WEBCARE: CMS DEMO

CMS Instructions

This demo website is up to enable you to explore the simple Content Management System that we use to build our CMS sites. This demo will allow you to log in to the admin system and to have a play with the fully featured page editor.

The real power of this system lies in the "Content Management" section of the admin system. In this section you can:

ADD a page to your site (and it will automatically appear in the navigation bar)
DELETE a page
EDIT an existing page - so you can change anything about that page.

Log in to the Admin system and enter the following details

u: demo
p: demo

You will see on the left hand side a navigation bar. Click on "Content Management". You will then see a list of all the existing pages in this demo site. You will also see a button at the top that says "Add Page", so if you want to create a new page, just click this button. You will then have a blank page to work with, that has all the features as I describe below.

If you want to edit an existing page click "edit". This will take you to the heart of the content management system.

At the top, you will see the Page Name - this is what displays in the Navigation Bar (ie the "link" to that page).

This is followed by Page Title - this is what appears at the very top of the user's browser window, and will also be the default name for that page if they bookmark it. Search engines are also interested in the title of a page (so make sure it has your main keywords in it (don't over stuff it though).

Next are the meta tags - these are hidden in the html code of the page and are there so that serach engines (in the good old days) could see what your page was about. They don't pay much attention to these tags any more but, on balance, it is probably still worth having them. The meta tags comprise the description (ie what this page is about - you should have a different description for each page of your site) and the keywords (ie what terms does this page use and that you want your visitors to find you on?)

Finally, we get into the page editor itself.

The first thing you should note (and if you are on dial up it could take a minute or so to load) is that the bars of icon look very much like what you see in Microsoft Word or other text editing packages. It will even check your seplling! Other features of the editor include:

Formatting your text - bold, italic, underlined, ~~strikethrough~~, ^superscript, _subscript, colour, size
Formatting your paragraph - bullets, numbering, alignment (left, right, middle, justified), indent
Adding a table (very useful for laying objects (text or graphics out on your page so they stay in alignment)
Adding an image
Adding a link - to a page in your site, to an external webpage, to an email address etc
Adding a file (so it can be downloaded)
Creating a pop-up window (click on the Insert/Edit Link button and then on the Target tab and select "Pop-up").
Creating a link to something in a page (an anchor) - which is very good if you have lots of text on one page and want people to be able to navigate through it more easily.
Adding a horizontal line
Editing the HTML code of a page itself
Adding a form and elements like radio buttons and check boxes
And much more!

So, this is a pretty powerful tool!

If you are going to be writing lots of text for a page, I suggest you do it in say Mircosoft Word first, then just paste it into this editor. That way, if you have any problems (system crash, internet drop-out etc), you will not lose all your work - you can just paste it in again. If you are typing it in as you go, it is worth clicking the Edit button every 5 or 10 minutes to make sure your work is being saved as you go.

Underneath the page editor, you will see a Sort Order box. This tells the system where, on your navigation bar, to place this page. It can be at the very top (0), or second (1) or anywhere else in the order you like (just change the number so it goes to the right place).

The last option is Status, and you have two options - to show your page or not. If you are just working on a page and you are not ready for it to be "live" click on "Don't show". When you want it live, just click "Show".

And finally, the most important button - Edit. This will save your new page to the system or make the changes to an existing page. Make sure you always click this button when you have finished (and, as noted above, to save your work as you are going). if you don't click Edit, all your work will be lost!

So, that is the quick tour of WebCare's CMS. If you have any questions about it, or how we can build your website with a CMS back-end, so you can edit your website whenever you want to, contact us.

Enjoy your play with our CMS!.....