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Configuring website sections

Use the Sections page in Site Service to add sections at the root of the website or as children of a parent section. Content is circulated, or published, into one or more sections in a website.

In Arc XP, a site section is a content container within a website that organizes and categorizes content. It serves as a logical grouping within a website's structure, typically used to manage content based on topics, themes, or content types. Site sections are part of your larger website hierarchy, which defines the organization and navigation of content on the site.

For example, if your website is example.com, your sections might be example.com/fashion and example.com/travel.

Each site section contains a name and ID. The section name is for display in Arc XP applications. The section ID is the Arc XP unique identifier and defines how the section may appear in your URL. For instance, an APAC news section might have the name Asia Pacific News with the section ID of /apac-news.

Overall, site sections help organize content in a way that makes sense for your website’s audience while supporting the logical flow of how you present content on your site.

Sections can be customized to hold configuration information. This configuration information is collected through custom fields you create in the UI and add to a section's edit form. See Configuring section custom fields.

Examples of often used custom section fields include:

  • Menu Title - the section name that you want to appear in your site navigation.

  • Description - the website SEO description for use in the HTML metadata and og tags.

  • Section About - an end user-facing description for use in the "about" page of the site.

Scenario: organizing a website into sections

An administrator of The Herald wants to divide the website into sections for news and sports content. The administrator wants content in these sections to have URLs that include /news and /sports after the domain. The administrator wants these segments in content URLs to be generated automatically, reading from information stored with the sub-directories themselves. After the administrator creates these sections, they can use the Canonical URLs application to create URL rules to enforce that section IDs are automatically applied.

Procedures

Creating a section

To create a section, you must have a website in Site Service, see ???. You open the Sections page from the Websites page.

All section IDs begin with a forward slash (/). The number of forward slashes show the level of a section's hierarchy. For example, /sports is a top level section; /sports/volleyball is a second level section.

The root section of a website is simply forward slash (/). The root section is the parent of all first level sections you create. The root section can contain the same configuration information as other sections, if you add the custom fields to the root section's form. However, the root section cannot be used to circulate content

  1. Navigate to the Site Service app. The Websites page opens.

  2. Filter for your website name if necessary:

    • Enter the website name in the search bar at the top of the Websites page. The list of sites filters to match your search term as you type it. Clear the search to reset the list.

  3. Click your website name. The Sections page opens displaying a filterable list of sections in your website.

    Note

    To return to the websites page click Switch Website next to the website name above the sections list, or click Websites in the top menu.

  4. Click New Section. The Create New Section page opens.

  5. Complete the following fields:

    • Section name - enter the display name of the section, for example, Sports. Section names can contain uppercase and lowercase characters from latin and non-latin alphabets, numbers, spaces and punctuation.

    • ID - enter a unique identifier, often included as a path segment of content URLs, for example, /sports or /sports/volleyball. Section IDs can contain only lowercase Latin alphanumeric characters, underscores ( _ ), dashes ( - ), and forward slashes ( / ).

    • Website - a read-only field, displays the site this section is associated with.

    • Complete any additional fields configured to display on the form.

    Note

    The sections form shows additional items when you have created custom fields with a default field property in the Fields page, or when you add custom fields to the form with the Edit Fields link at the top of the form.

    See Configuring section custom fields and ???for more information.

  6. Click Save.

Editing a section

You can update an existing section as needed, but changes to a website or a section do not auto-populate to existing ANS of a story, video, or gallery. To update the ANS of a story, video, or gallery with the updated fields, you must republish the content. If frequent changes occur, we recommend instead you include a call to the Site API in your content-source to override the outdated fields.

  1. Navigate to the Site Service app. The Websites page opens.

  2. Filter for your website name if necessary:

    • Enter the website name in the search bar at the top of the Websites page. The list of sites filters to match your search term as you type it. Clear the search to reset the list.

  3. Click your website name. The Sections page opens displaying a filterable list of sections in your website.

  4. Filter for your section name, if necessary:

    • Enter the section name in the search bar at the top of the Available items list. The list of sections filters to match the search term as you type it. Clear the search to reset the sections list.

  5. Click Edit next to the section you want to update. The Editing section page opens.

  6. Complete the following:

    • Update editable fields you want to change.

      Note

      You cannot edit the Section ID and website fields.

    • Add custom fields, see ???

    • Delete custom fields, see ???

  7. Click Save.

Editing the root section

The root section of the website can be customized to hold configuration information.

  1. Navigate to the Site Service app. The Websites page opens.

  2. Filter for your website name if necessary:

    • Enter the website name in the search bar at the top of the Websites page. The list of sites filters to match your search term as you type it. Clear the search to reset the list.

  3. Click your website name. The Sections page opens displaying a filterable list of sections in your website.

    Your website name appears above the list of sections on the Sections page.

  4. Click (edit top section), next to the website name. The Editing section page displays.

  5. Complete the following:

    • Update editable fields you want to change.

      Note

      You cannot edit the Section ID and website fields.

    • Add custom fields, see ???

    • Delete custom fields, see ???

  6. Click Save.

Deleting a section

You can delete sections beneath the root section, if they are without child sections.

  1. Navigate to the Sections page.

  2. Filter for your section name, if necessary:

    • Enter the section name in the search bar at the top of the Available items list. The list of sections filters to match the search term as you type it. Clear the search to reset the sections list.

  3. Click Delete next to the section you want to delete. 

    Note

    Only sections without child sections display the Delete button.

Managing child sections

Every section can have child sections that represent even more granular divisions of your website. For example, you may want subsections under /sports for /sports/football and /sports/rugby.

  1. Navigate to the Sections page.

  2. Filter for your section name, if necessary:

    • Enter the section name in the search bar at the top of the Available items list. The list of sections filters to match the search term as you type it. Clear the search to reset the sections list.

  3. Click Create Child Section to add a new child section. The Create New Section page opens.

  4. Complete the following:

    • Update editable fields you want to change.

      Note

      The ID field is seeded with the parent sections ID. You can add to the ID or the UI will complete the ID value automatically based on the section name.

    • Add custom fields, see ???

    • Delete custom fields, see ???

  5. Click Save.

    The Sections page opens.

  6. Click your section name to view its list of child sections.

    Note

    Sections with child sections are clickable in the list, and do not display a Delete button. Sections without children are not clickable and display a Delete button.

Adding a custom field to a section

While you are editing a section, you can add or delete custom fields to the edit form.

  1. Navigate to the Editing section page.

  2. Click Edit fields.

    The Optional fields panel opens from the left side of the Editing section page.

  3. Filter for your field name if necessary:

    • Enter the field name in the search bar at the top of the Optional fields panel. The list of fields filters to match the search term as you type it. Clear the search to reset the fields list.

  4. Click icon_plus.jpg next to the field you want to add:

    The field appears in the form at a location described in the field's configuration. See Configuring section custom fields

Removing a custom field from a section

While you are editing a section, you can add or delete custom fields to the edit form.

  1. Navigate to the Editing section page.

  2. Click Edit fields.

    The Optional fields panel opens from the left side of the Editing section page.

  3. Click icon_delete.jpg next to the custom field you want to delete.

    The field immediately disappears from the section form, reappearing as an item in the Optional fields panel.

In this section: