Tours are a collection of stories that have something in common. Tours can be organized based on thematic connections or geographic proximity. Tours have a tour description that in addition to providing general information on the tour topic, explains how the stories within the tour are connected.  

While images are the primary media format used in ExploreCU, audio and video files are included whenever possible. Hearing about an event from someone who was there, or watching an event unfold through a video are especially valuable sources of information.

The creator of a story is the person or entity that wrote it. The creator will appear in a citation for a story, just above the social media buttons.

The Narrative is the text within a story. It contains basic information about the story, but also engages users to think about its social, political, cultural, or historical importance.

A geolocation is the physical location of where a story is located or took place. The structure of ExploreCU is geographically based, and so geolocations are especially important for stories that have a specific locations, such as buildings. For stories that are more broadly focused, geolocations are used to anchor the story's content to a place so that users will be able to browse the map and find it. For example, Memorial Stadium is the geolocation for many of the stories in the "Homecoming at the University of Illinois" tour. 

Images provide visual context for a story and often contain important historical evidence. Image captions describe what is happening in the image. It is important that you note the source of the image in the image caption. If you are not the copyright holder, or the image is not in the public domain, you will need to ask the copyright holder for permission to use his or her work. 

Tours in ExploreCU are comprised of stories. A story, also called a location, is made up of several components such as a title, a geolocation, a narrative, related sources, a creator, tags and subjects, images and image captions, and potentially other media such as audio and video files.   

Related Sources are citations for sources used while researching the story, as well as any other sources related to the story that would be helpful for users who would like to explore the topic furher. 

Tags and Subjects help to organize the content in ExploreCU to enable users to find content they are interested in. Tags group a broad range of subjects together, such as "bronzes" or the "main quad," whereas subjects refer to what a story is about.