Considerations When Creating a Link to a File

When you create a hyperlink to another file, you can choose to link to a contributor data file or a native document. You can link to an existing file on the site, or you can link to a new file that you create along the way. These are some things you should consider when creating links:

• Contributor Data File Versus Native Document

• Reusing Data Files and Relative Paths

• New Files Result in New Web Pages

• Understanding Target Sections

• How Site Studio Contributor Determines the Target Section

Contributor Data File Versus Native Document

A contributor data file is a file that is generated by Site Studio Contributor and viewed and edited using the Contributor application. A native document, however, is any file created by a third-party application (such as Microsoft Word, Excel, or PowerPoint), which is converted into the web-viewable HTML format using Dynamic Converter.

Both files can be used on a Site Studio Web site. Both become web pages on the Web site, and in fact, you probably will not be able to tell a web page that is derived from a contributor data file from a web page that is derived from a native document.

The difference is in how you edit them. You open and edit contributor data files using the Contributor application, which is a powerful and flexible tool to edit web pages. You open and edit native documents using a third-party application (the actual application depends on the type of file you are editing).

Reusing Data Files and Relative Paths

If you are reusing the same contributor data file in different places in your Web site, you should avoid using relative paths in your links, because the relative path may change depending on where the file is being used on the Web site.

New Files Result in New Web Pages

If you have spent much time working on other Web sites, you are probably familiar with the concept of linking to an existing web page, or file. If, for example, there is a page called "news.htm" and you want to reference it from the page you are working on, you will create a link to that file.

However, if the file does not exist and you know you must create one, then you can use the Link wizard in Contributor to create the link and create the file at the same time. By adding the new file, you are effectively adding a new web page to the Web site. Therefore, using the Link wizard is not only useful for creating links, but it also the easiest way to add web pages to the Web site. (The other way is to add a file to a dynamic list, as described in Adding a New File to a Dynamic List and Adding an Existing File to a Dynamic List.)

Note: The Link wizard is available only in Contributor and Designer. You do not have such flexibility with hyperlinks when you are working with native documents in a third-party application.

Understanding Target Sections

When creating a hyperlink to a file (contributor data file or native document), one choice you have is to specify the section where that file should appear on the Web site when the link is clicked. This is also referred to as a "target section."

This is a special feature because you can control where a particular file will appear on the Web site regardless of where it is actually stored on the site. For example, if you have a product description stored in the "Products" section of the site, you can create a link to it from the "Support" section and then specify that the document will actually appear in the "Support" section when the hyperlink is clicked.

This becomes even more pronounced when you create a link to another file stored on another site or a file that is not associated with any Web site on the content server. Even though that file is not formally part of your site, you can create a link to it and specify that it appear in a section on your site when the link is clicked. (Or, you could do the opposite and create a link to a file on your site but make it appear on another site in the content server.)

This feature is particularly powerful where you want to reuse the same file in different ways on different Web sites.

How Site Studio Contributor Determines the Target Section

If you frequently create hyperlinks in Contributor, it is useful to understand the logic that Site Studio uses when determining where to display a particular file. There is essentially a three-rule evaluation that is performed, and it goes as follows:

1. If you (as the contributor) specify a target section for the file in the Link wizard, then the file appears in that section.

2. If you choose "Use default website section metadata" in the Link wizard, then the file appears in the section where it is stored on the Web site.

3. If you choose "Use default website section metadata" in the Link wizard, but the file is not stored in a section on the Web site, then the file appears in the same section where the original hyperlink is located. This is also the case if you do not specify anything.