Basic Link Lists

Basic Link Lists are useful for when you have a moderate to small number of links that you wish to display in a list on your website.

The following instructions will provide information on how to use Tridion to create a link to another page or an external website and create a list displaying those links.

Table of Contents

Creating Link Components

The first step in creating a Basic Link List is to create individual Link components. Unlike Hyperlinking Text, when you want to create a link list you have to create Link components as opposed to formatting Content components.

Open

In the Building Blocks folder of your respective website, click New Component (highlighted in blue above) in the Create tab (highlighted in yellow above) of the navigation bar.

You will be taken to a new page for creating the component (shown below):

Open

There is some important information when creating an individual Link component:

1. Enter an appropriate Name for your link component

2. Select Link from the Schema drop down menu (highlighted in yellow above).

   1. If you are linking to a PDF, PowerPoint, or other Multimedia type component in Tridion, you must use the Link: Multimedia schema instead of Link. This will allow you to create a component link to a multimedia component, like those using the Document schema.

3. Link title: Enter the text you want displayed as the link here

4. URL or Component: You can link to an external website with the URL for the link field (shown above) or to another page in your site with the Component link field (shown below).

   • If you want to link to an external website (like the example above), enter the full URL in the URL for the link field.

   • If you want to create a link to another page in your site, use the Component link field (like the example below).

1. Click the magnifying glass icon on the right (highlighted in yellow above).

2. Navigate to the location of a component that is on the page you want to link to (preferably a content component)

3. Select the component and click Insert.

Once you’ve linked to either an external website or another page on your website, you can fill in the rest of the information.

1. You can provide Descriptive text for the link if you want, this will appear as short, explanatory link for the link in most templates.

2. Click Save & Close (highlighted in blue above)

Repeat these steps until you have created a component for every link you wish to list.

Creating the Link List Component

Now that you have created your link components, you will need to create a Link List component.

In the same folder in Building Blocks that you created the link components in, once again click the New Component button, and you will be taken to a new page:

1. Enter an appropriate Name for your component

2. Select List from the Schema drop down menu (highlighted in yellow above).

3. Display Title: Enter the text you want displayed as the category for this selection of links.

4. List Element: Click the magnifying glass icon on the right (highlighted in blue above).

5. Navigate to the location of the link components.

6. Select the first link you want listed under this category and click Insert.

7. To add more links, click the + icon to the left of the new link (highlighted in green above).

8. Add the rest of your links by selecting them and clicking Insert.

9. Click Close when you are done adding links.

1. If you want to add any additional components, click the + button located to the left of the components list (highlighted in green above).

2. You can remove any of the links from the list using the trash can icons (highlighted above in red).

3. To change the order of the links, use the move icons (highlighted in blue above) to drag the link to the place you want it to appear in the order.

4. Once you have finished inserting and arranging the links, click Save & Close (highlighted in yellow above).

Insert the List Component on to a Page

Now that you have created the list, you will need to insert the link list onto a page.

Navigate in the Root Folder to page you want the link list displayed on, and open the page.

Click on the Component Presentations tab, then the Insert button located at the bottom, which will open your Building Blocks folder, shown below:

1. In the window that opens, navigate to the location of the master link list you just created.

2. Select one of the following templates from the Template dropdown menu (highlighted in yellow above):

   • Link List: Select this template to display the link list as the main content on a page. Links will appear in the order you placed them in the list component

   • Link list (A-Z): Select this template to display the link list as the main content of a page. The links will be organized in alphabetical order, divided into sections labeled by the appropriate letter.

   • Link list #right: Select this template to display the link list on the right side of the page. The links will appear in the order you placed them in the list component.

3. Click Insert, then click Close.

4. Save & Close the page, and you are ready to Publish.

In the next section, you can see examples of the types of Link List component templates:

Examples of Link List Components

The screenshots below show examples of the 3 templates for a Link List component: Link List, Link List (A-Z), and Link List #right:

Highlighted in yellow above, you can see an example of a regular Link List component as it appears on a web page.

The screenshot below shows an examples of both the alphabetical Link List (A-Z) component (highlighted in green) and the Link List #right component (highlighted in blue) as they appear on a page: