Building Micro Websites

About Zingoolarity Websites

Zingoolarity allows you to design simple micro websites, which support the Zingoolarity content you are creating with background information, reference information, or whatever comes to your mind.

Zingoolarity websites are simply collections of topic trees stored in the Zingoolarity database and you design them in the same way as you design other topic-related information, mostly in the Contextmap view mode.

As soon as the top-level topic of a website has the type Website set, the website will be accessible by using the Web function in the main menu or in the home screen.

If there is only one website available in the Zingoolarity database, this website will be invoked directly (without showing a selection first).

If there are multiple websites available, you can use a simple selection menu to choose one.

An Example Says More Than 1000 Words

Instead of giving you a detailed reference about this functionality, we simply supply a generic example, from which you can deduct the Zingoolarity website functionality.

Some Explanations

As you may have noticed, websites in Zingoolarity are just a hierarchy of topics, exactly like other structures in Zingoolarity.

The Detail attribute may contain any HTML and represents the main description of the page.

Web Background

Topics of the type Web Background included inside of another topic can represent either background pictures, background sounds or background movies, depending on the filetype of the uploaded attachment.

Alternatively a reference can be entered in the Avatar field in the web section (If the file should not be uploaded and pulled from an URL).

Web Backgrounds are up to 3 levels recursive; when you drill into one of the menu or content topics, the backgrounds contained in the parent topic are still (additionally) considered and rendered.

Web Menu

Topics of the type Web Menu are rendered in their order of the Sort attribute (and alphabetically) horizontally on the top of the screen.

If such a menu topic has the URL attribute set, it is used for the link; otherwise the topic is used implicitly (providing a drill-into link).

If such a menu topic has an image attachment, the image is rendered as an icon in the menu.

Alternatively a reference can be entered in the Avatar field in the web section (If the file should not be uploaded and pulled from an URL).

Web Menus are up to 3 levels recursive; when you drill into one of the menu or content topics, the menu contained in the parent topic is still (additionally) considered and rendered.

Web Content

Topics of the type Web Content are rendered in their order of the Sort attribute (and alphabetically) with a default width of 15%.

The default width can be overwritten by setting the Width attribute to either a pixel or a percentage width.

If you use percentage width, the content blocks will auto-wrap depending of the available browser screen space.

If a content topic contains an image attachment, the content topic is considered an image item, placing the image into a prominent position.

Alternatively a reference can be entered in the Avatar field in the web section (If the file should not be uploaded and pulled from an URL).

Drilling Into and the Breadcrumb

Topics of type Web Menu or Web Content can be drilled-into by clicking on their names.

A breadcrumb on top of the screen allows to navigate back to a previous level.

Automatic Table-of-Content

If you add a topic of type Web ToC inside a menu or content item, an automatically generated table-of-content item will be added in the right upper corner for all content items contained in the menu or content item.

Sum Up

As you can see, if you already have experience in designing nested topics in Zingoolarity, it is very easy to design simple websites in the same way.

Your Zingoolarity bundle (which you downloaded to install your own instance) contains this website as an example in the form of a ZML-formatted import file.

If you are interested in the use of micro websites, have a further look, import it and examine it as a more sophisticated example for your own micro websites.