Working With the Site Hierarchy

A site hierarchy is a collection of individual sections and web pages that together comprise the structure of the site. Similar to a folder in a folder hierarchy, a section in a site hierarchy is used to store related information. The site hierarchy can be flat, where all sections are located at the top, or it can be deep, where numerous sections are placed within other sections.

While you use the site hierarchy to organize and categorize content on your Web site, Site Studio uses the site hierarchy to perform numerous "behind-the-scenes" tasks, like generating navigational links and organizing page templates.

Site navigation: The site hierarchy becomes the basis for your overall site navigation. Site Studio "reads" the site hierarchy and converts each section into a link, which you see when you use a navigation fragment (see Navigation Fragments). If you have sections called Products, Services, and Contact Us in the site hierarchy, those names appear in the navigation menu for users to click.

Page templates: The site hierarchy is also used to organize content (contributor data files, native documents, fragments, and so on) to display on a page template. Rather than create numerous web pages in a section of the Web site, you create just one primary page and one secondary page. Site Studio assembles content on either the primary page or secondary page, depending on how you organize your site hierarchy.

You generally perform these tasks with your site hierarchy:

You can delegate many of these site hierarchy tasks to a site manager by enabling the Manager application (see Setting Up Manager).