E-mail this pageHow Widget Works
In order to use Widget effectively, you have to come to a basic understanding of how Widget works.
Widget lets you create subwebs, page content, navigation objects, and pages.
A subweb in Widget is, quite simply, a folder on the web server. Ideally, this folder will have a name that clearly identifies the types of pages (or additional subwebs) it will contain. The page you are reading right now, for instance, is in a subweb called Widget that is, along with other help resources, inside a subweb called Help that is, along with other Instructional Technology resources, inside a subweb called IT. On the web, you'll find the subweb at http://www.plattsburgh.edu/technology/it/help/widget/ and you'll know that the subweb contains information pertinent to Widget.
Page content and navigation objects are the stuff from which pages themselves are built. The page you are looking at right now, for instance, contains a navigation object --the menu on the left side of the screen--that's consistent on all of the Widget pages on this site. The text you are reading comes from a page content object. And the page itself is the wrapper that binds the page content and the navigation object together.
Conveniently, you can use more than one piece of page content on any given page, and you can also re-use page content. Thus, at the bottom of this page, there is, in fact, a second piece of page content containing little more than contact information. Like the navigation object that appears on all pages on this site, the contact information also appears on all pages. But, rather than creating either of these things again and again for each page, page content and navigation objects can be created once and then re-used on the multiple pages.
Best of all, Widget manages the worst part of the design and layout job for you by making each new page a ready-made framework onto which you can apply your content and navigation pieces. You never have to worry about a complicated page structure or making changes to your page(s) when the design of the Plattsburgh State web site changes: your pages will automatically adopt the look and feel of the redesigned site.
Now that you have had a brief introduction to how Widget works, you're ready to start building content and pages.