Presale Query
3 posts by 2 authors in: Forums > CMS Builder
Last Post: May 10, 2010 (RSS)
By me.prosenjeet - May 8, 2010
I am fascinated by your product. But somehow, I am unable to understand the use of it. I mean, the integration part into my existing html/php pages. Once a content has been created and we go for the code to add content on our page. It says "save the page as cccchhh.php" and on other hand it says simply copy the code on our existing pages. I am a bit confused and would appreciate your help regarding this.
Further, I would like to know if there is any user guide or manual to understand the whole system?
Thanks
Further, I would like to know if there is any user guide or manual to understand the whole system?
Thanks
Re: [me.prosenjeet] Presale Query
By gkornbluth - May 9, 2010
Hi me.prosenjeet,
Moving from straight HTML programming to CMS based programming can be a bit confusing sometimes.
Once you get the hang of it, you'll be OK.
The biggest difference is that all of your content comes from an on-line database, while your page layout comes from your regular html coding.
Here's an excerpt from nmy CMSB Cookbook http://www.thecmsbcookbook.com that may help to clear things up.
HOW DOES CMS BUILDER WORK?
Once you’ve installed CMS Builder, following the really simple instructions on the Interactive Tools web site, you’ll probably want to dive right in and create your first web site. I would urge you to wait until you’ve watched the videos on the Interactive Tools website, and until you’ve read at least the introductory chapter of this cookbook.
I’d also suggest that you follow the creation of the 2 sample pages later in this chapter. There are downloadable sample scripts so you can follow along and compare your result with mine. The URL is listed later in this section.
In order to use CMS Builder effectively, and to minimize the frustration that’s common to all first timers, there are a few new concepts that you’ll have to get your head around.
TYPES OF DATA BASE INTERFACES
CMS Builder uses 2 basic types of database interfaces to manage web pages.
1) A single record interface, for information that may be changed but only exist in one form at a time. Examples of this type of information would be an “about me” page, “contact information” and the directions to a specific location.
2) A multi record interface for information about a series of items that have the same basic informational structure, (name, address, description). Examples of this type of information would be a list of images, a calendar of events, and a list of products.
The multi record interface manages 2 types of pages. "List" pages that show a listing of either image thumbnails, event titles and dates, or products, and "details" pages that shows detailed information about a specific item in the list.
DESIGNING YOUR FIRST CMSB PAGES
AN “ABOUT US” PAGE
This “About Us” page get it’s content through a single record section editor interface.
Our “About Us” page contains the company name, an address, a phone number, and a few paragraphs describing the company.
CREATING THE “ABOUT US” HTML PAGE
The first step is to design the “About Us” page using HTML and to make sure that it looks the way you want it to.
Then you’d make a list of all the areas (fields) that you want the user to be able to modify. In our example we’ll want the user to be able to modify the company’s name, their current address, phone number, and a company description.
CREATING A SINGLE RECORD SECTION EDITOR
Since this page will contain only one set of information, it uses a single record section editor.
Log on to your CMS Builder interface as administrator and click on the admin tab on the menu. Then click on the section editors tab and again on the “Add New Editor” button. From there, click on the “Single Record” radio button. Then enter “About Us” in the “Menu Name” field and click on ”Create New Menu”.
On the next screen, which is a list of existing section editors, click on “modify” next to the “About Us” entry. That will bring you to a screen that will allow you to add new information fields to the section editor’s field menu.
We’ll keep things pretty simple to begin with, so for the menu of fields on your section editor, in addition to the “Title” and “Content” fields that are automatically created, you’ll be creating a text field called “Street Address”, a text field called “City” a text field called “State” a text field called “Zipcode”, a text field called “Phone” and a text box called “Description”.
You’ll add these fields by clicking on the “Add Field” button at the bottom of the field list.
For the first field, type “Street Address” in the “Field Label” box.
You’ll notice that your entry is reflected in the Field Name” box, but there are only lower case letters and numbers, and that any spaces or special characters are replaced by underscores. After you’ve created a field, you can modify your “Field Label” to say anything that you want to, but the “Field Name”, which is the actual name of your field in your MySQL database, is restricted to those types of characters.
From the “Field Type” pull down select “text field”.
Click on the Show All link next to “Input Validation” and check the box that says “Required” so that the user can not leave this field blank.
You’ll be creating a number of text fields, so instead of clicking on “Save”, click on “Save & Copy”. You’ll notice that the Field Label now says “Copy of Street Address” and all the other parameters (like the “Required” checkbox) are the same as they were for the original field.
