Link templates

Links are a fundamental part of the World Wide Web and are crucial for adding value to any website. Links primarily make it possible for the user to navigate the site, but they also direct the user to pages with additional information.

Links must contain at least two elements (“mandatory fields”):

• link text (or an image) that is displayed to the user on the web page
  (link texts should be informative and describe the content of the target while trying not to interrupt the flow of text.)
• the link target that is opened when the user clicks on the link text (or image)

Link templates are used to implement links in FirstSpirit. Template developers can use these templates to predefine the layout details for links within a FirstSpirit project. All link templates are placed in the “link templates” node in the template store. Any number of templates can be added. Link templates can then be used in particular input components (see Usage).

Configuration

This section lists the configuration options for links in FirstSpirit by using the individual tabs of a link template.

Similarly to adding content to page, section and table templates, editors enter all of the necessary content via input components that can be defined using the Form tab of a link template. All input options for managing links can be copied using the regular form syntax from FirstSpirit (see the Forms section for more information). The input components that can be used and how they are combined depends on the link type and the content that the editors add to the links.

“Properties” tab
The Properties tab includes some configuration options for link templates; for example, you can select input components that contain content to be used as a text or image link.

“Rules” and “Snippet” tabs
The Rules and Snippet tabs are used to define rules for working with the form or that influence how the form is displayed, such as when performing a search.

Presentation channel tab
To ensure that the editorial content of the links is visible in the respective presentation channel, the output must be defined within the template—similarly to how content of page and section templates is output. If a link template is selected in the tree view, a text editor window appears in the right-hand section of the window with one or more tabs for each existing presentation channel. The template developer must define the corresponding instructions for each presentation channel in the link template, e.g. $CMS_VALUE(...)$, $CMS_REF(...)$ etc., depending on the particular input component.

Link types

The following link types are possible:

• Internal links: links to a page reference within the same project
• Image links: links that refer to a clickable image instead of linked text. These links also make it possible to integrate images directly into the continuous flow in CMS_INPUT_DOM or CMS_INPUT_DOMTABLE. A link target is not necessary in this case.
• Download links: links that are used to download files from the page.
• External links: links to elements outside of the project, such as to an external website.
• E-mail links: links to e-mail addresses.
• Database links: links to data records.
• Remote links: links to FirstSpirit remote projects.
• Image map links: links to image maps (mouse-sensitive images).

The following pages provide form and output syntax examples for these link types.

Links can be flexibly adapted in FirstSpirit to the requirements of the particular project. For instance, the default options in the following can be freely arranged for the most part, e.g. linked images (see example) can be used not only for links to pages within the project, but of course also for links to external targets or for downloading media, etc.