Basic conversions

In addition to the page ID being included in the Sitellite URL, there is another parameter which is usually omitted because its default is sufficient for most web sites.  This is the "mode" parameter, which determines which output mode, or more specifically which global template set to select from, when formatting the web page request for a particular visitor.

The default mode value, or output mode, is "html", which is why the default template selected by Sitellite is named html.tpl -- the "html" represents the output mode.

Output modes are provided by Sitellite so that developers may create different output for different types of users.  For example, web users are fine with HTML, but cell phone users may prefer WAP/WML, and content syndication services might prefer RDF/RSS.  In the case of the cell phone users, you might direct them to a cell phone targeted version of the web site through a link on your main page, that would point to something like:

http://www.example.com/index/mode.wap

Of course, the issue isn't quite that simple, since you may instead choose to use automatic browser detection to set the output mode instead.  That is entirely within the possibilities Sitellite provides, to be sure.

However, you've probably noticed that I slipped in a new URL convention without explaining it yet.  The mode.wap obviously translates into mode=wap behind the scenes, but actually it goes even further.  The translation that occurs would actually translate the last URL you saw into the following:

http://www.example.com/index?page=index&mode=wap

If unspecified, the default page ID is "index", and the first value is taken to be a shorthand for page.index if the page. is omitted.

Page 1: What is URL rewriting?
Page 2: Basic conversions
Page 3: Calling boxes from the URL
Page 4: Calling forms from the URL
Page 5: Referring to the URL components using the Sitellite API

All Tutorials