Experience Notes
Website Toolkit
Project websites
Workshops
IW Jobs
E-BulletinDocument Actions
Using Folders
A folder is just like a folder or a directory on a hard drive,except that the folder and its contents exist inside Plone. You use a folder the same way; when you need to categorize content or make things a little clearer, you can group items and place them in a folder. To add a folder to your site, select Folder from the drop-down list. This will add a folder and take you to the edit properties page for that form. A folder has just three rather simple attributes that a user can edit: Name, Title, and Description. All these attributes have been discussed for documents, and nothing is different for folders.
Folders have two green tabs that represent slightly different views: contents and view. Actually, you may have already noticed that there's a contents tab accessible from any piece of content that you've added to the site; for example, when you were editing a document, the contents tab was there. That contents tab will always take you to the contents for that folder.
Viewing the Contents of a Folder
The folder has the concept of a default page, which is a page that will be shown to the user when they view a folder. It's a concept taken from Web sites where viewing a folder on a Web site shows a default page if one is present; often that default page's name is index.htm or index.html. If a folder has a default page, then clicking the view tab will show that default page. If the folder doesn't have a default page, then it'll show a folder listing of all the content in that folder. When looking for a default page to display, Plone looks through the folder for content with a certain name and shows this item. The page name is usually index.html or index_html; however, the site administrator can add or alter these names.
This contents view of a folder allows a user to perform a variety of
tasks, such as move content, rename it, delete it, publish it, and
change the order it's listed. Each row of the table shows the
title of the content (plus an icon), the type, its size, when it was
last modified, its current workflow status, and order selectors. On the
left is a checkbox to select the items you want to change and a series
of options across the bottom: Rename, Cut, Copy, Delete, and Change
Status. These functions are all pretty self-explanatory, and you can
apply them to multiple objects at once by clicking several checkboxes.
For example, to quickly rename a piece of content, click that item's checkbox and then click Rename. This will open the rename form and allow you to rename the title of each item in that list. Click Save to have the changes take effect. The Cut and Copy buttons allow you to copy or move content between different folders. The Delete button allows you to delete the item from Plone. Just like on your hard drive, if you copy, move, or delete a folder, all the contents of the folder will also be moved, copied, or deleted.
A new feature in Plone 2 is the ability to change the default order of items in a folder. By default, items in a folder will display in the order the items were added. If one item is more important and needs to be moved to the top, use the arrows on the right side of the table to move the item. The following features will appear in the folder contents only when certain things happen:
- If the content has an expiration date set and it has expired, you'll see the word expired appear in red next to the item.
- If the server has External Editor installed, you can click the pencil to edit in External Editor.
- If the content is locked, you'll see a lock icon appear next to the content.
Publishing a Folder
Folders have a much simpler workflow than documents. Earlier in this chapter you saw how to publish content to make it publicly visible because this allows users to create and edit content as much as possible before pushing it live. However, folders are a little different because they contain content but don't have any content of their own. For this reason, folders have no review state. Anyone can directly publish or make private folders, so there are three states: private, visible, and published.
After adding a folder, select Publish from the drop-down list. Then it'll show up in the navigation. As per the earlier rules for workflow, if you don't publish a folder, it won't show up in the navigation.
