Getting the Most out of Collections

(Partial transcript follows.) In Sandvox, a collection is a group of pages. A site can have many collections, but each site must have at least one collection, the Home Page. In the “site outline” of my website, the Home page contains the pages and other collections of the site arranged in a hierarchy. I’ll click on the disclosure triangle for the “Recipes” Weblog collection to reveal the pages. Similar to arranging file folders on your computer in which, a main topic may include many folders and files, a collection can contain nested pages and even other collections with other nested pages. But, unlike a folder on your hard disk, which just groups its contents together with a name and a general folder icon, a collection is visible on your site as a page, and usually that collection shows an index of what is inside the collection, in the form of summaries or thumbnail images. Think of a collection as a parent, and the contents of that collection as children. Parent collections can have any number of children pages so, every child page belongs to a parent collection. This diagram provides an alternative view of how collections are arranged. At the very top of the family tree is the grandparent, the Home page. The dropdown menu on the toolbar displays “Collection” choices; Weblog, Download list, Photo Album, and so on. Another way to access Collections is to go to “Site” in the menu bar . . . then “Add collection”. You can create several different types of “Collections”. Each collection has a purpose. A Weblog can be used as a Blog, offering written, podcast, or videocast content to site visitors. A Download List is used to present thumbnails, titles, and pages that facilitate the download of files. The Photo Album provides the grid structure and mechanism for the layout of photos, and so on.