How to Make a Table of Contents for Your Squidoo GROUP

A short lens such as this one may do just fine with the "contents tool" in the intro module, though I made a custom TOC to show you what I'm talking about. But a group doesn't have that choice. There is no content tool, nor any table of content module to add, on the group headquarters page.

I wanted my group to be very functional, so that anyone coming there could easily find lenses pertaining to whatever topic they had an interest in.

I decided to add lots of Featured Lens modules to the front page so that the lenses could be grouped by type and subjects could be easily located. However, as more lenses joined the group, the list of Featured Lenses grew until it was looking like Santa's naughty/nice list on December 24: kind of pretty, but very difficult to locate any particular subject or lens.

I kept returning to the Add Modules, searching for a way to make a clickable list for the group. It didn't materialize.

What a the Squidoo TOC module does is, it automatically generates a clickable link to a spot within the same lens. Clickable links are very handy, and making one to any page outside of your lens is simple. Just copy this code, and substitute your URL (website address) and the text you want displayed.

<a href="HTTP://WWW.LINK-URL-HERE.COM">NAME OF LINK HERE</a>

You can use this in any text box, and all you will see in your published text is the clickable words:
NAME OF LINK HERE

But that links to a whole page. How to link to part of a page, some specific spot lower in your lens, the way a TOC module does? As it turns out, on a lens, it is very easy to make a specialized table of contents. On a group, it is slightly more complicated, but still very do-able.

You might use a custom TOC within a lens if you have a long, complicated lens and want several shorter TOCs for sections of your lens, or if the TOC module was too long and bulky and you want a smaller TOC with columns, or even if you just want one in your intro module to get your keywords to appear there.

FIRST STEP - GET THE MODULE'S URL
1. Add the TOC module (you'll remove it later), and publish the lens.
2. Open the published lens.
3. Open a TXT or Word file to work in.
4. Copy and paste this linking text to your working text:
<a href="LINK-URL-HERE">NAME OF LINK HERE</a>
5. Go to the published lens and click the first link in your TOC.
6. Highlight and copy the link that appears at the top of the page. It should be your lens URL, plus a pound sign and a module number, so it will look something like this:
http://www.squidoo.com/lens-title#module12345678

SECOND STEP - CREATE A LINK TO THE MODULE'S URL
7. In your working text, paste your new URL where it says LINK-URL-HERE.
8. In the published lens, copy the title of the module and paste it where it says NAME OF LINK HERE (or just retype it). Don't disturb the quotation marks!
9. That's it! You just created the first link for your customized TOC.
10. Hit Enter to go to the next line, and then:
11. Repeat for each module you want to appear in your custom TOC.
12. When you are completely done creating your custom TOC using the Squidoo TOC module, delete it and put your custom TOC wherever you want it.

You can copy and paste your custom TOC into any text module, including the intro module.

Making a custom TOC for a group takes a couple of extra steps, because there is no TOC module to automatically generate the module URL (web address, AKA "anchor") for you. But it's not that hard to find, so you can make a TOC for your group page!

FIRST STEP - GET THE GROUP PAGE URL
1. Open your published group.
2. Open a TXT or Word file to work in (any word processor).
3. Copy and paste this linking text to your working text:
<a href="LINK-URL-HERE">NAME OF LINK HERE</a>
4. Go to the published group page and copy the URL at the top of screen.
5. In the work text, paste the group URL where it says "LINK-URL-HERE."

SECOND STEP - FIND THE MODULE IN THE SOURCE CODE
6. Go to the published group page and, anywhere on the page, RIGHT CLICK your mouse.
7. You should get a small pop-up menu. Choose "View Source."
8. You will get a pop-up window filled with utter gibberish.
9. Hold down the Control key and type "F" for "Find."
10. You will get a search box. Type the name of the module you want to create a link for. It must be EXACT! No typos allowed! (Copy/paste to make sure.)

HERE'S THE TRICKY PART!
THIRD STEP - GET THE MODULE NUMBER
11. When search lands on your module name, somewhere within a line or two of the title you will see something like:
id="module_id12345678_title or div class="module" id="module12345678"
That module number is what you are looking for! You may need to click "Find Again" to find the next instance of your module name in order to find the module number.
12. Copy the module number EXACTLY.

FOURTH STEP - CREATE A LINK TO THE MODULE'S URL
13. Go back to the work text.
14. Where you pasted the page URL in Step One, place your cursor directly at the end of the URL, inside the quotation marks. You are NOT replacing any text in this step! Just adding to what's already there.
15. Type a pound sign and the word "module" all together: #module
16. Now paste the module number you just copied, again without spaces: 12345678
So altogether, the page URL and the module URL should look like this:
"http://www.squidoo.com/lens-title#module12345678"
With NO spaces anywhere! Be sure to keep the quotation marks undisturbed.
17. Now change NAME OF LINK HERE to the name of your module.
18. Hit Enter to go to the next line, and repeat the steps.

You're done! Lots of steps, but not really difficult. Repeat for each module you want linked, and you will have a custom TOC for your Group page, which you can paste into any text module or the intro module if you wish.

If your module names are long, you won't want columns, but if they are nice and short you can split them into columns - very neat looking!

FIRST STEP - DIVIDE YOUR COLUMNS
1. Count how many items are in your TOC link list.
2. Divide by two or three (depending on how many columns you want) so you know how many items go in each column.
(TIP: A list with long module titles should be in two columns so the titles don't run onto two lines.)

SECOND STEP - CREATE YOUR FIRST COLUMN
3. Copy this text exactly:
<p style="width:200px; float:left;">
4. Go to your customized TOC. Find the FIRST link in your list and paste this text directly in front of it with NO line break (do not hit Enter between them) so that it looks like this:
<p style="width:200px; float:left;"><a href=" ... etc

THIRD STEP - CREATE YOUR 2ND & 3RD COLUMNS
5. Locate the item in your TOC list that should be at the top of your second column, and repeat step 4. This creates the column break.
6. If you want a third column, find the item in your TOC list that should be at the top of your third column, and repeat step 4.

FOURTH STEP - CUSTOMIZE THE COLUMN WIDTH
7. Play with the width of the columns a bit. Try changing the 200px to 150px and see how it looks. If you want only two columns, try making it 250px wide.
8. For a Group TOC, you will want only two columns. Set the width at 225px.

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