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Sandvox is the powerful, easy-to-use website creation software for the Mac from Karelia Software.   This video podcast contains a number of screencasts showing how to use Sandvox to build a website that gets you noticed. These are screencast tutorials demonstrating basic and advanced usage of this award-winning application for Mac OS X. Download the demo of Sandvox at http://www.sandvox.com/ and build your website today!

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(Partial transcript follows.)

In Sandvox, a collection is a group of pages.  A site can have many collections, but each site must have at least one collection, the Home Page.

In the “site outline” of my website, the Home page contains the pages and other collections of the site arranged in a hierarchy.  I’ll click on the disclosure triangle for the “Recipes” Weblog collection to reveal the pages.
  
Similar to arranging file folders on your computer in which, a main topic may include many folders and files, a collection can contain nested pages and even other collections with other nested pages.  But, unlike a folder on your hard disk, which just groups its contents together with a name and a general folder icon, a collection is visible on your site as a page, and usually that collection shows an index of what is inside the collection, in the form of summaries or thumbnail images.  

Think of a collection as a parent, and the contents of that collection as children.  Parent collections can have any number of children pages so, every child page belongs to a parent collection.  

This diagram provides an alternative view of how collections are arranged.  At the very top of the family tree is the grandparent, the Home page.  

 The dropdown menu on the toolbar displays “Collection” choices; Weblog, Download list, Photo Album, and so on.  Another way to access Collections is to go to “Site” in the menu bar . . . then “Add collection”.

You can create several different types of “Collections”.  Each collection has a purpose.  

A Weblog can be used as a Blog, offering written, podcast, or videocast content to site visitors.
 
 A Download List is used to present thumbnails, titles, and pages that facilitate the download of files. 
 
 The Photo Album provides the grid structure and mechanism for the layout of photos, and so on.

Getting the Most out of Collections

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(Abridged Transcript follows.)

With Sandvox Pro, you can register your website with Google in order to give you better control over how Google lists your website.  

...

First, to perform site verification with the Google Webmaster tools, open up the inspector by clicking the "I" icon in the toolbar . . . then choose the Site segment . . . then the Google tab. 

Click the “Google Webmaster tools” link to go to the site.  “Sign in” to Google Webmaster tools with your Google Account email address and password. 

When you “Sign in”, you are directed to the Google Webmaster tools Dashboard.  Add your site by inputting the url . . . and click “Add Site”.

Google Webmaster tools gives you access to the Overview page.  Click the “Verify your site” link.  

Choose the “Add a meta tag” verification method from the dropdown menu.  

Notice the code they provide.  Select it here . . . then “Copy”.

I’ll go back to my site in Sandvox.

In the site inspector, in the “Google” tab, paste the code into the “Site Verification” text box.

Click the “Publish” icon in the toolbar to send the changes up to the site.  

Go back to the Google website and click the “Verify” button.  

Uploading the verification meta tag into the site’s root verifies to Google that you are the authorized site owner.  By being verified as the site owner, you are able to examine any errors that Google may have with your website, choose how Google visits your site, and so on.  You will be able to see information about your site verification almost immediately.

In the second task, I will create a sitemap for Google.

But first, it is important to define the differences between the “Site Map” page on your website and the Google sitemap.  A Google Sitemap is not a page on your website, it is a special file that Sandvox can generate to communicate with Google about your website.

In Sandvox, you are able to make a “Site Map” page to help visitors get an overview of a complicated website.  In my website, Antique Cellphones, I have a Products page, a Contact Us form, a Blog page, a Terms of Service page, and a Site Map page.  This “Site Map” page is to help human visitors find the pages they need on the website.

I’ll show you how you can exclude a page from the human-readable “Site Map” page on your website and the Google sitemap.

All the pages, in my site are listed here in the “Site Outline”.  I’ll “select” the Terms of Service page.  In the Page segment of the inspector, by “checking” or “unchecking" here, I can choose whether I want it included in the “Site Map” page on my website and the Google sitemap.  

Click on the Site segment in the inspector . . . and then the Google tab.  

Check “Generate Google Sitemap”.  

“Copy” the url Sandvox provides in the textbox.  If I had not set up my website for publication, I would have to do that first, since I need to get the actual url of the published sitemap page for this process.  

Go back to the Google website.

Choose “Sitemaps” in the Dashboard.  

“Paste” the sitemap url into the “My Sitemaps” textbox . . . then click “Submit Sitemap”.

Google may also choose to make use of the sitemap page you provide as a hint for which pages are worthy of showing in sitelinks. It’s up to Google as to whether they will show Sitelinks on your website, but providing the sitemap is a good way to help Google do this.

...

Sandvox automatically marks the Home page and all the pages listed in the “Site Menu” as the main pages for the site.

Google integration with Site Verification and Google Sitemap Activation is complete.  Every time I publish my site from now on, the sitemap page will be updated to reflect those changes.  And Sandvox will automatically notify Google that the sitemap has changed.

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