How To: Optional Navigation
How to guide for using Optional Navigation
What is optional navigation?
Optional navigation (optional_nav) is additional navigation that can be placed under your Web sites left hand navigational links. The optional navigation file is an .html file and can be used to create basic links or to add more advanced programming. Links in your optional navigation file are not restricted to your Web sites folder structure so you can create links to other areas of the Southeastern Web site or to Web sites outside of our main site. For example, you might want to put links to Blackboard or Leonet in your left hand navigation. The optional navigation feature allows you to that.
Examples of the optional navigation in use: (view the links in the left hand navigation below the sites regular navigation)
- Basic links categorized in groups: http://www.selu.edu/acad_research/depts/biol/index.html
- Drop down menu: http://www.selu.edu/library
- Images in optional nav: http://www.selu.edu/alumni_donors/alumni_assoc/index.html
- Contact info in optional nav: http://www.selu.edu/admin/admissions/index.html
Follow these steps to set up your Optional Navigation:
1. Go to your Web sites home folder in Collage and find the
optional_nav sub-folder. Click on the optional_nav folder to
open it.
2. Once inside the optional_nav folder click on the
optional_nav.html file to open it in the internal editor.
Once open, you should see some helper text in the body area of the
page. This text is preformatted so all you have to do is
highlight the text that is there and type over it with your own
information.
*Note: the ‘Optional link’ text shown in the image below is also part of your Optional_nav. When used, the link you create will appear directly after the last item in your folder navigation. To add more links like this hit enter after you have replaced the text “Optional Link” with your own personalized text and the formatting should be retained.
3. Continue editing the helper text to create your own personalized links. If you would like a sub- section of your navigation that has a title, highlight the ‘Title Here’ bold text then type the title that is appropriate for the links that will go below it.
4. Now that you have added your title you can now add your
links. You add links in the optional nav the same way you
would add a link to any of your Web site pages. Highlight
‘Link 1’ and type the name of your new link over it
then highlight the text you entered and click on the link button to
create the link.
5. Here you can either link to an internal or external link. For this example we used an external link. Find the link that you want to use and put a check in the box next to it. Be sure to put a title for the link in the Title field (next to the wheelchair symbol). When creating an external link (a site which is not a part of the Southeastern Louisiana University Web site) you can set the page to open in a new window. (For internal links always open links in the same window)
For more information on creating links please see the following
how-to:
http://www.selu.edu/resources/howdoi/collage/collage_contr/classic_view/content/index.
html#links
6. Press ‘Ok’ and now your text should be linked and look like this:
7. Now we need to set the optional_nav to show up on your Web pages. Save and exit your optional_nav page.
8. Within Collage navigate to the page you want the optional_nav to show up on. Put a check mark next to the page you want the optional_nav to show up on and click the ‘Metadata’ button.
9. The ‘Metadata’ window should open up.
Make sure that the ‘Optional_Nav’ drop down box is set
to “Yes”.
**Note: You will need to do this for every page you want the optional nav to show up on.
10. When you are ready to preview your optional navigation go to the page that you set the navigation to show up on and put a check in the box next to it. Click the preview button in the top navigational toolbar. When the preview loads hover over the ‘Actions’ tab in the top left corner of the page. Click on ‘Preview Masterpage’ (this may take a minute or more to load). Once the page loads you should see your optional navigation below your main Web site navigation links.
