Menu Systems, Books and Lists
organizing and structuring your content
Group admins and members can contribute content (web pages) to their own and the Semel Institute websites using the 'Add' buttons from their Group Navigation Bar. But how to structure them? There are 3 main ways that pages are structured:
- Linked by a navigation menu system
- Put into books
- Become part of structured lists
The Semel Institute has a master navigation system (based on Research | Education | Health | Wellness | About), which you can see on the sitemap. There are also separate sub-navigation systems, usually one for each group website; these menus are either a horizontal bar across the top of the page, or a block in the left sidebar. The active page is always highlighted, but there are currently no 'dropdown' or 'flyout' menus for accessibility reasons.
Currently the only way to add pages into any of the navigation menus is by 'super' administrators. So if you need to alter your menu or get a page included, you will need to consult with the site administrator - who also benefits from a high level viewpoint of the whole website.
A book is a set of pages tied together in a hierarchical sequence, perhaps with chapters, sections, subsections, and so on. You can use books for manuals, site resource guides, Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs), or whatever you'd like. Users who have permission can create a book and write, review, modify, or rearrange the pages. Many users can work together on a book and separately add pages.
When creating a new web page (usually a Page or Wiki) you can place it into a 'book' structure in the 'Book outline' tab. You can either create a new book, or add it into a 'book' that already exists in your group (where you will be prompted to define the 'parent' web page). From the top level 'parent' page, you can add 'child' pages up to 9 layers deep. The only current constraint (April 2010) is that most users cannot re-structure the order of the book. Contact your friendly site administrator for help with this.
Why bother? Any book page will have links to its parent ('up'), siblings, and will list all child pages automatically. When you select the print friendly view (the printer icon at the foot of most pages), you will automatically include all the child pages in this view. For example, the whole Help section is structured as a 'book'
Many web pages, such as research projects and training programs can easily be turned into query-able lists. You will find that as you add such pages via your admin dashboards they will automatically be added to you public pages [accessible via your navigation system] that incorporate such views of lists. If you do not have such pages, or require specific queries of data, contact the site administrator for assistance.
And don't forget... It's important to add the relevant Taxonomy terms through the Vocabularies tab when creating a new page - this is another valuable way of indexing and classifying your pages, especially when considering search engine optimization.
