Collection
A collection "contains" other pages, much like a folder on your computer contains various files. You can nest as many collections within each other as you like.
Unlike a computer folder, however, a collection also contains content itself. Usually the main content is an index listing the items in that collection. (This page, when uploaded to your host, is usually called "index.html" but that file name is generally hidden from the person viewing your website.)
Every site has at least one collection, since the Home Page is actually a collection that contains all the other pages of the site.
Consider the example of a simple site below. The site structure is shown both in the Site Outline and in a diagram form.
As you can see, there are a total of four collections; they are arranged in a hierarchy.
Each collection can have any number of children:
And each page has a parent:
Collections are displayed in the Site Outline with a disclosure triangle next to their icon. Click the triangle to show and hide the children of the collection.
To create a new collection:
- Click the "Collections" item in the toolbar or choose "Add Collection" from the Site menu.
- From the menu of pre-configured collection types pick the one most suitable for your needs.
To group existing pages into a new collection:
- Select one or more pages in the Site Outline.
- Click the "Group" item in the toolbar or choose "Group as Collection" from the Site menu.
Settings
To edit a collection's settings:
- Click the collection in the Site Outline to select it.
- Open the Page Inspector.
- The top half of the Inspector contains general page attributes which are not mentioned here. Click the triangle in the Inspector to reveal all the settings shown below.
Collection
Click the disclosure triangle to show or hide the full attributes of the collection. The popup allows you to select a preset collection type.
Sorting
Select the order in which the pages of the collection are sorted:
- Not sorted
- You can arrange the order of the pages yourself in the Site Outline.
- Alphabetical or reverse alphabetical
- Pages are sorted in alphabetical order by their Page Title, either from A-Z or from Z-A.
- Recent at bottom or Recent at top
- Sorts the pages by their date and time. You can sort with the most recent page at the top or bottom.
Show in parent
Please see the "Show in Parent" article.
Index
Specifies the style of Index to be used. See the "Index" article for more information.
Maximum items
The maximum number of pages to display in the collection's index.
Useful for larger collections such as Weblogs where there may eventually be dozens of pages.
Enter 0 for unlimited Index items.
Truncate text
The number of characters to truncate summaries to. See the "Summary" article for more information. Enter nothing or zero to turn truncation off.
Generate RSS feed
Generates an RSS feed for the contents of the collection. Visitors can then subscribe to the RSS feed to be notified when you update the collection.
If you have Sandvox Pro, you can use the Web View to view the raw XML of the RSS feed. Information on doing this can be found in the "Web View" article.
Links to pages
Specify here what parts of the collection's Index a visitor can click on to be taken to the full page.
Collection Presets
Collections can be used in many ways. Sandvox provides some pre-configured collections for the most popular uses. To use one of these presets, you can either:
- Create a new collection by clicking the "Collections" item in the toolbar and select the type of collection you want.
- Select an existing collection in the Site Outline and use the Page Inspector to change its settings.
If you use one of these presets, don't forget that you can still tweak the settings of the collection using the Page Inspector. The following presets are available:
- Weblog
- Designed for use as a Blog, Podcast or Videocast. Please see the "Blogging with Sandvox" and "Podcasting and Videocasting with Sandvox" articles for more information.
- Download List
- A table of page thumbnails, titles, text and dates. Generally used with File Downloads to facilitate downloading of a series of files.
- Photo Album
- A grid of photos in the collection. Please see "Working with Photo Albums in Sandvox" for more information.
- Photo Weblog
- A hybrid of a Weblog and a Photo Album. Photos are laid out in a grid, but are timestamped and arranged in reverse chronological order. A Photo Weblog also has an RSS feed and allows comments.
- Sorted Title List
- Simply lists the titles of the pages in a collection.
- Summaries
- A list of page titles and their content. If the pages in the collection contain a lot of text, it may be a good idea to truncate the text in the Index.
- Collection with Raw HTML
- A general collection (similar to "summaries" above) but with the page itself being a Raw HTML page. Not available from the inspector since it is not possible to change the page type from the Inspector.
