Creating Navigation Links to External Sites

SWEB allows you to easily create menu items that will take your users to external locations on the Internet.  It is often handy, if not required, to have links to additional web services for your site's users - applications such as web-based mail, phone-banking and campaign management all work over the Internet.

SWEB allows you to create links to these external locations, which can be placed in all navigational regions of SWEB; header, horizontal, vertical and footer.  Once created, these menu items can be placed in multiple locations, or moved between them, as necessary.

The following tutorial will help get you up to speed with all you need to know to start using this powerful feature today.

Adding navigation items that link to external sites:
 

1. To get started, one should be logged in and looking at your homepage.

2. Once there, open the homepage for editing to access the edit menu and select to add a new page, just as you would any other time.

3. When the properties page dialog comes up, where you begin to set-up the details for each page, do everything just like you normally would - give it a page title, a navigation title and a URL, just like any other page.  When done, the URL and page title won't be too important, but the navigation title will be displayed in the navigation menus, as usual, so name it what you what the link text to be.

4. Next, move down just a bit on the properties and you'll see a check box that says, "Link to an External Page" - turn this on, as this is the option that tells the system this link will go off-site.

5. Just below you have the option to open in a different/new window, then the field to supply the URL.  Complete these options to form the link how you want and keep moving down the properties page a bit more.

6. Finally, we need to now tell SWEB to put the new page link in the desired navigation menu location.  Again, like any other page, simply tell SWEB where you want the link to appear.

When done, save/publish the page and your new navigation link will be in place and ready to use!

*One note about the "page" that gets created in this process: if you view the actual page that you created while in draft mode, SWEB will display a placeholder page that tells you where the external link will go.  The off-site link will not function in any mode except the public view.