Change the “Field Label” to “City”. Notice that the “Field Name” changes as well.
Click on “Save & Copy” to create the “State” field, the “Zipcode” field, and the “Phone” field. Then click on “Save” because this is the last text field that we’ll be creating for this exercise.
HINT: To create a field that maintains all of the parameters of any original field, click on “modify” next to the original field and then click on “Save and Copy” to create the new field and then change the “Field Label” of the new field.
There’s one more information field to create and that is the text box for the “Description”. You should be able to do that on your own.
For this exercise we won’t be using the “content” field so you can click on the “erase” link next to the “content” entry.
THE SEPARATOR FIELD
The “About Us” editor is a pretty simple section editor, but if you had a large number of fields, you’d probably want to be able to group them into sections, and then insert header bars at the top of each section. With CMSB it’s a snap to create as many header bars as you need. You can also customize their color and other properties to meet your specific needs.
For this editor, let’s create a header bar that says “Company Information”.
Click on “Add Field” and in the “Field Type” pull down select “–separator--”
This type of field doesn’t use a “Field Label” or “Field Name”, so click on the “Header Bar” check box and type “Company Information” into the box just below the radio button. Then click save.
RESTRICTING ACCEPTABLE DATA
Now it’s time to modify the parameters of the “State” field, so click on modify next to the “State” field entry.
If the input validation fields are not showing, click on “show all”.
The Required box should already be checked.
State/Possession abbreviations all have 2 letters so enter a 2 in the “Min” and the “Max” length boxes.
State/Possession abbreviations are always capital letters, so select “only allow characters” from the “Allowed Content” menu and type all the capital letters A through Z (no commas and no spaces) in the box to the right. Don’t include a “B” or a “Q” since they do not appear in any of the official abbreviations.
In the “Field Description” Box type “Enter only official 2 capital letter abbreviations”. Then click “Save” to save your changes to this field.
!!!YOU MUST ALSO CLICK ON THE “SAVE DETAIL” BOX OR YOUR CHANGES WILL NOT BE SAVED TO YOUR DATABASE!!!
PUTTING THE FIELDS IN A LOGICAL ORDER
You’ve created 7 information fields and one separator field, but when you look at the list of fields, they are not in an order that makes the most sense, so for convenience, let’s rearrange them so that the header bar appears at the top, followed by Title, Street Address, City, State, Zipcode Phone and Description.
Just click on one of the up/down arrows in the “Drag” column and drag any field up or down in the list to where you want it to appear.
HINT: You can rearrange any field list using this technique. It does not affect your web pages, just it’s position on the field list.
ENTER THE “ABOUT US” DATA
Now that you’ve created all of the fields needed for your “About Us” page, it’s time to enter some data so that it will appear on your page. Click on “About Us” in the menu on the left side of your page. This will display a user interface with all of the fields that you created. Enter the appropriate information into all of the fields and click “Save”.
CAUTION: Your information is not uploaded to the database until you click “Save”. If you don’t save your work, it will be lost when you close the page in your browser.
HINT: Instead of typing information directly into the interface, you can copy and paste text from your favorite word processor.
CONVERTING YOUR HTML PAGE
Now it’s time to convert your “About Us” web page to work with CMS Builder.
Make a copy of your HTML page and change the file extension from .html to .php, then open the new .php page in your web page editor.
In your CMSB interface, click on the Admin tab on the CMS Builder main page and then on “Code Generator”. This is one of the most powerful and useful tools in CMS Builder. It allows you to copy and paste code snippets into your web page minimizing the need for retyping and the possibility for error.
Select the "About Us” section from the pull down menu and click on the “Detail Page” radio button. Leave all of the other entries at their default settings and click on “Show Code”.
The first thing that you’ll want to change on your web page is the code above the <head> tag. Using copy and paste, replace all the code above the <head> tag on your web page with the code from the Code Generator that’s above the <head> tag.
Then, in the “Step 2 area” of the code generator code, locate the word “Title:”. The code that follows, including the less than and greater than sign will replace the text for Company Name on your web page. Don’t replace any of the formatting, just the text.
Repeat this for the code next to Street Address:, City:, State:, Zipcode:, Phone:, and Description:. Then save your new page and upload it to your server.
If you’ve done all the steps correctly, you should see your web page, exactly as you designed it.
