By In our first post about EverWeb’s Web Page List feature, we focused on the basics of the Web Page List. In our second post we looked at some of its advanced features. In this final post about EverWeb‘s Web Page List, we will take look at how it’s used in relation to navigation, assets and publishing.
All About Directories
EverWeb allows you to create directories, or folders, and you’ll want to create these in your site for a couple of good reasons:
- Directories organize your pages: If you’re building a large website with many pages, you’ll probably want to organize them into some kind of structure to make them easier to manage.
- Directories are used for Dropdown Navigation Menus: When you put pages into a folder structure, this equates to creating a dropdown navigation when using EverWeb’s own Navigation Menu widget.
Creating a directory is easy, just use the ‘Add Directory’ button in the Toolbar. If you have an existing page that you want to convert to a directory all you need to do is to right, or secondary, click on the page you want to convert, then choose the ‘Convert To Directory’ menu option. Note that when you do this, you can’t undo the operation.
When working with the Web Page List, you can expand and collapse directories as needed by clicking on the arrow to the left of the directory page. This toggles the directory to open or closed. Note that when you re-open the project file, all folders will be opened automatically.
A directory page is used as the top menu item in the Navigation Menu widget, with the pages that it contains hanging off of it, thus creating the dropdown menu structure. You can only have one level of dropdown though, as more than one level makes navigation more complex. To create the dropdown menu items, just drag and drop the pages you want in to the directory page in the Web Page List. To do this drag and drop the page you want a little bit under and to the right of the directory page. A guide line will help you with placing the page correctly in the directory. If you want to create new pages within the directory page, right, or secondary, click on the directory page and choose the ‘New Page’ menu option.
When creating a dropdown navigation for your site, you probably will want the top menu item to be a placeholder only. If this is the case, select the directory page, then go to the Page Settings tab in the Inspector Window and check the box ‘Redirect to child page’. If your visitor clicks on the ‘placeholder’ top menu item, they will be automatically redirected to the first page within the directory.
One more point about Navigation Menus… if you don’t want a page listed in the Navigation, click on the page to exclude in the Web Page List, then go to the Page Settings tab. Uncheck the ‘Include page in navigation menu’ option.
Creating and Managing Draft Pages
When it comes to designing your site, often you’ll be wanting to test your pages to see how they are working on the Internet before the final publish. You can use Preview to do this, but sometimes you will need to test on different device types so publishing to a test directory on the Internet is often a better solution when testing. However, as you build your site, there may be pages that you don’t want to upload at the moment as they are not ready for testing. If you use a page in your site for notes about the site itself and its settings (e.g. colors, fonts, site author etc.), or you have a test page in your site, again, you won’t want these published at all.
To stop EverWeb publishing these types of pages, simply right, or secondary, click on the page you don’t want to publish in the Web Page List. You’ll see an option ‘Do Not Publish’. Click on this option. You’ll notice that the page’s icon and page title text change to a grey color indicating that the page will not be published. As this option is a toggle, repeat the process and click on the checked ‘Do Not Publish’ option if you want to publish the page at some point. The page icon and page title text will change back to white again when you have toggled the Do Not Publish option off.
Finding and Replacing Assets on Pages
The Web Page List is also used in conjunction with the Assets List so that you can find the pages in your site that use a selected image asset. This is especially useful when you want to update or replace an image with another.
To find out which pages use a particular assets, click on the Assets tab in the Inspector Window. Next click on the asset that you want to find then right, or secondary, click. Choose the ‘Find Pages Using Asset’ option. EverWeb will now search your project for the asset. When finished, the pages that the asset is on will be highlighted in the Web Page List. Once you have confirmed that you want to replace the image asset, click on the original image in the Assets List. Again right, or secondary, click on the asset and choose the ‘Replace Asset…’ option. You will then be prompted to choose another image file. Once you have selected the image, all the asset on all selected pages will be replaced.
To clear the highlighted pages in the Web Page List, right, or secondary, click in the Web Page List and choose the ‘Clear ‘using Assets’ Indicator’ menu option.
Other Good To Know Features of the Web Page List
Before we leave our look at the Web Page List, there are a couple of good know options that may save you time and effort in the future. You can easily duplicate existing pages if you need to by right, or secondary, clicking on the page you want to duplicate in the Web Page List. Choose the ‘Duplicate Page’ menu option to create a duplicate.
You can also use this menu to preview your site instead of using the Preview button in the Toolbar. Just choose the ‘Preview Page’ menu option.
So, EverWeb’s Web Page List, a simple list packed with a lot of features! Let us know in the Comments Section below what you think!
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