Structure Groups

Now that you've learned some general features of SDL Tridion (see SDL Tridion Basics and Navigating SDL Web for more), you can begin to think about how to organize and build your website, with the instructions below.

The way Pages and Structure Groups are organized in the Root folder will determine how users navigate your site.

What You Will Learn

• How to edit the navigation of your site.

• How to create a structure group.

Structure Groups

Structure groups are folders within the Root which contain individual pages and can also contain more structure groups. The navigation of your site will be determined by the hierarchy of structure groups and the pages within them.

The structure groups located in the top level of the Root folder represent the main navigation items for your site.

• The main navigation will be present across the top of every page of your site, so it should represent the primary categories of content visitors to your site will be looking for.

• For example, some commonly used main navigation items are "Research," "Faculty," "Contact Us," and "Patient Care."

Any structure groups created within main navigation structure groups represent folders in the left navigation.

• Left navigation items will only display when visitors are within the main navigation which contains those folders.

• Structure Groups in the left navigation are used to further divide up content within a particular main navigation item, and are only necessary for larger sites.

Open

To create a Structure Group:

1. Navigate to the location in the Root folder where you'd like to create a new structure group.

2. In the Create tab (highlighted in yellow above), select New Structure Group (highlighted in blue above).

You will be taken to a new page (in a new tab) to enter information for the Structure Group (shown below):

Open

1. In the Name field, enter a three digit prefix followed by an underscore (###_), then the name you would like to appear for the navigation item.

   • The value of the prefix will determine the order in which navigation items appear.

     • Navigation items appear in increasing order from left to right for main navigation items, and in increasing order from top to bottom for left navigation items.

   • For example: entering 035_Test Structure Group in the Name field will create a navigation item "Test Structure Group" which would appear after an existing item “030_Education”.

2. In the Directory field, enter the path of this folder as it will appear in a URL.

   • The directory should be concise and contain only lowercase letters, numbers, and hyphens.

   • The directory path should be similar to the title that appears on the structure group’s landing page.

   • For example: "structure" is a good directory name for a structure group with the Name "035_Test Structure Group."

3. All other fields and settings for the structure group should remain their default value, and can be ignored.

4. In the Home tab, click Save & Close (highlighted in yellow above).