Literature
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Contents |
Introduction
You can set up and maintain a powerful Literature library and publish that Literature to your website. Customers see the filename and file type icon, with a link to download the file. Literature is a term used for any documents, files or even executable program files that can be placed on your website for download by your website visitors.
Literature Benefits
Literature is an extremely powerful tool for instant publishing of downloadable web content. Your online business can very quickly develop a literature library for access by website visitors. When Literature is downloaded by a website visitor, a record is made of the action. This means that you can now accurately track when literature is being viewed, how often and so forth.
Reporting features provide instant feedback about what customers are downloading. This helps you refine your content to update poorly performing items or create more of what customers want. Having better information at your fingertips helps you make instant decisions about improving your business.
Adding Literature
To create literature you must first author a document or file in its native format - such as Microsoft Word or PDF. Once you have the document in the format that you would like to be uploaded, go to Modules -> Literature
- Click Create a new Literature item
- Enter Literature Details in the Details tab. Note that:
- Role responsible (advanced option) will notify the selected role if the item expires
- Click Save
- Click Upload Literature to upload the file
- Classify this Literatureif it is required
- Add the Literature to a Secure Zone if it is required.
- Add the Literature to an RSS Channel if it is required. (Syndicate and share using RSS)
Note: You may decide not to use the Literature feature and upload or FTP your documents directly to your website. If you use this approach then you will need to manually create links to these documents. Also no usage tracking is available for these documents when Literature module is not used.
The Literature module does not support streaming. This affects file types such as Windows Media or Streaming Flash. If you use the Literature module for these file types then the visitor will be forced to download the entire file before they can view it. For these file types it is better to upload or FTP them directly to your website and link to them from your web pages.
Classifying Literature
Literature may be assigned to one or more categories. When you classify items in categories you make it easy to publish them on web pages, by allowing you to group related items together. Here is how classification works:
Imagine you are a financial advisory business which has a wide range of content relating to educating individuals on Tax matters as well as Superannuation matters.
You can assign the tax related documents, FAQs and Literature under the tax category and the superannuation related items under the superannuation category. Assign a classification under the classifications tab, by moving your desired classifications from left to right.
By classifying items you can publish groups of them at once on any web page. As
you add more items related to superannuation they will automatically appear on
your website without any further editing of web pages required.
Note: You can manage your category list and create new categories that are relevant
to your business. This is done under Admin -> Manage Categories.
Making Literature Secure
All these items may be added to one or more Secure Zones. By adding an item to a Secure Zone, you restrict access to it to members of the Secure Zone. Website Visitors will not be able to access the item via a link or by their web site search.
To add items to a Secure Zone, go to Website -> Secure Zones -> select the zone you want to add items to and click on Make Content Secure. Then simply select items on the left and click the arrow in the middle to put the items in the square on the right. This will automatically make these items secure.
Note: When using the search engine, if an item matches a query it is displayed, regardless of whether the item is secure or not. However when a secure item is selected only visitors currently logged in to the secure zones will be able to view the details of the item.
Inserting Literature
Literature can be inserted on a page via the Add Announcement to a web page and then using 1-Click Insert drop down when viewing or editing the item itself. 1-Click Insert will give you the option to insert just one item, all items within a category or all of the items.
Alternatively you can insert items on a page via the Module manager in the WYSIWYG editor or using Triangle. Again, you are able to choose to only insert one item, all items within a category or all of the items.
Adding Literature to RSS channel
You can syndicate all of these items and share them with the world by adding them to an RSS channel. By adding an item to an RSS channel, subscribers to that channel will be able to see and be able to read the item you just added, almost instantly.
To add items to RSS channel, go to Website -> RSS channels -> select RSS channel you want to add items to and click Add items to RSS Channel.
Then you simply need to use the arrows to move the items from left to right to make them secure.
Sorting Literature
Weight field is used for sorting literature.
You can put numbers in that field and literature with the highest number will be displayed first.
It's useful when you want to sort literature by date instead of alphabetically, which is default.
So if you wanted the newest literature item always to be displayed first, you can do it using the date but in this format 20070801. That would be literature created on 01-August-2007.
Next time you add literature, the weight number would be greater and the new literature would be displayed before 20070801.
If you leave that field blank the literature will be sorted alphabetically.
Customizing Literature
When you display Literature on a web page you can customize the entire layout to suit your needs. This type of content use two templates that you can use to customize their appearance. These layouts are generally customized up-front and require no further maintenance.
All customization of these layouts can be done under Admin -> More Customization Options, then Announcement.
You can equally use Triangle to customize these layouts.
The List Layout
The List template defines how a group of Literature are displayed on a web page. For instance if you have a number of Announcement you may want to create a web page and display all of the Literature on it. The list template controls how the list of Announcement are displayed together on a web page.
You may move each tag to the position you desire, and add new tags via the tag manager or tag list.
The Details Layout
Details layout defines how the details of an Announcement that is displayed after it has been selected. In this instance once a customer chooses one of the Literature it is loaded and displayed exactly how you have setup your Details template.
The appearance of these types of content is entirely customizable. Layout, style sheets, colors and the information that is displayed is controlled and positioned as you want it, via the use of tags and the tag list.
Advanced Topics and Techniques
After adding the Literature module to a web page, you can make changes to it to slightly alter its behavior. Normally the module would look like:
{module_literature,filter,numberofItems,id,targetFrame}
- filter criteria and can be one of the following:
- i - individual item
- a - all items
- l - latest items
- r - random item
- # of items to be displayed
- id system generated (do not change)
- targetFrame the frame in which to open the item in
