Site structure and navigation
When you create a local siteA managed collection of documents, folders, and resource files on the local file system that you intend to publish as a Web site. in Namo WebEditor, the site tree plays an important role: it forms the basis of all dynamic navigation barsA set of hyperlinks that are automatically updated by Namo WebEditor to point to whatever documents occupy specified positions in the site tree. in the site. The site tree is an explicit representation of the logical relationships among the documents of the site—the hierarchy of parent and child documents. Below is an example tree for a very small site:
A small site tree
Each square represents a node in the tree. At the root (the top of the inverted tree) is the node representing the site itself. Any node can have zero or more children. Typically, the site node has exactly one child: the home (index) page of the site. In the example above, the home page has three children, two of which have children of their own. Except for the site node, each node has exactly one parent. Nodes that have the same parent are called siblings.
The purpose of the site tree is to define the relationships between documents—to define “what goes where”. This is useful as a visual aid in thinking about the site, but more importantly, it lets you create dynamic navigation bars that respond to changes in the site’s organization.
When you create a dynamic navigation bar, you don’t specify which documents it links to. Instead, you specify a relationship between the current document and the linked documents. For example, you can create a navigation bar that links to the children of the current document. If the current document is the home page in the example given above (the page titled “Dark Matter”), then the navigation bar will link to the pages “About Me”, “My Poems”, and “My Stories”. But if another document is added as a child of the home page—say, “My Photos”—Namo WebEditor will automatically update the navigation bar to include a link to the new child. If a child document is deleted, Namo WebEditor will automatically remove its link from the navigation bar.
In this section
Adding dynamic navigation bars and trees