This document contains help and notes for using the CMS system for your website.
We regularly update this document, so if you have any questions, comments or notice omissions, please contact eric@bright-interactive.com
Before you get started managing the content on your website it's important that you understand a few basic terms used throughout this user guide:
During the build of your website we will have setup a number of lists and categories and integrated them into the structure of your website. For example, a News list might be within the About section of your website and promoted News items might appear on your home page.
Each list has two templates, the web pages in which the list and individual items are displayed.
Categories for each list are usually displayed in the navigation and if you add more categories they will usually appear automatically on your site. We say 'usually' here because it depends upon how we have set up your list.
Each list has a pre-defined order. For example, News is usually ordered by date with most recent first, Case Studies might be ordered by Company Name (an extra metadata field), Quotes might be random, and Toolkit might be defined by you (using the Sequence metadata item).
If you would like to make changes to the way lists or items are displayed (perhaps to add something to the footer of a list page, or add more metadata, such as a price for an event list) please contact us and we will make the change for you.
To edit an item logon to the CMS admin pages, choose Items from the navigation (right at the top of the page), choose your required List, then Category (from the 2nd and 3rd level navigation), then click the Edit button next to the item you wish to edit.
Simply type into any of the single line fields. To edit a multi-line field (e.g. Description) click the Edit button beneath the box. This opens up an HTML editor enabling you to use a Microsoft Word-like environment making it simple to add paragraphs, images, tables, links, styled text, etc.
Once you have finished using the HTML editor, click Done and you are then taken back to the standard edit item view. Don't forget to click Save to save your changes.
[This section is in progress...]
If required we can configure the CMS so that changes you make to items don't go live immediately. In this scenario, you edit items in Draft mode and the live website is only updated when you Publish your changes.
This can be configured on a list by list basis on the following actions:
So for example, we can configure a News list so that Additions and Deletions must be reviewed before they update the live site, but Edits go live immediately.
Who edits and who publishes is controlled by the User's Role (see Security and User Roles below). For example, some users might be able to create items, but not publish them.
The CMS has a number of time saving features making it easy to add images from whatever source (e.g. your digital camera).
To add an image to the CMS follow these steps:
Once the image is uploaded a number of channels will be created, each of differing size, and these can be used in any items.
There are two ways to add an image to an item: either by choosing it from the Image drop down list, or by dragging it into the HTML editor (for the Description or one of the extra content fields).
Items and Categories can have a status, which defines how they are presented on the website. To take an obvious example, a Hidden item is not shown on the website. So if you want to hide an item, simply change its status to 'Hidden'.
Promoted items are usually shown in other areas of the website, depending upon your requirements (we configure exactly how they are shown during the build stage, and if you want to change this please contact us).
For example, a Case Studies list will be shown on a Case Studies page. However, it's also nice to be able to show case studies on other pages. Perhaps your 'About' page should have a case study selected at random and shown in the right margin? By promoting the case studies you'd like to appear in other places on your website this can be easily achieved.
Now consider News. Again you will have a News page, but we often also show News on the homepage. By changing the status of your favourite News items to Promoted they can appear on the homepage.
How do you define the order in which promoted items appear on the homepage? By using the Promoted1, Promoted2, Promoted3... statuses. 1's appear before 2's, which appear before 3's, and so on.
The last status to discuss is 'Title' status. Often on a list page, for example News, it's useful to have an editable introduction to the page. A Title item is just that: it's a title or introduction to the current category.
A title cagegory is slightly different, it's simply a way of hiding the category from the navigation, which is useful for the default or title category of a list.
Access to the CMS admin pages is password protected. There are two levels of user: editor and super user. Editors can:
Super users can:
There are a number of shortcut codes that you can use to link to other parts of the website. Each code is surrounded with double square brakets [[like this]] and includes both an instruction of where to link and the text for the actual link that is presented to the user.
To link to a list page, e.g. news, include the list and category code:
[[list:news/current Read our news]]
To link to an individual item, include the list and item code:
[[item:news/ibm Read about SIA and IBM in the news]]
To link to a document, upload the document via FTP to /resources/docs, then use:
[[doc:path/to/document.pdf Read further information]]
Tips:
By default an item can contain the following metadata:
These are self explanatory:
These require a little more explanation:
And finally, there are 3 extra rich text fields (containing HTML) and 6 extra single line fields, which can be configured to your requirements:
Exactly which fields are shown for which lists is something we configure for you, so if you would like to make changes please contact us.
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