Create a Site Menu

After you've made a couple of individual pages, you can create a Site Menu page. The Site Menu page contains a link to each page of the current site (photo albums, movie pages, invitations, etc.). It provides an overview of the entire site's content. Sounds complex? No, it's incredibly easy.

1. In the main HomePage window, click the "Site Menu" tab (shown below).

2. Select one of the themes (circled below) to open the "Edit your page" window shown on the opposite page.

   Each link on the page contains a thumbnail image or movie that links to a separate page containing the actual movie, photo album, or other content.

   In this example, the two existing pages are considered a "site." See page 288 to learn how to add more sites.

   
   

3. Type your own customized text in the text fields.

4. To add more links, click the plus button. The Site Menu above has just two links because two pages existed when the Site Menu was created.

   After you create more pages for the site, you can add them to the Site Menu: Click the plus button to place an empty link (shown below) on the page.

   Click the "Choose" button to select a movie or photo to place as a thumbnail in the link window (see the next page).

   Click the "Edit Link" button to choose a new page you want to link to (see the next page).

   To delete a link from the Site Menu, click the minus button

   
   

   When you click "Choose" on a HomePage template, the "Choose a file" page opens so you can select a photo or a movie to place in the thumbnail area of the link. The left column, above, shows folders of photos that have been copied to the Pictures folder on an iDisk.

   We used the "RandomShots" folder to create a new page (a photo album), and now we're selecting a photo from it to place in the new link as a thumbnail image (below-left). Next, as shown below, we're ready to tell the photo item to link to the new photo album.

   

   As you can see, the link (far-left) now contains the photo we selected in the example above.

   When you click "Edit Link," the "Edit your links" page opens so you can choose a page from the Pages column to have this item link to. To link the item to an external site (outside of HomePage), click the "Other Pages" tab at the top. To link the item to an email form, click the "Email" tab at the top.

5. You should set the Site Menu page as the first page of the site. Since it has links and thumbnail images for all the pages of the site, it makes sense that it should be the first page you see.

   Click the "HomePage" link in the top-left corner to open the main HomePage window (shown below).

6. Locate the name of the site menu page in the "Pages" column, then drag the name to the top of the list. The name will change to bold type, indicating it is now the first page, also known as the start page.

7. To publish the page, click the "Edit" button beneath the "Pages" column, then click the "Publish" icon on the "Edit" page that opens. After the site is published, you can come back to this main HomePage window at any time and change the start page.

Drag the Site Menu page to the top of the list to make it the start page.