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CMS Made Simple 1.6 Beginner's Guide Create a fully functional and professional website using CMS Made Simple Sofia Hauschildt BIRMINGHAM - MUMBAI This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by Niels Vils on 17th August 2010 Thorsøhøjen 8, Silkeborg, 8600 CMS Made Simple 1.6 Beginner's Guide Copyright © 2010 Packt Publishing All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews. Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the author, nor Packt Publishing, and its dealers and distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book. Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information. First published: March 2010 Production Reference: 1250210 Published by Packt Publishing Ltd. 32 Lincoln Road Olton Birmingham, B27 6PA, UK. ISBN 978-1-847198-20-4 www.packtpub.com Cover Image by Vinayak Chittar ([email protected]) This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by Niels Vils on 17th August 2010 Thorsøhøjen 8, Silkeborg, 8600 Credits Author Editorial Team Leader Sofia Hauschildt Aanchal Kumar Reviewers Project Team Leader Jeremy Bass Lata Basantani Yury V. Zaytsev Project Coordinator Acquisition Editor Srimoyee Ghoshal Sarah Cullington Proofreader Development Editor Lesley Harrison Chaitanya Apte Graphics Technical Editors Geetanjali Sawant Gauri Iyer Smita Solanki Production Coordinator Shantanu Zagade Copy Editor Cover Work Leonard D'Silva Shantanu Zagade Indexer Hemangini Bari This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by Niels Vils on 17th August 2010 Thorsøhøjen 8, Silkeborg, 8600 About the Author Sofia Hauschildt is a web mastering and web development tutor, who started designing and developing professional websites in 1995 just before her graduation in Computer Science. With experience as a data warehouse developer and ERP consultant, she became a self-employed tutor. During her career, she has been contracted by IT and management academies, the German army, several city administrations, and international companies such as Siemens. Her work as a tutor is always focused on practical training combined with a theoretical background in order to get fast and handy results. I would like to express my gratitude to all those who gave me the possibility to complete this book. I want to thank my husband Jens for investing a huge amount of time in the first reviews of this book and his patient love. Furthermore, I have to thank Yury V. Zaytsev for his stimulating support and interesting discussions. A special thanks goes to my parents who encouraged me to go ahead with this book and gave me incredible mental support. This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by Niels Vils on 17th August 2010 Thorsøhøjen 8, Silkeborg, 8600 About the Reviewers Jeremy Bass began learning web construction at the age of 12 using the "view source" on sites such as the young Yahoo and the late GeoCities. Armed with a computer and a talent for the fine arts, he has been in computer-based graphics ever since. A few of the high points are stents at an international telescope (Gemini in Hawaii) and winning a Telly award for 3D animation. Currently, Jeremy works with Digital Barn Productions in Idaho, and Defined Clarity in Philadelphia along with freelancing and participation in the CMSMS community. I would like to thank my wife, Aimee, for understanding I work long hours not just to grow, but for her and the kids. This was fun. Yury V. Zaytsev has an advanced degree in physics from the Nizhny Novgorod State University, Russia, and is currently working towards his doctorate in Computational Neuroscience at the University of Freiburg, Germany. Yury's primary interests concern scientific computing, modeling, and simulation, particularly of the complex dynamics of large populations of neurons. Yury's first contact with computers was at the age of 6 when he programmed his first text-based role-playing game in BASIC on a historical 80386 machine. This inspired a never ending passion for programming, which also led to a brief career at the age of 17 in freelance web development for companies in Russia, Europe, and overseas. Having successfully implemented many commercial and hobby projects with CMS Made Simple, Yury is happy to contribute to the widespread adoption of CMSMS for the benefit of both users and developers. This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by Niels Vils on 17th August 2010 Thorsøhøjen 8, Silkeborg, 8600 This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by Niels Vils on 17th August 2010 Thorsøhøjen 8, Silkeborg, 8600 Table of Contents Preface 1 Chapter 1: Building Websites with CMS Made Simple 7 What is a CMS? 8 A CMS versus a website builder 9 Why CMS Made Simple? 