How to use section pages for navigation and directories

Use these instructions to set up section pages. Sections make great landing pages where users can jump off into other areas of related contents. Use sections for pages that have lots of subpages - directories, tables of contents, and other navigational pages. You can create section pages with different layouts to organize subpages in easy-to-navigate ways.

It's easy to switch between the Compact directory, Detailed directory, and Grid templates for sections. Compact directory and Detailed directory templates will show subpages as a list of text links. The Grid template shows subpages in a grid of thumbnail images with page titles as captions.

Add a section page

1. Navigate to the location on your intranet where you want your new page to be. Click the Add button (plus icon) on the right of the page header.
2. Type your page title in the box that says Enter a title.
   1. Note: Try to write a clear page title that includes topical and descriptive words.
      1. Example: Projects for Bella Vista development.
      2. In this example page title "projects" describes the type of activity or content and the other words explain the topic of the section.
3. Click on the Content type dropdown (the field that says Page) on the right, and select the Section content type.
   
   
    
4. Click on the Template dropdown on the right, and select the template that you want. (See template descriptions below.)
5. Click Publish in the top right when you are done editing. Your new section page will appear on the screen, ready for you to add subpages.

Section templates

These descriptions are for the default section templates that come with ThoughtFarmer. Your intranet administrator may have made changes to the templates to customize them for your organization.

• Compact directory: Two levels of subpages appear as small-text links in the main column of the page. It creates a neat, organized view that works great for large sections and landing pages.
• Detailed directory: Two levels of subpages appear as large-text links in the main column of the page, in one or two columns depending on the layout of the page and the number of subpages. Page summaries show in this template. This template has more "white space" than the compact directory template. 
• Grid: Subpages show as thumbnail images with page titles as captions, in the main column of the page.

Add subpages

Once you've created your main landing page, start adding subpages. As you do, you'll start to see how these different templates organize subpages.

The examples below show the main column of the same intranet section using three different templates:

Example Compact Directory Section


Example Detailed Directory Section


Example Grid Section