If you get error, open the sample PHP page and compare the code with the code on your page. The most common mistakes are missing a less than “<”, or greater than “>” sign when copying and pasting, or missing some of the information above the <head> tag.
There's a lot more in the Cookbook about setting up your first pages, but this should help you to understand the basic concept.
Best,
Jerry Kornbluth
Moving from straight HTML programming to CMS based programming can be a bit confusing sometimes.
Once you get the hang of it, you'll be OK.
The biggest difference is that all of your content comes from an on-line database, while your page layout comes from your regular html coding.
Here's an excerpt from nmy CMSB Cookbook http://www.thecmsbcookbook.com that may help to clear things up.
HOW DOES CMS BUILDER WORK?
Once you’ve installed CMS Builder, following the really simple instructions on the Interactive Tools web site, you’ll probably want to dive right in and create your first web site. I would urge you to wait until you’ve watched the videos on the Interactive Tools website, and until you’ve read at least the introductory chapter of this cookbook.
I’d also suggest that you follow the creation of the 2 sample pages later in this chapter. There are downloadable sample scripts so you can follow along and compare your result with mine. The URL is listed later in this section.
In order to use CMS Builder effectively, and to minimize the frustration that’s common to all first timers, there are a few new concepts that you’ll have to get your head around.
TYPES OF DATA BASE INTERFACES
CMS Builder uses 2 basic types of database interfaces to manage web pages.
1) A single record interface, for information that may be changed but only exist in one form at a time. Examples of this type of information would be an “about me” page, “contact information” and the directions to a specific location.
2) A multi record interface for information about a series of items that have the same basic informational structure, (name, address, description). Examples of this type of information would be a list of images, a calendar of events, and a list of products.
The multi record interface manages 2 types of pages. "List" pages that show a listing of either image thumbnails, event titles and dates, or products, and "details" pages that shows detailed information about a specific item in the list.
DESIGNING YOUR FIRST CMSB PAGES
AN “ABOUT US” PAGE
This “About Us” page get it’s content through a single record section editor interface.
Our “About Us” page contains the company name, an address, a phone number, and a few paragraphs describing the company.
CREATING THE “ABOUT US” HTML PAGE
The first step is to design the “About Us” page using HTML and to make sure that it looks the way you want it to.
Then you’d make a list of all the areas (fields) that you want the user to be able to modify. In our example we’ll want the user to be able to modify the company’s name, their current address, phone number, and a company description.
CREATING A SINGLE RECORD SECTION EDITOR
Since this page will contain only one set of information, it uses a single record section editor.
Log on to your CMS Builder interface as administrator and click on the admin tab on the menu. Then click on the section editors tab and again on the “Add New Editor” button. From there, click on the “Single Record” radio button. Then enter “About Us” in the “Menu Name” field and click on ”Create New Menu”.
On the next screen, which is a list of existing section editors, click on “modify” next to the “About Us” entry. That will bring you to a screen that will allow you to add new information fields to the section editor’s field menu.
We’ll keep things pretty simple to begin with, so for the menu of fields on your section editor, in addition to the “Title” and “Content” fields that are automatically created, you’ll be creating a text field called “Street Address”, a text field called “City” a text field called “State” a text field called “Zipcode”, a text field called “Phone” and a text box called “Description”.
You’ll add these fields by clicking on the “Add Field” button at the bottom of the field list.
For the first field, type “Street Address” in the “Field Label” box.
You’ll notice that your entry is reflected in the Field Name” box, but there are only lower case letters and numbers, and that any spaces or special characters are replaced by underscores. After you’ve created a field, you can modify your “Field Label” to say anything that you want to, but the “Field Name”, which is the actual name of your field in your MySQL database, is restricted to those types of characters.
From the “Field Type” pull down select “text field”.
Click on the Show All link next to “Input Validation” and check the box that says “Required” so that the user can not leave this field blank.
You’ll be creating a number of text fields, so instead of clicking on “Save”, click on “Save & Copy”. You’ll notice that the Field Label now says “Copy of Street Address” and all the other parameters (like the “Required” checkbox) are the same as they were for the original field.
Change the “Field Label” to “City”. Notice that the “Field Name” changes as well.
Click on “Save & Copy” to create the “State” field, the “Zipcode” field, and the “Phone” field. Then click on “Save” because this is the last text field that we’ll be creating for this exercise.
HINT: To create a field that maintains all of the parameters of any original field, click on “modify” next to the original field and then click on “Save and Copy” to create the new field and then change the “Field Label” of the new field.
