## Website folders

Website folders provide a convenient way to create and manage a miniature website inside BSCW. Apart from the HTML documents (“pages”) making up the contents of the website, a website folder has three special documents:

o the home page that is shown when you click on a website folder’s icon or name in a folder listing,

o the layout page that serves as the standard framework for all other HTML documents of the website folder, thus ensuring a consistent layout of all pages in a website folder, and

o the style definition, a style sheet that defines e.g. the colours and fonts of the HTML elements used in the pages of the website folder.

When creating a website folder, predefined home pages, layout pages and style definitions are offered for a start.

Website folders may still be opened like ordinary folders bypassing the display of the home page (use Open in the action menu instead of Web View which shows the home page) and exhibit the functionality of ordinary folders, i.e. may contain other material than HTML documents and also subfolders, which may be website folders themselves or not.

Website folders have a built-in element system with a wiki-like `[element` …`]` syntax, allowing you to include BSCW system features into your pages, e.g. a page’s last modification date, links for editing the page, last visited pages or even whole action menus. Additionally, you may also define your own text elements to be used in other places of the website folder. This way, you can define, e.g., the page title in every content page which is then used in the layout page to display the title. The following figure shows a sample page of a website folder exhibiting some of these features.

Figure 17: A sample page of a website folder

BSCW elements as well as links to other pages of the website folder may be inserted into the pages of the website folder very easily using BSCW’s built-in HTML editor. The editor offers four menus for this purpose when HTML documents are edited within a website folder.

Website folders may also be exported and published in form of a static copy. A static copy is the result of an evaluation of the website folder, i.e. all text and BSCW elements are replaced by their respective values and the pages are embedded in the layout page. BSCW elements that cannot be used in an external environment, e.g. action links or action menus, are omitted during this process. Subfolders are included in a static copy.

Website folders are only available on your BSCW server if the respective functionality has been activated by your server administrator.

More:

Creating website folders

Creating, editing and setting home page, layout page and style definition

Changing website folders

Editing pages in website folders

Using BSCW elements

Using text elements

Exporting and publishing website folders

Integration of an external wiki engine