SimplStart for Membership Sites - Organizing Content and Menus
Organizing Content and Menus
What: Your Simplweb site comes with articles organized into sections, categories, and uncategorized articles. Specifically, for your membership site, you will have two sections, called 'Content' and 'Premium Content'. The Content section has a single category called 'Blog'. The Premium Content section starts with two categories, 'Course 1' and 'Course 2'. You might have any number of categories for your subscription content. This initial set up is an example of how to structure them. To start, each Course has two articles in them, "Lesson 1' and 'Lesson 2'.
| Section | Category | Articles |
| Content | Blog | Intended for a blog-style news articles about your company |
| Premium Content | Course 1 |
Lesson 1 |
| Course 2 | Lesson 1 Lesson 2 | |
| Uncategorized | Uncategorized | Home page (Welcome to SimplMember) |
Why: In your main menu navigation, you will have a link to you Blog category, and a link to your Premium Content Section. The Blog category link will show all your blog articles as posts. The Premium Content link will show a list of your categories (the courses) and allow the visitor to drill down into them.
Once the navigation is set up, all you need to do is add articles/content and it will auto magically appear in the correct pages on your site.
Uncategorized articles will be linked to individually. Leaving them as uncategorized keeps them out of the other category displays. In the case of this site, our only uncategorized article is being used as the home page. This allows us greater control over the content of the home page, which will be important for Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
Read more about organizing content:
www.simplweb.com/intermediate-lessons/9-intermediate/59-lesson-3-organizing-your-content
Blog Category:
What: This category is set aside for new articles to be constantly added to keep your site fresh and current. This type of format is sometimes called a blog.
Why: It is important because you need to show content to public visitors. Your site needs to appear that it is fresh and recent. It also allows people to see the quality of your writing..
How: The Clients menu item links to the Clients category, and will display every article in that category in a list format, so a visitor can look at each client from the list by clicking on the link.
Premium Content Section:
What: This section is set aside for you to place (we called them) courses and lessons.
Why: All of the content you want to be protected by a subscription must live in a single section or category. Here we chose section so then we have a second level, the categories, where we can organize our paid content a little more.
How: The Premium Courses menu item links to the Premium Content Section, and displays every category as a list. The visitor can then drill deeper into each category (our courses) and see the lessons.
Home page (Welcome to SimplMember)
What: The Home page of your site is a single unauthorized article.
Why: A business should carefully control the home page of its website to maintain its brand and search engine optimization.
How: Having a single article be the home page makes it easier to make changes.
If you login to the front end of your Membership Website, you can click on the edit button and make changes directly to the articles. For more about editing articles, see:
simplweb.com/beginner-lessons/2-beginner/15-lesson-1a-an-overview-of-your-simplweb-site#logintofrontend
Menus
What: Your Simplweb site has a main menu with five menu item links. These links (Home, Blog, Premium Courses, Forum and Contact Us) go to various different types of pages – some link to sections, some to categories, some to articles, and some to components.
Why: Your menu is designed to funnel users to information about you and your business. You want as many people to click further into your site as possible, and your menu is set up to facilitate this.
How: It is set up for people who may naturally gravitate to different menu items so that you can maximize the number of users who find something which prompts them to click further into your site.
If you login to the back end of your Membership Website, you can click on the edit button and make changes directly to the menus. For more about editing menus, see:
simplweb.com/beginner-lessons/2-beginner/17-lesson-1c-customizing-your-site#changingmenus