New to CMS, Not new to HTML/CSS/PHP

[Ashx999]

Hi, basically I've spent the last few days learning about all the different CMS. Here is what I understand so far.

Content Management Systems are what website creators use to make it easy for the client to update the content of a website.
Content Management Systems are installed onto a web server and that's how they are accessed.

What I don't get though is this: If I make a website, and on the page I have a section for the content, I want the client to be able to update the content without going into the code. The content is in between the following:

Code: Select all

<div class="content">Content goes here.</div>

From what I have gathered is that if I wanted the client to be able to update that content, I would insert some sort of tag such as:

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{ content }

Ok - this makes sense so far. What I don't get now though, is, if I want to make the entire website using HTML and CSS, can I then upload said website to the same directory I have put the CMS software on, and just add in the special tags and would that work?

OR, do I have to write the whole program within the CMS software?

Ok - this is a very basic question but I have search online for all sorts of information but everything keeps saying you have to make the whole website in the CMS software - something which I don't want to do. I want to program the website as normal on my pc in notepad while adding graphics, then upload it to the server.


Thanks,

Ashley

[Wishbone]

You don't 'upload' your site. You create templates in the admin panel of CMS. A template is a mixture of HTML and Smarty. All templates and content are stored in the CMS database. Smarty tags are referenced by putting the command in {curly braces}. You have all access to built-in Smarty tags, and some that CMSMS defined. The {content} tag means "Take the content from the page I'm trying to access and place it here". You can create your own Smarty tags by defining a User Defined Tag and placing your own PHP code in it.

I used to design my site locally and make sure it works as regular CSS and HTML, then copy/paste into CMSMS, and convert into a template. Now I do it directly in CMS.

This is a really powerful CMS, and it's very easy (minutes) to take your own custom HTML and add the appropriate Smarty tags in order to create a template.

Install it and spend some time reading the default content. It explains a lot. Then log into the admin panel and play around. The basic functions are self-explanatory.

A copy of the default content can be seen on the Dr's site: http://multiintech.com/defaultcontent/

Spend some time reading the forums as well.. Many good tips and tricks.

[calguy1000]

I want to program the website as normal on my pc in notepad while adding graphics, then upload it to the server.

You are forgetting about the 'M' in the CMS acronym... 'Management'. All CMS systems that I have seen are designed to 'Manage Content', not just provide a wysiwyg editor, if that's all you want, there are tonnes of them that you can 'plug in' to your site very easily. This is not the site to discuss that cruft.

If you want to manage templates (i.e: the layouts for your pages or various portions of your pages) so that you don't have to make the same change in each page very time you need to change something. If you want to allow your customer to dynamically add/edit/delete pages without messing up design or navigation, if you want to be able to embed other custom applications easily, and style them... if you want to separate 'content' from 'design'. then you need something to 'Manage' that. and that's basically what a CMS system does. And what CMSMS is designed to do.

Yes you need to build your website in CMSMS, and let CMSMS manage it, using whatever tools CMSMS provides (and/or third party tools). This is the same with the other CMS packages too.

Now, there are free online (hosted) services, and other packages that make it easy to embed a wysiwyg editor into certain spots of a pre-uploaded page. But personally I wouldn't classify them as 'Content Management Systems', because they aren't doing the 'management' part.

[Wishbone]

I want to program the website as normal on my pc in notepad while adding graphics, then upload it to the server.

You are forgetting about the 'M' in the CMS acronym... 'Management'. All CMS systems that I have seen are designed to 'Manage Content', not just provide a wysiwyg editor, if that's all you want, there are tonnes of them that you can 'plug in' to your site very easily. This is not the site to discuss that cruft.

I think it is a valid question. It seems to me from her(?) post is that she is talking about templates. Most CMS's don't allow users to update templates from the admin panel, and require you to edit files, and package it in some way (zip, etc) and upload it.

What I like about this CMS is that I can make template edits from any computer, right from the control panel.

[Ashx999]

Thanks for all your replys, I seem to have a better understanding now.

Ok - I installed it, and I have it set up, I created a template, I pasted my page code into it and removed the content and replaced it with {content}, the problem now is though it isn't linking to my css page, I have added a style sheet, pasted my css into it and added it to the site, tried adding {style} into the header section but when I look at the page I get no style, anyone have any idea what's gone wrong?

Thanks again, it's all very appreciated, by the way, Ashley is also a guys name over here in the UK

Thanks,

[Dr.CSS]

It helps if you read the default content that comes with CMSMS...

http://multiintech.com/defaultcontent/i ... cmsms_tags

[Ashx999]

Okey, problem, again.

I figured out you had to have {stylesheet} in the heading of the page to link the style sheet to it.

Done that.

So, as the template I pasted all the code from my index.html page into a template and pasted all the code from my style1.css page into a style sheet on the site, now it should look like this:

http://www.circasdesigns.co.uk but instead looks like this http://www.circasdesigns.co.uk/cms

What have I done wrong? I know I haven't uploaded the images yet but still, you can't even see the menu.

Thanks for that reply above ^ it's really appreciated.

[Wishbone]

Look at your list of templates.. There should be a 'css' button. You can use this to attach your stylesheet to your template. You can use {cms_stylesheet} in your <head> to include all the stylesheets you have attached to your template.

[Dr.CSS]

Most likely problem is that the images aren't in root/images folder, put them in root/uploads/nameoftheme folder then call them (uploads/nameoftheme/image.jpg)...

Look at some of the default style sheets to see how they are called, new {cms_stylesheet} calls them different than older ones, ([[root_url]]/uploads/etc.)...

[Ashx999]

Ok ok, making more sense of it now, got the images to work the bg image and the logo see

circasdesigns.co.uk/cms
the images that I got working, are linked to in the template html page, now, on my DIV section, I have a BG image which is linked in the CSS page

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#content {
	background-image:url(uploads/menubacktrans.png);
	position: fixed;
	top: 50px;
	left: 50px;
	background-repeat:repeat;
	padding: 2px;
	width: 250px;
	overflow:auto;
	height: 300px;
}

Thats in the CSS page, so my question is does the CMS Made Simple software not store the CSS in the same dir as the html page?

If you know what I mean, basically in the template I have

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<img src="uploads/logo.jpg" >

and it works fine - on the css page however it doesn't load the image at all.

Just want to say thanks to everyone who has put some input in for me - you have all been a great help and it's very much appreciated, hopefully when I get the hang of this I'll be able to stick around and help others out like myself!

Thanks again.