There’s one more information field to create and that is the text box for the “Description”. You should be able to do that on your own.
For this exercise we won’t be using the “content” field so you can click on the “erase” link next to the “content” entry.
THE SEPARATOR FIELD
The “About Us” editor is a pretty simple section editor, but if you had a large number of fields, you’d probably want to be able to group them into sections, and then insert header bars at the top of each section. With CMSB it’s a snap to create as many header bars as you need. You can also customize their color and other properties to meet your specific needs.
For this editor, let’s create a header bar that says “Company Information”.
Click on “Add Field” and in the “Field Type” pull down select “–separator--”
This type of field doesn’t use a “Field Label” or “Field Name”, so click on the “Header Bar” check box and type “Company Information” into the box just below the radio button. Then click save.
RESTRICTING ACCEPTABLE DATA
Now it’s time to modify the parameters of the “State” field, so click on modify next to the “State” field entry.
If the input validation fields are not showing, click on “show all”.
The Required box should already be checked.
State/Possession abbreviations all have 2 letters so enter a 2 in the “Min” and the “Max” length boxes.
State/Possession abbreviations are always capital letters, so select “only allow characters” from the “Allowed Content” menu and type all the capital letters A through Z (no commas and no spaces) in the box to the right. Don’t include a “B” or a “Q” since they do not appear in any of the official abbreviations.
In the “Field Description” Box type “Enter only official 2 capital letter abbreviations”. Then click “Save” to save your changes to this field.
!!!YOU MUST ALSO CLICK ON THE “SAVE DETAIL” BOX OR YOUR CHANGES WILL NOT BE SAVED TO YOUR DATABASE!!!
PUTTING THE FIELDS IN A LOGICAL ORDER
You’ve created 7 information fields and one separator field, but when you look at the list of fields, they are not in an order that makes the most sense, so for convenience, let’s rearrange them so that the header bar appears at the top, followed by Title, Street Address, City, State, Zipcode Phone and Description.
Just click on one of the up/down arrows in the “Drag” column and drag any field up or down in the list to where you want it to appear.
HINT: You can rearrange any field list using this technique. It does not affect your web pages, just it’s position on the field list.
ENTER THE “ABOUT US” DATA
Now that you’ve created all of the fields needed for your “About Us” page, it’s time to enter some data so that it will appear on your page. Click on “About Us” in the menu on the left side of your page. This will display a user interface with all of the fields that you created. Enter the appropriate information into all of the fields and click “Save”.
CAUTION: Your information is not uploaded to the database until you click “Save”. If you don’t save your work, it will be lost when you close the page in your browser.
HINT: Instead of typing information directly into the interface, you can copy and paste text from your favorite word processor.
CONVERTING YOUR HTML PAGE
Now it’s time to convert your “About Us” web page to work with CMS Builder.
Make a copy of your HTML page and change the file extension from .html to .php, then open the new .php page in your web page editor.
In your CMSB interface, click on the Admin tab on the CMS Builder main page and then on “Code Generator”. This is one of the most powerful and useful tools in CMS Builder. It allows you to copy and paste code snippets into your web page minimizing the need for retyping and the possibility for error.
Select the "About Us” section from the pull down menu and click on the “Detail Page” radio button. Leave all of the other entries at their default settings and click on “Show Code”.
The first thing that you’ll want to change on your web page is the code above the <head> tag. Using copy and paste, replace all the code above the <head> tag on your web page with the code from the Code Generator that’s above the <head> tag.
Then, in the “Step 2 area” of the code generator code, locate the word “Title:”. The code that follows, including the less than and greater than sign will replace the text for Company Name on your web page. Don’t replace any of the formatting, just the text.
Repeat this for the code next to Street Address:, City:, State:, Zipcode:, Phone:, and Description:. Then save your new page and upload it to your server.
If you’ve done all the steps correctly, you should see your web page, exactly as you designed it.
If you get error, open the sample PHP page and compare the code with the code on your page. The most common mistakes are missing a less than “<”, or greater than “>” sign when copying and pasting, or missing some of the information above the <head> tag.
There's a lot more in the Cookbook about setting up your first pages, but this should help you to understand the basic concept.
Best,
Jerry Kornbluth
The first CMS Builder reference book is now available on-line!
Take advantage of a free 3 month trial subscription, only for CMSB users, at: http://www.thecmsbcookbook.com/trial.php
Take advantage of a free 3 month trial subscription, only for CMSB users, at: http://www.thecmsbcookbook.com/trial.php