Section 4: Folder structures / site organization

Section 4.1: Introduction to your website's “guts”, the architecture

Each departmental site is housed in a series of Folders. These folders allow organization to each site, and allow it to be structured and compartmentalized. Each department's folder, and each sub-folder contain default pages that the user will be directed to when they click on the appropriate folder links. For main departmental folders, this will correspond to their homepage.

Due to this file organization, Plone adds features such as Copying and Pasting, which can be applied across several items at a time to facilitate rearranging your site structure. This can be done while in the “Contents” tab in any area of your website. 

Figure 4.1 – View within the “contents” Tab of the Main Faculty site

Section 4.2: The Contents Tab

Many items housed in a department's main folder are hidden from view so the public cannot access or view certain areas. These areas can include folders used to organize images or documents found on the sites, or areas which are in development and should not yet be released to the public.

However, as a user logged into the system, these items can be seen in a “contents” folder.

In order to view the contents of your site follow these steps:

Step 1: Navigate to your department's main homepage. This can usually be done by clicking on the topmost link in your left navigation bar.

Step 2: Login to the site.

Step 3: Once logged in, click the “contents” tab to view all items within the folder. This is the root of your site and will show you the architecture of your site in the form of listed items in the same order as the left navigation.

Section 4.3: Rearranging the Left Navigation

Step 1: Navigate to your department's main homepage.

Step 2: Login to the website.
Step 3: Click on the “contents” tab once you are logged in.

Step 4: Click on a cell in the right most table column (the header listed as “order”) in the corresponding row of the item you wish to rearrange. These cells can be selected with your cursor and dragged down or up depending on the order you wish to create or modify your left navigation into (this function may work differently in browsers other than Firefox, it may appear as little click-able up and down arrows).

Figure 4.2 – close-up of a the “order” column in a website in the “contents” view

Step 5: After rearranging the order, click on the “view” tab, or hit the refresh button on your web-browser to lock the changes in place. The left navigation order will have changed to the new order to match that displayed in your contents folder list.