Sectionals

The Sectionals app in Aiir make it easy to access all of the sectionals on your website.

Jump to:

• What's a sectional?
• Creating a sectional
• Constructing a sectional
• Sectional layouts
• Embedding a sectional

What's a sectional?

A sectional is a type of component that you can embed in a page in Page Manager. Sectionals consist of a set of items, displayed in a chosen layout. They make it easy to link to other pages on your website, with each item typically having  a title, summary and image.

Each item can be scheduled to appear and disappear. You can choose the order they appear in, or have them appear in a random order.

Creating a sectional

If you're already editing a page in Page Manager, the easiest way to create a sectional and drop it into your page is by tapping the + button at the top, and choosing Sectional.

From here you can create a new sectional or select an existing one. You can build or edit a sectional without leaving the page you're working on.

Alternatively, you can create a new sectional from the Sectionals app in the main menu.

You'll be asked to choose two things:

• Title - this wont appear anywhere publicly, it's just for naming it inside Aiir.
• Layout - you'll need to select one of the layouts provided. You can change it later, at any time.

Constructing a sectional

A sectional is constructed by adding items to a list, which link to other pages on your website.

Items can be set to appear in a random order, changing each time a page is refreshed. If this option is selected, a further option becomes available, to fix a number of items in place starting with the first. 

Items can be re-ordered by dragging the handles on the right, removed by clicking the cross icon and scheduled to appear and/or disappear at set date and times by clicking the calendar icon. Expired items can be set to automatically be removed from a sectional. 

There are three types of item that can be added to a sectional. Tap the green + icon to insert a new item. 

Open Link

The basic type of item which can link to anything. You can also disable the link if you wish.

It has a name, summary and images. The number of images that can be set in each item differs from site to site, depending on what is required. The size that will be used for the item will be defined by the layout and the position of the item in the order. 

Tag to Page

Similar to Open Link, except the item's attributes are saved with the selected page in Page Manager.

This means whenever the page is inserted into a sectional, it will share the same summary and images, so it's easy to centrally update the properties.

The properties can also be updated by editing the actual page and clicking on the 'Properties' tab. 

Content

The third type of item lets you insert any kind of content, instead of the usual title, summary and image. It is entirely up to you how this appears on the page.

Sectional layouts

A Sectional Layout defines the style and positioning of the items in the sectional as they are displayed on your website. 

If you're a pro or enterprise customer, the layouts are built for you during the website design stage. Otherwise, we provide a few simple layouts out of the box.

You can change the layout a sectional uses at any time. You wont lose any of the items in your sectional.

A layout may limit the number of items in a sectional that are actually shown at any one time, meaning an unlimited number of items can be added but only a set number appear in rotation.

Embedding a sectional

It's easy to drop a sectional into a page in Page Manager, using the + menu at the top. You can include one sectional in many pages.

If you have  Template Builder, you can drop a sectional into other parts of your website's template too.

Sectionals can be included on multiple websites. If you use the Search option when you're adding a sectional, you'll see results from all sites that you can access, and then select them to insert in to your page.

Our iOS mobile app supports including sectionals in the home feed.