Share via

How to: Create a Site Map

  • Article

Site maps are becoming more popular as methods of navigating through a Web site. A site map is simply a list of links to HTML files in your Web project. Visual SourceSafe includes the Create Site Map command on the Web menu to simplify site map creation. You must have the Write access right to use this command.

Each time you run the Create Site Map command, it creates a totally new site map file. Thus, if you customize the site map file after running the command, you will need to customize it again after rerunning the command, unless you save a copy of the file to another location.

Note

The Create Site Map command generates HTML 2.0 tags. If you want a more customized Web page, you can cut and paste from the HTML provided by this command, or add HTML tags to the file as needed.

The Create Site Map command works by retrieving the titles of your HTML files from their <TITLE> tags. If you have an HTML file without a <TITLE> tag, the command will use the file name. To build a good site map, you should use unique descriptive strings in the <TITLE> tags of your files. Category names in the site map file come from the Web project name, which should also be descriptive.

Once a site map file is created, you can add it to your Web project using the Add Files command. You must check the file out of the database before running the Create Site Map command again.

It is possible to customize the site map by adjusting the HTML in the site map file. You can use a different background color or pattern, change indentation levels, delete or add items, and so on. One way you can customize the site map is to change the graphics files used for the folder and file icon. For more information on doing this, see the topics IMG_Folder Initialization Variable and IMG_File Initialization Variable.

To create a site map:

  1. Open a Web project in Visual SourceSafe Explorer.

  2. On the Web menu, click Create Site Map.

  3. In the Create Site Map for <name> dialog box, use the To box to specify the file to contain the site map. Alternatively, you can click Browse to locate a file to use.

  4. Select the Check in to Visual SourceSafe check box.

  5. Click OK. The specified file is created and checked in to the database.

  6. If desired, you can navigate to the file and customize it.

See Also

Reference

Create Site Map for <name> Dialog Box (Explorer)
IMG_File Initialization Variable
IMG_Folder Initialization Variable