mySobek Home   |   Help
Skip Navigation Links.
MISSING BANNER
User Help >> Online System Administration >> Design Files >> Static Information Pages

Static Information Pages

General Concept

Static information pages work like a simple html content management system, to allow html pages to be displayed within the framework and design of the digital library. The source pages can be displayed under any of the web skins in use by the digital library as well. There is no need to enter any information for the pages into the database. As each page is requested, the application simply looks for the file and displays its content if the file exists.

While the pages are encoded in simple HTML, there are several rules which must be followed and several special directive keywords which are available for use within the html source files.

The page you are reading right now is an example of a static information pages.

Directory and Structure

All static pages appear in the WEBCONTENT subfolder directly under the main design folder. They are addressed by filename with one of the following URL query strings: ?m=le[source] or ?m=he[source]. The source parameter in these query strings can be replaced with just the filename, if the file is directly under the INFO folder.

You can also organize the static info pages into subfolders and address the subfolders in the query string as well. To address subfolders, an underscore is used after each directory name. For example, to address a file such as ..\design\info\help\tagging\home.html, simply use query string like ?m=lehelp_tagging_home.

File extensions can be either .htm or .html. Due to the use of the underscore for addressing subfolders, underscores cannot be included in the source file name.

To avoid the execution cost of case-changing, these source files are case sensitive, so observe same cases that appear below.

Source File Header

Within the source files files, the following meta tags can exist in the header:

<meta name="banner" content="&lt;%BASEURL%&gt;design/aggregations/dloc/html/info/exhibitbanner.gif" />
<meta name="thumbnail" content="&lt;%BASEURL%&gt;design/aggregations/dloc/html/info/exhibitthumb.gif" />
<meta name="author" content="Sullivan, Mark" />
<meta name="date" content="March 8, 2010" />
<meta name="keywords" content="help pages, technical help, xml" />
<meta name="description" content="This contains any descriptive information..." />
<meta name="title" content="Browse and Info Static HTML Source Files" />
<meta name="code" content="infobrowse" />
<meta name="sitemap" content="myfirstsitemap.xml" />
<meta name="webskin" content="skin_code" />

These values will be read from within the <head> tag using an XML reader.

The following additional tags are also read:

  • <title> Browse and Info Static HTML Source File </title>
  • <code> infobrowse </code>

Any <link> elements included in the head will be included in the final HTML response. This allows stylesheets to be included in the source document's <head> section and appear in the final <head>. For example, adding
<link href="mycustom.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" /> to the source file will cause it also appear in the html served to the user.

Any javascript that should be included in the page should appear within the body of the document.

Note: The INFO and BROWSE static information pages do include the basic HTML skeleton (HTML, HEAD, and BODY tags). Aggregation landing pages do not use a basic HTML skeleton.

Banner Meta Tag

While the tags above can also be used in item aggregation specific browse and information pages, these top-level info pages additionally include the banner meta tag which can be employed in one of the ways below:

<meta name="banner" content="NONE" />

<meta name="banner" content="DEFAULT" />

<meta name="banner" content="&lt;%BASEURL%&gt;design/aggregations/ufdchelp/images/banners/coll.jpg" />

If there is no <meta name="banner" /> tag (or NONE is explicitly included as the content), no banner is displayed at all. Setting the content value to 'DEFAULT' allows the banner for the current web skin to be included. Finally, in the last example above, you can include a pointer to any banner image you wish to use, and this will always override the banner for the current web skin during display.

SobekCM Directive Keywords

Several special directive keywords can be placed in the body of the source html file. These keywords will be replaced during runtime by the web application. Think of these as SobekCM-specific server side includes.

  • <%BASEURL%>
    This directive is replaced with the base URL for the current user's request. So, if the user comes through http://www.dloc.com, that is the base URL. Likewise, if the base URL for http://ufdc.uflib.ufl.edu/juv/all/brief/4 is http://ufdc.uflib.ufl.edu. Use this directive for all links within the digital library, to support access via multiple URLs.

    A link to return the user to their home link would be..
    <a href="<%BASEURL%><%?URLOPTS%>" title="Home">

    A link to send a user to a info page on their base url would be..
    <a href="<%BASEURL%>/info/adminhelp/staticinfo<%?URLOPTS%>" title="Static Information">
  • <%?URLOPTS%>
    This directive is replaced with the current user's general options, which includes the user's current web skin, user interface language, etc. The encoded url options are preceeded with a question mark. This would be used for links which do not already have any query strings associated with it, such as..
    <a href="<%BASEURL%>/info/adminhelp/staticinfo/<%?URLOPTS%>" title="Static Information">.

    Without this included, following one of your links may cause a user to lose their scope and settings.
  • <%&URLOPTS%>
    This directive is replaced with the current user's general options, which includes the user's current web skin, user interface language, etc. The encoded url options are preceeded with an ampersand. This would be used for links which already has query strings associated with it, such as search URLs..
    <a href="<%BASEURL%>/juv/results/?t=kittens<%&URLOPTS%>" title="Canned Search">.

    Without this included, following one of your links may cause a user to lose their scope and settings.
  • <%URLOPTS%>     ( legacy directive )
    This directive is scheduled to be deprecated. It currently functions by putting the URL Options but excludes any leading character ( ? or & )
  • <%WEBSKIN%>, or <%INTERFACE%>
    These directives are replaced with the web skin code for the current user's web skin ( such as 'sample' ). This can be useful for addressing some design elements which may exist in every web skin's design folders.
  • <%TABSTART%> and <%TABSTART%>
    These draw downward tabs in the current web skins design. This is useful for adding tabular navigation under the banner or title box.

    For example the html '<%TABSTART%> TEST <%TABEND%>', is replaced with TEST during runtime rendering.
  • <%SELECTED_TABSTART%> and <%SELECTED_TABEND%>
    These draw the selected downward tabs in the current web skins design. This is useful for adding tabular navigation under the banner or title box which should include highlighting of the currently selected tab.

    For example the html '<%SELECTED_TABSTART%> TEST <%SELECTED_TABEND%>', is replaced with TEST during runtime rendering.
  • <%LASTMODIFIED%>
    This directive is replaced with the date the source file was last modified or created

Text Indexing

( Pending Additional Development )

When the text indexes are built for a collection, the info and browse pages for collections and subcollections under the group will be indexed. The full text will be the full text of the browse (with an attempt to remove all html tags) and the values in the meta tags will be used for the appropriate metadata fields. These will appear in the result sets, just like other items.