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Department Home Page Wizard: Version 9.3

The Department Homepage is the most diverse of all VTH forms, with areas for department contact information, additional links, flexible 3-column tables (for staff / board listings), as well as an area for included folders (minutes and agendas, as well as news items, for example). This page wizard is also used for most appointed or volunteer boards and committees home pages.

New in V9.3: The tabs have been rearranged, and you will notice there is a new tab called Layout. This can give you tremendous flexibility on how your department home page appears on the website. For older sites you don't need to make any changes, however, if you want to change the look of your page feel free to experiment.

NOTE: Most sites have department home page layouts controlled by the sitepref document which is not editable by you. This provides a way to guarantee every department home page in your town's website will appear in the same way. If you would like to give it a try contact VTH customer support and ask to have the Override turned off.

Best Use of the Department Homepage Wizard

Use the Department Home Page for the main (or Home) page for departments, boards or committees. This form allows you to list numerous contacts and easily link additional pages to your department's homepage.

The Department Homepage is divided into 6 sections, accessible via the tabbed headers at the top of page. The following sections cover the form fields of each tabbed section of the form. Fields with an "*" are mandatory; all others are optional.

Form Example:

The above website example is the typical layout. Contact/masthead information is at the top of the page to the left; a photo or rotating photos is to the right of the masthead; Additional Links appear below the masthead, followed by the Staff Tables and finally the Free Form text area. Any postable areas appear in the left navigation column below your global navigation.

Details Tab:

Most of the fields on the details tab are covered in the Standard Details help page.

Postable Items (Included Containers) - This was previously the "Postable Folders" tab.

Using the Postable Items fields allows your department's home page to display dynamic content that has been posted to another folder or calendar. For instance, you could use one of the Locations to display a list of links to the three most recent announcements from the Recreation Department, and the other Location field could display the scheduled events on the recreation calendar.

Location: This is a relative path to the container to be included in this postable item section. (EG: /Pages/Ourtown8_RecNews/) The path must terminate with a forward slash. REQUIRED

Image: This is a relative path to an image to be used as an optional header to the postable item section. If the image (RecNewsHeader.jpg) is located in a sub-folder (images) of the recreation department folder you could enter it as follows: images/RecNewsHeader.jpg

Title: This field displays as the textual header to the postable item section, or if the optional image is defined, as the ALT tag to that image to remain in compliance with ADA requirements. REQUIRED

Either the Image Title or the Text Title will always be a clickable link to display the entire folder or calendar view.

Items to Show: This numeric field indicates the number of items to show in list format if the postable item is defined as a Postable Folder. This field defaults to five (5) items.

Table (No Fill / Background): This field set defines the fill properties of the postable item's container table. Checking the No Fill box will cause the Background color selector to be hidden, and will render a transparent table to the postable item section of the Web page. Unchecking the No Fill box will cause the Background Color selector to be shown, and will render a table with the defined RGB background color to the postable item section of the Web page. This box is not checked by default.

Table (Border): Checking this box will cause the Border Color selector to be shown, and render a 2pt border for the postable item container table with the defined RGB color for the postable item section of the Web page. Unchecking this box will cause the Border Color selector to be hidden and render a borderless postable item container table for the postable item section of the Web site. This box is not checked by default.

Table (Link Color): This color selector indicates an alternate link color to be applied to the postable item section of the Web site. If this selector is modified to choose anything except, this color will be substituted for the Sidebar Links color defined on that site's Global Site Preferences (.sitepref) form. Selecting blue in this selector will cause the Link Color to once again be drawn from your website's .sitepref form.

Table (Back Img): This is a relative path to an image to be used as an optional background image for the postable item container table.

Postable Folder: Checking this box indicates that the postable item is a folder or conference. Checking this box also causes the List Properties check boxes to be shown. This box is checked by default.

Left: / Checking this box renders the postable list with the date to the left of the link to the item. This also changes the "preview" image to represent the selection.
Bot: / Checking this box renders the postable list with the date beneath the item. This also changes the "preview" image to represent the selection.
No Date: / Checking this box renders the postable list without a posted date. This also changes the "preview" image to represent the selection.

Calendar Month View: Checking this box indicates that the postable item is a calendar to be displayed in the dynamic month view. With the Calendar Month View the website will display a mini-calendar, with any events scheduled for today displayed below it as clickable links. (See image above).

Calendar List View: Checking this box indicates that the postable item is a calendar to be displayed in list view. Checking this box also changes the "preview" image to represent the selection.

Items to Show: This numeric field indicates the number of days to show in list format when the postable item is defined as a Postable Folder, including the current date. This field defaults to five (5) items or days. When displaying the typical calendar we recommend entering seven (7) days.

Layout Tab

With Version 9.3 you now have a lot of flexibility on how your department home page layout looks on the web. If you have an older site the Layout Options V9.1100 is most likely unchecked.

Pre Version 9

There are four variations on how your page will be displayed online. You can experiment with the appearance of the page by selecting each layout, saving and closing the page and viewing it online (make sure to hit the Refresh button on your browser). You'll notice that the fields (contact info, staff table, additional links, and free form area) change their positions on the page when you select different page layouts. As a guide the colored sections of the Standard Layout correspond to the website example at the beginning of this document on page 2. Each of the other 3 options includes the same color legend so you can get an idea of what the page should look like.

NOTE: Version 2 includes the Additional Links in the left navigation column of your website. Whether they appear above or below your global navigation links is controlled by your site design. If you would like to change it contact VTH Customer Support.

Some sites have been configured, however, so that only one layout option is available for all departments and boards within the site. If you change your page layout and nothing updates on your webpage, you can assume that your layout options have been locked by your site administrator during design.

For examples of the page layout formats visit the Site Home Page help page and view the examples.

Address & Phone Tab - Contact Information

Category Header: Category Headers (editable fields in dark green) are placed before each appropriate section. Category Headers can be changed as needed. Any section without data will not have the category header rendered whether or not it has been changed.

Hide Categories: Checking this box will cause each section on this tab to render to the Web page without headers. Unchecking this box will cause each section on this tab to render to the Web page with headers. This box is not checked by default.

Contact: This is the name of a contact. There are four such fields on this tab. Any fields left blank will not be displayed on the web page. If you choose to use the second field for direct phone numbers you might want to include the contact's title in this field.

Title or Phone #: This is an additional information field that will render in a smaller font size below the name of a contact. It can contain any type of text other than a link. There are four such fields on this tab.

Email: This is the email address for a contact. It can only contain an email address (EG: ). In this field, unlike other link fields throughout the site, it is not necessary to include MAILTO: before the email address. There are four such fields on this tab.

NOTE: Your site administrator may have decided not to use the email fields throughout the site and only to use the Contact form for email communications. Spammers regularly "harvest" email addresses off websites to send you spam. By eliminating valid email addresses on your site, and only using the Contact form for website/email communication you can, over time, reduce the amount of spam you received, especially if you have a newly registered domain name.

Address & Phone Tab - Address & Phone Information

Address: This field set includes Address Line #1, Address Line #2, City or Town, State, and Zip. Any fields not filled out will not be rendered to the Web site. If you happen to notice a blank line on your website it is most likely caused by a "space" character in a field of data. A "space" is considered data by computers and thus renders the field to the web page.

Phone/Fax/Etc.: This field set includes four single-line fields with Category Headers and suggested uses. These areas can be modified and used as needed.

Hours: This is a multi-line field that supports carriage returns. The suggested use is for office hours, but it can be modified as needed.

Address & Phone Tab - Optional Image

Image: This is a relative path to an optional image. The placement of this image depends upon the site implementation. Since each department can control their own images it is usually recommended they simply File > Upload the image file into either the department folder, or a sub-folder within the department folder, such as "images". If you choose to use rotating images on your department home page this field should be used to identify the relative path to the folder containing the images. If the folder is a sub-folder of the department be sure to enter the name of the sub-folder followed by a "/".

Alt Text: Prior to version 9 you had to enter the text to be used in the optional image's ALT tag field for your site to remain in compliance with ADA requirements. With version 9 the Alt Text tag and the caption that appears below the photo will be taken from the Subject of the uploaded image file. NOTE: You must enter a descriptive Subject whenever you upload an image file to your web server.

Caption: Checking this box causes the Subject/ALT Text to render below the optional image as a caption.

Dimensions: These are the width and height dimensions in pixels of the photo you have uploaded. These fields are required to remain in compliance with ADA guidelines. Be sure not to exceed 300 pixels wide or your page will be out of balance.

Rotator Checkbox: Check this box if you intend to provide a rotating slide show in the designated photo area of the Department Home Page wizard.

Seconds to Slide: This represents the number of seconds each photo will remain on the Department Home Page prior to rotating the next photo from the folder designated in the Image field.

Additional Links Tab

Top 2 Links: This area is for two separate links that you want to stand out from the regular Additional Links area. It is most often used for Minutes and Agendas, but you can use it for any special links.

Meeting Minutes (default): The Category Header and relative link can be modified as needed, and will render as a special links section on the Web page.

Meeting Agendas (default): The Category Header and relative link can be modified as needed, and will render as a special links section on the Web page.

Additional Links: This is a Category Header that can be modified as needed, and will render as a links section title on the Web page. There is space for 18 links. If you have the possibility of more than 18 you should try to organize them into additional sub-page index page; e.g. forms/index