Please note that as an editor you are not given access to the design elements like templates and stylesheets within your implementation of CMSMS. If you require design changes then please contact us. CMSMS maintains their own extensive user documentation if this guide proves insufficient.

To enter the administration section of your website you simply click on the “Admin” link provided or enter your website address in your browser followed by “/admin” (ie: “www.yoursite.com/admin”). You will need a user name and password to access administration section of your website.

Once you have logged in the following menu options are available

[Main] : Admin home page

[Content] : This is where you will do 99% of your work

[Extensions] : Standard dynamic items which you can include in pages

[My Prefs] : Setup your preferences like language, email, editor

[View Site] : Open a new browser window with home page

[Logout] : Logout of admin section.

Generally you will not need to change any settings and the [Content] menu is where you will spend all your time. It has the following sub-menus

[Pages] : Where you add/edit/delete content

[File manager] : Manage files that you have uploaded to website

[Image manager] : Manage images that you have uploaded

[Global content] : Manage chunks of content you need to use several times.

Again you will spend most of your time in the [Pages] section. The file and image manager are only used for uploaded non text data to the webserver which most of the time will be images.

In the [Pages] section you will see a table listing all the pages on your website. They are numbered in the same sequence that they appear in your menu structure. So typically 1 is the home page and then 1.1, 1.2, 1.3 ….etc are sub-menu items for 1 and 1.1.1, 1.1.2, 1.1.3… are sub-sub-menu items of 1.1 and so on. Typically the sub-menu items are collapsed from view until the main menu item is hovered over or clicked on by a user. The page numbered 2 is the next main menu item and appears next to 1 and so on. These simple but elegant numbering system represents the hierarchy of information within your site.

You can shift the location of a page in the menu structure by using the icons on the right of pages list. They are grouped into three columns…

[Active] : This determines if page is visible for site users. Click on icon images to either activate or de-activate page for viewing

[Default] : This sets the home page. Only one page can be the default.

[Move] : Using the up or down icon images allows you to move the page up or down in the numbered hierarchy. So If you click up icon for page 3 then it becomes Page 2 and Page 2 becomes Page 3.

To edit a page click on the page title or click on the small square icon image on extreme right hand side.

The magnifying glass will show you the page as it appears to a user and the dustbin will delete the page.

If a page has sub-pages then there will be a small arrow icon next to it which will either expand or contract the sub-page listings

At the bottom of the [Pages] listing there are three links

Add New Content : which takes you to the Page editor.

Expand all Sections : which expands and displays all sub-pages in list

Contract All Section : which contracts sub-pages so you only see main pages.

Now you are ready to either edit an existing page or add a new one. Either way you will end up on the page editing screen. There are several settings for each page which are….

[Content type] : Select type of content. For a normal page you just use the default, which is Content You rarely need to select the other non-content options, which deal with menu layout and external links. Section header creates a menu header which does not link to any content. Separator does just that between menu items. Link allows you to create a menu link to an external URL.

[Title] : This is the page heading which will appear above the page content and also in the browser caption next to the main website title.

[Menu text] : Often identical to Title this is what appears in the menus. You may want a long Title for the page but a shorter summary for the menu.

[Parent] : Select a page from drop down list. This determines where the page appears in the menu hierarchy. Example: If the Parent is Page 2 then this page becomes 2.1 or if 2.1 is already exists then 2.2 and so on. Another example : If Parent is 3.2 then page becomes 3.2.1…..etc

[Template] : This determines how the page is displayed. Normally you should leave the default entry without modifying. Sometimes you may have a choice of layouts like 2 or 1 Columns.

[Content] : At last the actual page content. Sometimes this is just raw HTML if no default editor has been installed, but normally the FCK-Editor interface is available. This means that you do not need to know any HTML just use the editor as a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor. Please view detailed FCK-Editor help.

And at the end of the page you will see the following buttons…

[Preview] : to preview the page without saving or leaving the editing window

[Submit] : to submit the changes and return to Content » Pages

[Cancel] : to return to Content » Pages without applying any changes

[Apply] : to apply the changes you made, but still staying in the editing window

Using images in pages: Images need to be uploaded to the webserver and then linked to from the desired page. You can view thumbnails of all existing images in the [Image manager] sub-menu of [Content] menu.

The Image manager also allows you to upload any image from your local hard drive. Click on the [Browse] button to specify the file and then click on [Send] button to upload the image. When an image is uploaded a thumbnail image with the prefix “thumb” is automatically created (ie: upload “picture.gif” and “thumb_picture.gif” is created).

Now goto the page content where you want to place the image and click the FCK-Editor Image icon. You will be prompted to specify image URL (for images on a remote server) or you can click [Browse server] button to view all images available from uploading. Select the image or thumbnail you want and you will see a preview in the Image screen along with Image height and width in pixels. Now you need to Specify how the image is inserted into the text.

You can adjust either the width or height and as long as lock ratio is set (you should see a small blue padlock) the other dimension is automatically adjusted to maintain the image proportions.

The [border] option is the number of pixels wide you want the border to be. Leave blank or put ‘0’ for no border.

[Hspace] and [Vspace] specify in pixels the Horizontal and Vertical spacing between image and surrounding text.

Select the [Align] option to specify where image appears within the local HTML element (ie with the page or a table cell). You can view the effect of the alignment in the preview window.

NB1: You can also upload images directly from here using the [Upload] tab which has similar functionality to the [Image Manager] menu option.

We recommend that you use the [Image manager] as this is has more functionality and is more integrated into CMSMS.