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Site Structure - Rearranging Pages

Individual pages and entire sections can be moved around in the tree representing the structure of your web site. As these changes are made, any link bars that you have inserted into your pages are automatically updated to match.

On the previous tutorial page, we added some pages into a section TMS-SiteNav. Imagine that as the tutorial grows, we decide to group some of these pages under SiteStruct, because they describe details of working with the Site tab. Click on SiteStruct caption; click button "Add Children":

shrunk view of UGuide pages, short captions ==> shrunk view of Site Structure with third column that has SiteStruct header 

Now, pages can be dragged and dropped to just below that new "-- SiteStruct --" header. [Tutorial continues under "Orphans".]

Orphans              purple text: "click desired orphan then drag-in"

The moment you begin dragging a page, a new feature appears, the "orphans" list. (Note the black text "HomePage" floating on the right edge of caption Sections. This is a  page being dragged.) 

shrunk view of orphans list plus site structure with HomePage caption being dragged 

When a page is dragged out of its place in Site Structure, it no longer has a parent, so is added to the Orphans list. Often, you will simply continue dragging to the new location. Once you drop it (release mouse button) over the new location, it will be removed from the orphans list.

Drag-Out              purple text: "drag item out/in to rearrange (cut/paste)"

However, you can also drop over empty space, such as a gap between columns. The page will still be in the orphans list. You can drag several pages out of their homes ("drag-out"); they will all be listed as orphans.

Drag-In 

To place an orphan, click it so that it is highlighted. Without holding down a button, move mouse to empty space near where you want it to go. Press and hold the mouse button -- the highlighted orphan will "jump" to the mouse. Drag it into its new home, and release mouse button to drop it ("drag-in"). After all the pages are dragged into position under "-- SiteStruct --" header, the orphans list is again empty.

orphan list and site structure, with HomePage text being dragged into new home  ... shrunk view of empty orphans list and site structure with pages under SiteStruct header

NOTE: Orphans are not remembered if you close the TMS-SiteNav window. You can switch back to the main Expression Web window (by clicking in it), and then click on toolbar button TMS-SiteNav again -- without losing the orphans. However, if you do "Done" or "Cancel" to close TMS-SiteNav, or if you exit Expression Web (or switch Expression Web to a different website), the orphans will be forgotten. In that case, you will need to browse Web Files again to locate the pages, and re-type their captions.