Creating a Dynamic Site with Templates, Zuse Create and Reusable Content

Introduction

A dynamic site is a site with content that appears on multiple pages that only has to be updated in one place in order to update it in all the places it appears on the site. Zuse Create, Templates and Reusable content can work together to allow you to build dynamic sites.

What is Zuse Create?

Zuse Create is a layout editor that uses 'building blocks' or modules put into rows and columns. Modules allow users to place specific types of content into the the rows and columns like:

• A Callout or Notice — Visually highlight a section of content on your page
• An Event List — show upcoming events in a list, that feeds from your calendar
• A Form — Allow your viewers to communicate with site stakeholders, create event registrations, contact forms, surveys and more
• Recent Posts — show a list of recent posts, either all recent posts or only posts in a certain category
• A block of Reusable Content
• RSS Feed
• Sub-page or Supplemental Menu
• Tabs and Accordions Menus
• Image Carrousels

Zuse Create is very flexible, allowing you to create pages with complex structures. See Create a Page Using Zuse Create for more information about using Zuse Create.

What is Reusable Content?

Reusable content is a module that you use in multiple places on your site, with the same content and settings. For example, it could be the same supplemental menu or recent posts list that you want to highlight in many places on your site.

See Reusable Content for more information about building and using reusable content.

What is a Template?

Templates are a model of a page with a placeholder for content. They can be used to create many pages with the same look, saving you the time of re-building the same page design many times. They can also hold placeholders for reusable content. Templates can allow authors to create more complicated pages, but they can also be useful to editors so they don't have build the same page layout many times.

Templates create structure to your site. Say you have lots of pages that have a two page layout with a menu on the left. You can create a template in which you always have the menu on the left and a content area on the right. Because this requires using Zuse Create to build, authors wouldn't be able to create a page like this. However, an editor can set up a template and reusable content blocks for an author to use. 

See Using Templates for more information about how to build and use templates.

Examples of Use

Home pages are great examples of where you might use dynamic content to showcase important, relevant and timely information your audience is likely to look for. Most of the time is is just a snippet of what they could find out more about further inside the site. You can use Zuse Create to insert items like Event or Recent Post Lists, that will update dynamically when you add new events or posts. You can also use Callouts to highlight and link to deeper pages on your site.

Templates can be useful for keeping a consistent layout. You could have many pages with a supplemental menu on the left and content on the right. First, create a template with a reusable content placeholder on the left and the content placeholder on the right.Then create reusable content blocks with the supplemental menus you want to include. (If there is only one supplemental menu that you want to include, you can insert it directly into the template and skip the reusable content step.) Now, an author can create pages with the template and selecting the reusable content menu to place on the page and building the content in Zuse Create. Now, to update the look of all the pages, you just need to update the template.

Related articles