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The Widget Editor
The widget editor allows site administrators and webmasters to tune and customize the HTML generated by Big Medium.

At the heart of Big Medium's page-building engine is its collection of "widgets," the chunks of dynamic content and HTML that Big Medium pours into your site's pages. Your site's design templates (loaded with Big Medium's section editor) control the layout of each page, indicating which widgets are displayed on the page, and where.

Each widget has its own special job to do, generating HTML that is specific to the page being built. On an article page, for example, the ++HEADLINE++ widget generates the article headline; the ++CONTENTS++ widget generates the article text; the ++BYLINEDATE++ widget generates the author byline and article publication date.

Widgets generate the HTML for your site's dynamic content.

The output of every widget is a fully formed piece of HTML or XHTML, ready to drop into your webpage. And every widget is created with squeaky-clean code to help ensure that your site is completely compliant with HTML or XHTML standards.

So, while Big Medium worries about the nitty-gritty details of creating clean markup and updating all of the dynamic elements of your pages, all you have to do is use your design templates to tell Big Medium where you want to place these widgets on your page. For more about templates, see the section editor page.

Customize the widgets

Big Medium's power is in its flexibility, giving you complete control over your pages, right down to the details of how Big Medium builds the HTML widgets for your site. Users with webmaster or administrator accounts may edit the widget settings for a site, changing the content, presentation and construction of the site's widgets. This is typically something that needs to be done only when setting up a site for the first time or when launching a redesign.

To edit your site's widget settings, click the "Widget Settings" link in the left-column menu. Widget settings are organized into panels by function. Each panel displays the widgets that are affected by its settings (clicking on a widget name displays complete information about the widget).

The widget settings

Layout and design method
Determines whether Big Medium should rely on HTML tables for layout or instead use cascading style sheets

"About Us" info
Links and copyright information to include in your site's page footer

Page header
Nitty-gritty document information for your site, plus custom HTML to include in the header (scripts, style settings, etc)

Site navigation
Preferences for how Big Medium should build your site's navigation bars

Article counts
The number of article links that should appear on the homepage and section pages of your site

Link formats
The information and presentation used in article links across the site

Article page format
Preferences for displaying headlines, pullquotes and article tools ("e-mail this article", "printer-friendly page")

News and Tips
The sections identified as the news section and the tip section

Image sizes
The preferred image sizes for the many image types used by Big Medium on your site

Date formats
Preferences for displaying dates in various areas of your site

News Feeds and Content affiliates
Preferences for the content and format for your news feeds and article syndication

Empty sections
Text to display when a content section does not have any articles

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