readiness as HSDS is adopted and adapted to local contexts.

How, and how prominently, should the [docs.openreferral.org](http://docs.openreferral.org) site signpost known Profiles? Either individually or collectively.

Currently — since the documentation review — there is a [List of Known Profiles](http://docs.openreferral.org/en/documentation-review/hsds/using_profiles.html#known-hsds-profiles) on the “Using Profiles” page in the Guidance section. **Is this enough or should we be signposting individual Profiles in another way?**

My take on this so far has been that the use-cases for signposting individual Profiles are limited to:

1. introducing someone new to HSDS to a Profile that may be of use/interest to them.
2. helping someone navigate to the (external) docs site of a Profile that they already know about by name.

This is because individual Profiles are pretty self-contained and are expected to host their own documentation for the most part. A user of a Profile should ideally have very little use of the [docs.openreferral.org](http://docs.openreferral.org) site in terms of reference material.

But we still need to support people discovering Profile documentation via the [docs.openreferral.org](http://docs.openreferral.org) site. There are a few ways I can think of that would make individual Profiles more prominent on the docs:

- A new section in the navbar called “HSDS Profiles” (or similar), where each link is an external link to that Profile’s documentation site.
- A new top-level page in the Guidance section which links to individual Profiles. The benefit of a new page is that it’s in the main navbar so people can spot it easily.
- Some copy on the landing page asking people “Are you looking for one of these HSDS Profiles?” with the links there.

There’s likely more things that I haven’t thought of! So the asks from this thread are:

- What do you feel the role of the [docs.openreferral.org](http://docs.openreferral.org) site is in relation to Profiles?
- How prominent should links to individual Profiles be on the [docs.openreferral.org](http://docs.openreferral.org) site?
- Where/how should the [docs.openreferral.org](http://docs.openreferral.org) site link to Profiles, given your answer to the above?
