About folder nodes
A folder node is a special kind of node that is only created when you create a local site in an existing folder that contains subfolders. In such a case, each subfolder will be represented by a folder node at the appropriate level in the site tree, and any documents in the subfolder become child nodes of the folder node. Folder nodes never appear in 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., and you cannot create folder nodes manually.
For example, say you have a small collection of documents that you want to turn into a local site, and the documents are arranged in a folder and two subfolders as below:
When you create a local site in the acme folder, Namo WebEditor will automatically create the following site tree (shown here in vertical, small-node view):
In this example, photos and stories are folder nodes. The HTML documents (a.html, b.html, and so forth) in the corresponding subfolders are represented as child nodes of the folder nodes.
If you were to insert a parent-level dynamic navigation bar in a.html, the bar would contain only a link to index.html. It would not contain links to the photos and stories folders, because folder nodes never appear in dynamic navigation bars.
You may be wondering why Namo WebEditor creates folder nodes at all, since folder nodes cannot participate in dynamic navigation bars. The answer is simply that it does so as a convenience to authors. By creating a node for each subfolder and child nodes for each document in the subfolder, Namo WebEditor can ensure that every document in the collection is represented by a node in a predictable location in the site tree. You can then drag the document nodes to the desired locations in the tree and remove the folder nodes. This is easier than adding the documents to the site tree manually.
In the example above, if a.html is the “main” document in the photos folder, you could drag it “up” in the tree so that it is on the same level as index.html; and then drag b.html to a.html so that it becomes a child node of a.html. Finally, you could remove the photos node.
In short, you can think of folder nodes as temporary parents for nodes representing documents in subfolders when you create a local site in an existing folder hierarchy. Since folder nodes play no part in the navigational structure of the site, you should move their child nodes to the appropriate locations in the site tree and then remove the folder nodes from the tree.