CMS Made Simple Forums

I am struggeling a bit to come to grips with CMSMS. As is often the case, it is the very fundamental information - the kind of information those who know the system take for granted - that is hard to get.

Have I got it right when my understanding is this:

The only web-document in traditional sense is index.php. All other pages - as shown on the net - are produced by adding content through ?page=xxx statements. The layout is determined by the template and css used for the added content page, and not by the index.php - meaning that I can give each indiviual page its own layout if I would like to do that. I do not have to worry about any pages, just the content (and template/css)

A follow-up question is: Is it possible to have several catalogues, each with one index.php file (like there is /admin catalogue in cmsms), or should it all be based on the one and only index.php file in the root folder?

Here's my 30 second introduction to CMS Made simple.

You create templates that control your layout.  The stylesheets are (usually) attached to the template.  It's the templates and the CSS that specifies your layout.  Templates normally include a tag that will generate the menu.  Then you create content pages and select one of your templates to use for displaying that content.

The menu and navigation are controlled by the content pages, and will be updated automatically as you add/edit/rename/delete content pages though the admin interface.

All of the templates, stylesheets and content pages are stored in the database, therefore there's only one interfaece (on the frontned) to the system, and that's via index.php.  It (and it's supporting files) are responsible for reading everything from the database and putting everything together, then displaying it to the user.

CMS Made simple uses smarty as a template engine, which provides a great deal of flexibility for controlling your layout, or conditionally changing the layout or the content. 

Editing of templates, stylesheets, and content pages is done entirely through the admin interface.  You do not need to edit files in an editor like (ugh) frontpage, and then upload them.  It's all done from one location.

Hope this helps.

Thank you for your reply.

The reason why I was thinking of having several calogues is that I am running "several websites in one". First, I use two different languages (Norwegian and English). To have a menu with some items in Norwegian and some in English. The there are several topics which I want to keep separate.

If it is possible to have more than one "main menu" (I have not had time to look much into the Menu Manager yet), this may be a way to solve the issue. (One "main menu" in Norwegian pointing to pages in Norwegian, another for "English", and they should actually be subdivided even more.)

I am also considering installing several instances of CMSMS as an alternative - in various directories. But I hope that this should not be necessary.