Creating and Editing Your Site Map in Adobe Muse
Note: This excerpt is from the forthcoming book Adobe Muse Classroom in a Book, ISBN 9780321821362.
The best way to begin working on your site is by editing your site map. Refining a site map is a critical first step because the map shows the number of pages in your site, how the pages will be ordered, and how they connect to each other in the site navigation. In the exercises that follow, you will edit your site map in Plan mode.
With the KevinsKoffeeKart.muse site file open, make sure Plan mode is selected in the upper-left corner of the Application window. As you can see, Plan mode is divided into two main sections: the site plan area and the masters area. The site plan area contains thumbnail images of your website’s pages organized into a site map that shows how those pages connect to each other. Below each page thumbnail are the page’s name and, in blue brackets, the name of the master page associated with that page. The masters section, below the site plan area, contains the default master page that every Muse site starts with. A master page is essentially a template that you use to maintain consistency across the pages in your website. You will learn more about master pages in Lesson 3, “Working with Master Pages.”
When you create a new site, Muse creates one blank home page and one blank master page by default. These pages are the starting point for your site map and website itself. The next step is to begin adding pages to your site and determine how users will navigate your site.
Adding and deleting pages in your site
In a Muse site, the web pages you create in your site map follow a basic family hierarchy and are displayed in levels that reinforce their relationships. Sibling pages appear on the same level in the site plan. Child pages appear a level below and are usually linked from a particular Parent page. Parent and sibling pages may appear on the Home page level or another level of the site map, while child pages reside below the Home page level. Any page on any level of the site plan can have sibling pages or child pages.
The site map’s top level includes the pages that will make up the site’s main navigation. For example, the page named Home is always a top-level page. Any pages that you create to the right or left of the Home page are considered siblings to Home and are also in the top level of the site navigation. The next figure illustrates how a Muse site map later translates into navigation menus for the site.
Adding sibling pages
You’ll learn more about the relationship between the site map and menus in Lesson 3, for now simply concentrate on adding top-level pages to your site.
- Position the cursor over the Home page thumbnail in the site plan area.
- Click the plus sign (+) to the right of the Home page thumbnail to add a new sibling page to the right of the Home page.
- Select the text “Untitled 2” beneath the new thumbnail to rename the page, and type THE KOFFEE in all capital letters.
- Choose File > Preview Page In Browser to open the home page in the default browser installed on your machine.
- Close the browser window, and return to Muse.
- Position the cursor over the thumbnail labeled THE KOFFEE, then click the plus sign (+) to its right to add a new sibling page to the right of the THE KOFFEE page.
- Change the name of the page to ABOUT using the technique from step 3.
- Position the cursor over the THE KOFFEE thumbnail, then click the plus sign (+) to the right four more times. You now have a total of seven pages, including the Home, THE KOFFEE, and ABOUT pages.
- Beneath each of the new page thumbnails, click twice slowly to edit the title of each page. Starting from the left, name them KART MAP, PRODUCTS, OUR STORY, and GALLERY, respectively.
- 1In the upper-left corner of the Application window, drag the Size slider to the left to resize the page thumbnails until they all fit horizontally in the site plan area and the scroll bar disappears.
Notice a series of plus signs (+) appear on the right, bottom, and left sides of the thumbnail. Clicking the plus sign to the right or left of a page thumbnail adds a sibling page. Clicking the plus sign beneath the page thumbnail adds a child page.
After inserting a page, you can immediately change the title of the page.
When the site is published, by default Muse uses the name that appears beneath each site map thumbnail as the page’s title at the top of the browser window. Muse also automatically fills these names into the menu bars you create to access the pages. (You’ll learn more about menus in Lesson 3.)
Notice that Muse used the thumbnail’s name, Home, as the title of the page at the top of the browser window. You’ll learn how to specify more descriptive titles for pages in “Adding page metadata” on page XX.
The page thumbnails may not fit in the visible site plan area. If they don’t, a horizontal scroll bar will appear at the bottom of the site plan area, above the masters area.