Contents Articles
Informative content such as articles, press releases, publications and tutorials are referred to as Articles within the context of this software. If your site constantly publishes new informative content then you would create Articles to publish this content. Articles are placed into categories to sort them into related topics. If your site uses another term instead of "Articles" (For example: "Tutorials") then you can change the word Articles inside the language files.
This application allows you to quickly create articles, whether they are short summary types of publications or lengthy documents & multi-page articles. There are two article types in this application. They differ in the amount of content they can hold, the options which are available and how they are displayed on your website.
- Complete article with pages
This is the default type of article. It requires a title, summary, category, author and page content. It is commonly used to create lengthy documents such as tutorials and publications. When creating a new article, you will need to enter an article summary (also referred to as teaser) and content, which is displayed as the body of the article. The summary is used on the home page (and other locations) to introduce readers to the article. - Short article or summary
This type of article is generally more brief than a complete article and only requires a short description or summary. Short articles are used fto display summarized content such as press releases or when you want to link to an article published on another web site or to a document.
Blogs are typically a user's opinion or discussion about a particular subject, although they can be used for any purpose. Blogs are required to have a title and content. They show up under the list of recent blogs on the home page and in the blog archive available at www.yoursite.com/blogs. Blogs can have podcasts attached to them, and you can have a blog automatically published on a future date by setting the "Start Date" to a date in the future. On the public area site, visitors can post comments to a blog post (if the option is enabled via the settings page). Blogs can be disabled site-wide via the 'Content Settings' tab on the Settings page.
News Items
News items are mainly used to share news and events about your particular website, business, or community. They are usually more formal than blogs and less opinionated. They can however be used for any purpose you see fit. News items show up under the list of recent news on the home page and in the news archive available at www.example.com/news/. News items can be set to expire at a future date, after which time they will no longer be visible on the website (but they will still exist within the control panel). News items are generally used to notify your website readers about your new website, plans or upcoming events. Most times they are the first thing your website visitors will read when they first arrive at your website.
Web Pages
Web pages are used to publish content on your website that doesn't change very often. These include common web pages such as an "About Us" or "Contact Us" page. A link to each web page can optionally be set to appear on your website's navigation menu. A web page can contain content you type in, or it can link to another website.
This software comes bundled with 4 default web pages, and each with a special purpose. Those pages are:
- Home
This is your website's home page. You will notice that when you edit the page from the control panel that it contains the %%HomePageContent%% placeholder. This is the placeholder that loads the default home page content such as your recent news items and featured articles. You can add your own content above and below this place holder. For example: you can add a 'Welcome to my website' section and a brief description of your website, but you shouldn't remove the placeholder.
- Contact Us
The "contact us" page contains a built-in contact form that users can fill out to send you an email. You can change which email address their feedback goes to by visiting the 'Content Settings' in the Settings Page. New form fields can be added to your "contact us" page which will be automatically added to the email that's sent when someone fills out your contact form. By default, CAPTCHA (An automated way of stopping spammers from using your contact form to spam) is included in your contact form.
The "contact us" page is a page with a form, which users visiting your website can use to contact you. Once a user fills out the form and clicks send, an email containing the form information will be sent to the email address specified for the 'Contact Email' field on the settings page under the 'Content Settings' tab. (Note: This email address is different to the 'Admin Email' found on the Site Settings tab). You can add new fields to the form and they will automatically be included in the email that's sent. - Syndicate
This page displays information about and links to the RSS feeds available on your website. The syndicate page uses a placeholder that acts in the same manner as the "Home Page" placeholder in that it represents where the dynamically generated content will appear in relation to any other text you want to add to the page. The placeholder is %%Syndicate%%. - SiteMap
This page displays an automatically generated list of links to all of the pages, blogs, news, authors, categories and articles on your web site. This page uses the placeholder %%SiteMap%% which works in the exact same way as the contact us and syndicate placeholders.
