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How do I use this CMS?
Deletion of Sites/Designs/Pages
Duplication of Data
1: Create a new Site and a new Design
2: Build the Site via it's menu
3: Edit the Design's content
4: Generate the web site's pages
Changing the names of Sites/Designs/Pages
1: Editing names
2: Editing menus
Deleting Pages
How do I skin the Design?
How do I backup my Designs?

# How do I use this CMS?

CMS means Content Management System.

If you're starting with an empty database, the program will default to the [New Site] tab.

If you have designs on file, the program will default to the [Edit Site] tab, where you use the search engine to find a site, design or page to work on.

But first, a note on deleting things.

# Deletion of Sites/Designs/Pages

Each delete button displays a Javascript warning, so you can cancel the delete before any message is sent to the server.

Deletes cascade, which means deleting a site automatically deletes all designs and pages (and their content!) which belong to that site.

In the same way, deleting a design automatically deletes all pages (and their content!) which belong to that design.

So, proceed with caution.

# Duplication of Data

There are various buttons allowing you the duplicate sites, designs and pages.

Clicking on [Duplicate site] will use the new name you entered to copy all designs and pages, and their content, from the current site to the new site.

Clicking on [Duplicate design] will use the new name you entered to copy the current design's pages and their content to a new design within the current site.

## 1: Create a new Site and a new Design

Start by creating a new site. Each site's name must be unique.

You can have any number of sites, and a single site can have any number of designs.

Each design's name must be unique, for a given site.

## 2: Build the Site via it's menu

Use the [Edit Site] tab to search for a design you've saved.

Select a site and click the [Edit pages] button. On the [Edit Pages] tab, you'll create the menu of how this design's pages link together.

So, each design must have a menu.

This menu will allow the user of your web site to navigate around the pages.

This program's design is completely based on the assumption that every web site has a menu of some sort, which link's the site's pages.

Each item on this menu will be a clickable link to a page whose content you design. You also choose the template to be used for each page, when the time comes to output the design as a set of web pages.

The program displays the menu you design as a tree, at the bottom of the [Edit Pages] tab. The tree displayed is called the Site map, and you can click on it while designing, to move from page to page.

From here, you move to the [Edit Content] tab, to input the content per page.

When the program finally outputs (generates) your design as a set of web pages, the content is poured into the templates like wine into a glass.

The menu can be displayed on any output page as either a vertical menu (a tree), a horizontal menu, both or neither.

## 3: Edit the Design's content

Use the 2 textareas on the Edit Content tab to add content to each menu item's page, so that when a visitor to your site clicks on a menu item, they see the content you have designed for that page.

## 4: Generate the web site's pages

Specify the output directory, and click the [Generate] button.

# Changing the names of Sites/Designs/Pages

## 1: Editing names

In general, whenever the program is displaying the name of a site, design or page, you can just try in a new name, and click [Save].

So, if you changed the site's name, a new site will be created, using the given design name of course, and it will contain a new homepage.

If you just change the design's name, a new design will be created, with a matching homepage.

Likewise, changing the name on an existing page will just change the name of that page.

All this will happen, as long as the program can work out what your intention is.

The complex part begins when you're building up the site's menu.

## 2: Editing menus

You use the buttons on the [Edit Pages] tab to add pages to the menu, one at a time.

Starting with a menu containing just the homepage, you can extend the menu tree up or down, or you can add submenus to any existing page.

This menu structure will produce a corresponding directory structure when you finally generate the web site's files.

For each menu item, and hence for each page, you specify the content to appear on that page, and the page template to be used when generating pages' files and writing them to disk.

# Deleting Pages

After you delete a page, the homepage becomes the 'current' page. If no page is flagged as the home page, then the first page in the design becomes the 'current' page.

The 'first page' is the one on the Edit Pages tab which appears at the top of the site map.

# How do I skin the Design?

See http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/articles/skinning/.

YUI is the Yahoo User Interface, the Javascript library I used to write the client-side code for this program.

# How do I backup my Designs?

All designs are stored in a database, so it's a matter of running the database's standard backup procedure.

That means also that to restore after a mistake, you need to run the database's recovery program.

Which is a way of saying that this program does not yet have an undo command.