9 Case study website 10 Functional specifications 10 Preparing for installation 11 Browser 11 FTP browser 12 File archiver 12 Uploading CMS Made Simple's files 12 Summary 18 Chapter 2: Getting Started 19 Installing CMS Made Simple step-by-step 20 Choosing a language 20 Step 1: Validating file integrity (optional) 21 Step 2: Checking requirements 22 Step 3: Testing file creation mask (optional) 25 Step 4: Admin account information 26 Step 5: Database information 27 Sample content and templates 28 Step 6: Creating tables 28 Step 7: Installation is complete 29 Understanding the admin console 29 Finishing the installation 33 Sending e-mails with CMS 33 Known issues 35 Summary 36 This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by Niels Vils on 17th August 2010 Thorsøhøjen 8, Silkeborg, 8600 Table of Contents Chapter 3: Creating Pages and Navigation 37 Creating pages 39 Time for action – adding a new page to the website 39 Editing pages 42 Time for action – editing existing pages 42 Previewing changes 43 Changing the page alias 43 Deleting pages 43 Formatting page content 43 Configuring TinyMCE 45 Time for action – activating search and replace function 48 Adding meta tags 50 Time for action – adding meta tags to pages 50 Adding global meta tags 52 Understanding page hierarchy 52 Time for action – adding subpages to a website 52 Breadcrumbs 54 Search engine friendly URLs 54 Time for action – creating search engine friendly URLs 55 Getting more success from hierarchy 56 Controlling the navigation of the website 57 Time for action – preventing pages fromdisplaying in the navigation 57 What is your start page? 58 More navigation control with content types 59 Efficient work with pages 60 Creating a new page as a copy of existing one 60 Changing multiple pages at once 60 Creating pages and navigation 63 Summary 64 Chapter 4: Design and Layout 65 Working with existing templates 66 Time for action – importing a ready-made template 66 Creating a new template 67 Time for action – creating a new template 68 Adding dynamic parts to templates 69 Time for action – adding Smarty tags to a template 70 Having control over the output 72 Time for action – adding Smarty parameters to the template 72 Using plugins in content 74 Adding stylesheets to the template 74 Creating a new stylesheet 75 [ ii ] This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by Niels Vils on 17th August 2010 Thorsøhøjen 8, Silkeborg, 8600 Table of Contents Time for action – creating the stylesheet 75 Media types for stylesheets 78 Creating navigation for the website 78 Time for action – adding navigation to the template 79 Designing navigation—the pure CSS way 80 Time for action – design navigation with pure CSS 80 Adding sidebar navigation 83 Porting a HTML template 84 Time for action – porting a HTML template to CMS Made Simple 85 Learning Smarty basics 91 Working with Smarty variables 91 Time for action – getting Smarty variables 91 Controlling output with the IF function 94 Time for action – displaying tags in dependence of the page 94 Creating navigation template with Smarty loop 96 Time for action – creating a menu template 97 Exporting templates 101 Time for action – displaying tags in dependence of the page 101 Summary 104 Chapter 5: Using Core Modules 107 Understanding global content blocks 108 Time for action – adding a global content block to the website 108 Managing news articles with module News 110 Displaying news on the website 111 Time for action – displaying news on the page 111 Adding news 112 Time for action – adding news items 112 News categories 114 Time for action – creating news categories 114 Customizing news templates 116 Time for action – creating a new summary template 117 Adding custom fields to the module News 119 Time for action – adding custom fields 120 Using the news title as the page title 122 Using the search function with the module Search 122 Time for action – adding a search form 123 Browsing files with File Manager 125 Using Image Manager 126 Time for action – using the image editor 126 Using images in template and content 128 [ iii ] This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by Niels Vils on 17th August 2010 Thorsøhøjen

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