Dialogs Framework Basic Concepts
Page Groups
Updated: 21 Apr 2023
Dialogs installs with several pre-defined page groups. The default page group is "/". Pages assigned to this page group will have a URL of the manner www.domain/pagename.html. The developer may elect to create additional page groups for a variety of reasons. Page groups:
- allow for content organization on the back-end (valuable for websites with hundreds or thousands of pages)
- are reflected in the URL appearing like a directory(ies) between the host name and page name (valuable for SEO strategies that involve URL alignment with page content)
- direct inbound traffic based on the domain name of the request (multiple domains assigned to one Dialogs website can have differentiated content)
- allow for management of Phantom Pages that allow content from Lists other than the Pages List to present to visitors like any other page (valuable for giving SEO friendly URLs to large databases of content like product lists)
Add a new page group by clicking the Add button from the page group tabular view. The following fields define the page group:
- Name The page group Name should start and end with a "/" except for the "/" page group which is a single "/". There can be multiple "/" in a page group name. Valid names include: "/", "/products/", "/products/us/", "/products/us/consumer/".
- Active Controls whether or not the page group appears in the page group drop-down selector on the Pages List tabular view and content entry view.
- Position Controls the position of the page group in the drop-down selector.
- Default Page Defines the default page for a page group if a specific page is not defined in a URL.
- Include in Google Sitemap Controls whether or not Dialogs includes the page group in automatically generated Google sitemaps.
- Default Page Tpl Defines the default page template Dialogs assigns to new pages created in the page group.
- Language Indicates that the page group is for handling multilingual content for a website.
- Domains Direct inbound traffic based on the domain name of the request by defining the domains in this field, one per line.
- Phantom Page Fields (optional) control Phantom Page behavior. Learn more about how Phantom Pages work.
- Phantom Page Table If populated, defines the table containing content for the page group.
- Phantom Page Field If populated, defines the table field used to match the inbound URL to the item.
- Phantoms Real Page Group If populated, defines the page group containing the page used to control display of content.
- Phantoms Real Page If populated, defines the specific page used to control display of content.
- Phantoms 404 Page (v.8) If populated, defines the 404 page for if content is not found for the phantom page.
Pages in the "/a/" page group present the Dialogs control panel iself, allowing the developer to customize both the front and back-end of a Dialogs website. The other page groups are provided as examples.
Next: Dialogs Lists