Build your top level site structure

Sitecore ‘how to’

Before you start• Before you start to construct your site in sitecore you need to have decided on your site

structure (or information architecture (IA))• Don’t underestimate this task as many stakeholders may want a say in how your website is

structured.• As well as the structure you must also agree on the page names (e.g What we do, About us)• Once agreed you should illustrate your structure in a top down, tree structure. This will help

you understand the layout when creating the site in Sitecore.

Home

About us Our Policies News Our Directors

What we do How we do it Policy A Policy B Press Releases Top stories Speeches Joe Bloggs John Smith

Selecting a template• Sitecore provides many templates that perform different tasks. Before you start to build

your site you should establish which template to use for each landing page.• If your page is a standard page of content including text, images and links then the

GeneralPage template should be used. This template will account for about 90% of your content.

• BIS Digital will help you to decide which templates to use but before you contact us please complete the following…

– Review your content and establish whether the content is• A long list of items that could be stored alphabetically• A profile for someone in your organisation• A list of recently published publications• A list of consultations• Regularly updated time sensitive content (e.g. news, press releases, speeches)

– Review the main BIS website and existing partner sites to see how their content similar to yours is presented. If you see a page that looks suitable for your needs ask them what template was used.

– Provide us with a copy of your IA and your opinion of the template you think should be used for each page.

Template tipsA long list of items that could be stored alphabetically

– If you have a long list of pages that may suit alphabetical storage then the PoliciesLanding template or the ThemeditemLanding template may be suitable. See an example http://www.bis.gov.uk/policies

A profile for someone in your organisation– The minister template is most suited to this task. See an example

http://www.bis.gov.uk/ministers/vince-cableA list of recently published publications

– The publicationslanding template is best suited for this task. See an example http://www.bis.gov.uk/publications

A list of consultations– If you have regular consultations on your site the CounsultationsLanding template

is ideal for displaying them in order (open, open with response, closed)– See an example http://www.bis.gov.uk/Consultations

Regularly updated time sensitive content (e.g. news, press releases, speeches)– If you have a lot of news related content the NewsAndSpeechesLanding template

will sort these into Top Stories, Speeches and Press Releases. See an example http://www.bis.gov.uk/news

Building your top level structure

• Once you have an agreed your IA and established which templates to use you can start to build your top level structure. Lets build the following top level structure as an example…

Home

About us(GeneralPage)

Our work(ThemedItemLanding)

News(NewsandSpeechesLanding)

Our directors(MinistersLanding)

Using templates

• To insert a page either right click your mouse or select the template from the home tab. Initially you will only have two options, content folder or GeneralPage template.

• If you are not using the GeneralPage template you will need to choose the Insert from Template option and find the required template.

Finding a template

• Once you click Insert from Template a window will appear with a list of template directories.

• The majority of required templates are stored under BISCore > Sections

• Expand the required folder and highlight the required template. Click Insert to insert a page using that template into your site.

Assigning a template• To speed up the editing process you can assign a template to a

parent page. • Once assigned the template will appear in the list of templates

available immediately from the insert option on the home tab. • This removes the need to navigate through the template hierarchy

each time you need to add a page using that template.• To assign a template highlight the parent page, click the configure tab

and then assign under the insert options.

Assigning a template• A popup window will appear. Simply navigate through the tree to

the required template.• Highlight the template and hit the > arrow to move it to the right

hand pane.• Click ok to save.

About us• The first Landing page we need to add is the About us page.• This page and its children contain standard text, images and links so

therefore should use the GeneralPage template. • The parent of this page is the Home page. Highlight the homepage and

select the GeneralPage template. • The item name should be about-us . The item name is the url for that

page so should always be lower case with hyphens replacing spaces.• Complete the required fields and save the page. You will now have a

page called about-us underneath our home page in your site tree.

About us(GeneralPage)

Our Work • The our work section of the site lists all the work my department does. We

have 50 items we are working on so rather than have 50 separate web pages listed under our work I think this would be more suited to an A-Z listing. Therefore I’m going to use the ThemedItemLanding template as this allows me to list my items alphabetically under tabs of my choice.

• Highlight the homepage and select the Insert from template option.• The ThemedItemLanding template sites in BISCore > Sections >

ThemedItems. Select the template and click add.• Name the item our-work.• Complete the required fields and save the page. You will now have a page

called our-work underneath the about-us page in your site tree.

Our Work(ThemedItemLanding)

Find out more about how to use the ThemedItemLanding template

• We have lots of Press releases and Speeches and we would like to write our own “top stories” for news items we want to promote. The NewsandSpeechesLanding template will allow me to show the latest Top Stories, Speeches and Press Releases on one landing page.

• Highlight the homepage and select the Insert from template option.• The NewsandSpeechesLanding template sites in BISCore > Sections

> NewsAndSpeeches. Select the template and click add.• Name the item news.• Complete the required fields and save the page. You will now have a

page called news underneath the about-us page in your site tree.

News News(NewsandSpeechesLanding)

Find out more about how the NewsAndSpeechesLanding template works.

Our ministers• We have 5 Directors for which we would like to add a profile to the

site. The MinistersLanding template is the best template to list these directors.

• Highlight the homepage and select the Insert from template option.• The MinistersLanding template sites in BISCore > Sections >

Ministers. Select the template and click add.• Name the item our-directors.• Complete the required fields and save the page. You will now have a

page called our-directors underneath the our-work page in your site tree.

Our Directors(MinistersLanding)

Sorting your pages

• We have now built our top level navigation landing pages for our site, however they are in the wrong order.

• To change the order of your pages right click on the page you need to move and select sorting.

• Use the up and down arrows to move your page to the correct location.

Adding your top level pages to the navigation• Now we have our top level landing pages in the

correct order. • The rest of our content will sit underneath one of

these four pages.• These top level pages now need to be assigned to

tabs on our site navigation.• The Home page controls the top level site

navigation.• Open the homepage in sitecore and scroll down to

the top navigation links field. • The left hand pane contains all of the top level pages

in your site.• To add a page to a top navigation tab highlight the

page and click the > arrow so the page appears in the right hand pane.

• Repeat for each page of the navigation.• To change the order of the navigation use the up

and down arrows to re-order the pages in the right hand pane. The left to right tab order is determined by the vertical order of the pages (top down).

• Sort your navigation and then click save.• When you preview your page you will now see the

navigation tabs appear.