Site Structure

When building your site, it's best to have plan for how you will structure the site. How many top level sections? How to organize pages into sections and sub-sections (mini-sites)? These are the sort of questions you should ask (and answer!) ahead of time. On the other hand, you shouldn't fear the need to change your plans mid-stream. Remember, our system allows you to completely change the site structure by dragging and dropping pages and entire sections without the need for reconfiguring links, images, or anything else.

The information on this page will help you to understand how to structure your site.

The amount of horizontal space allowed for the top level sections or main navigation options is limited, so you should consider carefully how many you really need.

Each top level section may contain as many pages, sections, and subsections as you desire. The following examples illustrate how nesting pages and sections will affect site navigation.

Example 1: Pages directly under a top level section

All pages stored in the top level sections will be listed on the site navigation drop menu.

If using page templates with the left navigation bar, that menu will display all the pages in that section as illustrated in the image below.

This the most basic method of site construction and works well for top level sections that will contain a small number of pages. However, you can see how the menu could get out hand it there were, say, 50 pages in the section.

Example 2: Subsections (Mini-sites) with pages

The first image to the left shows two subsections with pages nested inside a top level menu. Note how the main navigation menu only displays pages and sections nested within, but does not display pages within subsections.

If a visitor clicks "Sub Section 1" from the main menu, the pages within that section will be displayed in the navigation bar on the left of the page. The image below shows that navigation bar.

Tip: Always select page templates with the left navigation bar for pages within sub sections.

Example 3: Subsections within subsections

By nesting subsections within subsections, you further simplify your main navigation menu. In this example, notice how the sub subsection does not appear in the drop menu for the top level section.

As pictured below, when a visitor clicks "Sub Section 1" from the main menu, the page navigation displays not only the pages in that subsection, but also includes the sub subsections and their pages.

Clicking a top level menu item can result in two different outcomes depending on how you have organized the pages and sub-folders of your top level menu.

1. If you have a page directly under the top level section, then visitors to your site will land on that page when clicking that top level section.

2. If you have a Sub Section directly under the top level section, then visitors to your site will see an Index page with a site map of that top level section.