About Web Site Sections
SiteMaker allows you to publish as many different pages on your site as you want. It also offers you several types of pages, or sections, to use, each designed for a specific purpose. From a visitor's perspective these are all just different pages on your site.
When you create a new page or section you must decide what type of section to use. Here is a list of all the section types available in SiteMaker.
- Text and/or Image Section
- List of Links/Files
- Single Link or File
- Embedded Site
- Embedded Section
- Data Access
- Mixed Media
Text and/or Image Sections
This section type is the basic web page. You will probably use this more than any other section type. A brand new SiteMaker site starts out with one of these sections that simply says, “Under Construction.” Use this type of section for general information such as an introductory page on your site where you tell a bit about yourself and your teaching philosophy. Editing this type of section is similar to using a word processor. You can place images and create links to other sites or files you upload to your site on this type of section.
A neat feature of the text and/or image section is that you can create multiple versions of the same section. This will allow you to keep copies of your page as it was at various times and refer back to them. One idea for this feature is to create different versions of a section for different times of the school year. Then you can recycle this information each year, making minor modifications to keep things current.
You can also set up access permission for this type of section which will allow you to keep some information posted to your site private, requiring someone to have an account on your site to view the page.
The basics of text/image sections are covered on this site. More advanced features are addressed on the SiteMaker for Experts site.
List of Links/Files Sections
This type of section is great for a “Related Links” page. The focus of this section is the links, so there isn’t room for a lot of descriptive text and no decorative graphics. However, there is a place for each link and the section itself to have a short explanation.
Links can be directed to files you have uploaded to your site as well as other web sites or be mixed with both. So, if you have several files you want to make available for students to download (e.g. handouts or presentations) you should consider using this type of section, especially if this will be a long list.
See SiteMaker for Intermediates for more information.
Single Link or File Sections
The single link or file section allows you to define a link to one web site or one file for downloading. The visitor will not see a list or any kind of descriptive text but will go straight to the target of the link. This might be good for linking to your course syllabus or linking to a very important web site
Note: This type of section cannot be used as your site’s home page.
See SiteMaker for Intermediates for more information.
Embedded Site Sections
An embedded site is a great feature but a bit tricky to understand at first. This type of section allows you to take someone else’s web site and embed it within your own site. It allows you to present the information someone else maintains on another site without having to retype anything. When the owner of the embedded site updates their site the information is updated on your site too. The catch is that this only applies to SiteMaker sites served from the Robertson County Schools’ web server. Any other sites, even SiteMaker sites hosted on another server, cannot be embedded on your site with this feature.
For example, if your school’s PTO has a web site hosted with SiteMaker on the Robertson County Schools’ web sever then the person maintaining your school’s web site can embed that PTO site on the school’s web site. This makes the PTO’s information easily accessible from the school’s site but allows the PTO officers to maintain their own content completely separate from the the school’s main content.
If that PTO site is not hosted with SiteMaker (regardless of what web server it is hosted from) the embedded site feature cannot be used. Other options would be to link to this site with a single link or file section or display it with an iframe within a mixed media section.
Note: This type of section cannot be used as your site’s home page.
See SiteMaker for Intermediates for more information.
Embedded Sections Sections
An embedded section is similar to an embedded site. The difference is that rather than embedding an entire SiteMaker site within your web site you are embedding a specific page or section from another site within yours.
Note: This type of section cannot be used as your site’s home page.
See SiteMaker for Intermediates for more information.
Data Access Sections
Data access sections allow your visitors to interact with a data table. This allows you to make a searchable database available on your site. A blog would be a good use of a data access section as this would allow you to easily add entries to the blog and always present the most recent entries first while allowing the visitor to browse through or search previous entries.
This SiteMaker Knowledge Base is a data access section. The articles in the knowledge base are records in the data table. The section is the portal used for you to be able to browse, search and read articles in the data table.
You cannot create a data access section without first creating a data table. Each data access section can allow visitors to browse a list of records in a data table, view a single record, search for records, add records, and import records. Each of these view can be turned off as you set up the data access section. You can also create multiple data access sections from one data table giving visitors multiple methods of accessing the same data if necessary.
Data tables and data access sections can either be created manually or by installing a data package.
Doing it yourself
A data access section is probably the most difficult section type to set up from scratch for the beginner, especially if you want to customize the look of the section. A data access section allows you to present a data table any way you want. You can define:
- what access visitors have with your data (browsing, editing, adding, deleting records)
- how records are sorted and if certain records are not displayed
- what fields visitors have access to
- how the search form works
You can customize the HTML template of each type of view available as well.
See SiteMaker for Experts for more information.
Data Packages
A data package is a file you can upload and install on your web site. Installation of the file handles the creation of one or more data tables and data access sections in a predefined set up. For example, if someone perfected a blog using a data table and data access section and created a package from that blog you can install it on your site. This package would set everything up for you. You could either use the installed table(s) and section(s) as is or use that as a starting point for your own development.
See SiteMaker for Intermediates for more information.
Mixed Media Sections
A mixed media section is similar to a text and/or image section except that it divides the content area in up to four panes (think window panes) with different types of media presented in each pane. SiteMaker gives you several choices for arranging these panes (see the screen shot below for all possible configurations). You can choose from the following types of media in each pane: an AVI movie, text or HTML, an image (gif, jpg, or png), a Java applet, a downloadable file, a Real Audio stream, a Flash animation, a web page (displayed within an iframe), or a QuickTime movie.
See the Data Table Packages page for more information.