Terry's TMG Tips

Creating a Notable Ancestor Index Manually

This page revised 25 Nov 2003

Version note: Applies to TMG 4, 5 & 6, and Second Site ver. 1.4 and later

Second Site, beginning with version 1.5, offers several ways to create custom indexes. These methods will suffice for the vast majority of applications. But for those users intent on having absolute control of the format of the index, and who are comforable working with HTML directly, I have retained this article. It was originally written to describe how to create such an index before the automatic index features were available in Second Site, and describes two additional methods for creating customized indexes.

The Main Page Method

An alternate method is suggested in the Second Site Help files. To find it, use Help > Contents, then in the box in the center of the page, click the link "Topics List." On the page that appears, scan down to about the middle to "Page PersonHREF" and click the first link there.

The lower half of the page describes how to use the Page PersonHREF() function to create an index in the Main page of your website by adding the illustrated codes to the Main Page Content field on the Pages > Site screen. (Hint: As in TMG, to enlarge this or many other fields for entering large amounts of material, press F7. When done, press F9 to close the enlarged screen)

The illustrated method shows only a list of names, each being a clickable link to the person named. But you can also add descriptive text pretty easily. For example, if you modify the example in Help to enter:

<b>Notable Ancestors</b>
<br><a href="<%=Page.PersonHREF(2)%>">Geo. Bezanson</a>: Our Grandfather
<Br><a href="<%=Page.PersonHREF(8)%>">Simon. Cardinal</a>: Immigrant Ancestor

You see in the resulting webpages:

Notable Ancestors
Geo. Bezanson: Our Grandfather
Simon Cardinal: Immigrant Ancestor

You could of course make the notes much longer if desired. (Note that the links in the above illustration are nonfunctional, but the ones in your webpages will take the user to the desired person).

Manual Separate Page Method

The Main Page Method can produce a very nice list of "Notable Ancestors" and does not require the user to create new HTML pages. But it does have some limitations. The list appears on the main page, and thus competes for space with any other text you want to include there. And, if you use the side-by side layout that I prefer, you cannot keep the list open in the left pane while viewing the narratives in the right pane. My solution was to create a separate index page which uses the left pane in a side-by-side layout. To keep the task of creating links simple, I used the same Page.PersonHREF() function as described above.

The use of this function in this fashion is described briefly in the upper half of the Help page mentioned above. The method described in Help produces a page that can be used nicely in other Themes, but some modifications are required to use it in the left pane of the Side-by-Side layout as I desired. Note that this approach requires creating pages in HTML, and modifying either the Theme templates or the finished pages to create links to the special index page. Some suggestions for modifying Theme templates are described in my article on Customizing Themes.

This method is more complex to use than the others because it requires creating HTML templates. If you are not comfortable dealing with HTML, this is probably not a method you should attempt. But for those comfortable with web page authoring, or those feeling adventurous, may find this approach produces the result they desire. Here are a few tips if you want to try it:

• Copy one of the existing Theme templates as a starting point for your new Index template, rather than starting from scratch. That way all the basic stuff, like styles and links to other pages, are already done for you. If you are going for the left pane approach use one that is suppose to be in that pane, like the surname_index_template.htm in the Side-by-Side Theme.

• Consider where to place your template. If you will only have one variation, with one list of names, you can place it in the folder of the Theme you are using. But if you will want different lists for different sets of pages you will generate, make separate Site Definitions for each set, and place your template in the "-t" folder for each set. That way, they will not be overwritten if you should update the Theme.

• Modify the Page.PersonHREF() syntax for left pane use. If you use the surname_index_template.htm() function as described in Help in the left pane, when you click on a link in it the Person page with the narrative will come up in the left pane as well. I found the following format to work correctly, bringing the narrative pages up in the right pane as desired:

  <A CLASS=nav TARGET="ssmain" href="<%=Page.PersonHREF(31)%>"> William Fenker</a>

• Create Links to the new Index. In order for the user to find the new index, you will need to create links to it from one or more of the other pages. The simplest thing to do is to add links in the Main page, using either in the Site screen, where you could use the Main Page Content field or the HTML for Counter field (Do remember that you have to configure the links to bring it up in the left pane, the reverse of the above example). A more elegant solution is to modify the template pages, adding links at the top and bottom of most pages similar to those provided in the standard templates for the regular index pages.