la.plume CMS Help
Install the system
This help page assumes you have correctly installed la.plume Micro CMS.
The system must be installed in either one of the following folders (replacing www.example.com with your own domain):
http://www.example.com/
http://www.example.com/laplume/
FTP to:
/public_html/ or
/public_html/laplume/ or
/httpdocs/ or
/httpdocs/laplume/
A different path will probably not work unless you are familiar with and able to edit the .htaccess file to suit.
Last updated on 11th November 2011 [ download latest ] [ view changelog ]
To create a new page
(1) Open your password-protected admin page:
http://www.yourdomain.com/cms/admin/ or
http://www.yourdomain.com/laplume/cms/admin/
(2) In the "Page filename" box, enter a filename. Don't enter spaces or a file suffix (eg: .html or .php). The filename will be placed into the page's web address, eg: www.mysite.com/my-file. It will also be added to the navigation menu (Capitalized and with any hyphens converted to spaces) as My File linking to the page.
Note! The "Page filename" for the home page must remain as index.
(3) In the "Content" box, the first line entered will become the small text banner right at the top of the page. This can be useful to "label" or categorise the page. The second line entered will become the large heading, eg: "la.plume CMS Help" on this page. This text will also become the page title tag in the head of the page, displayed only in the top bar of the browser. Leave the third line blank. Anything entered from the fourth line onwards will be the page content.
Example:
Screenshot: creating a new web page in Admin
(4) Then click the "Create page" button to create the page. Done!
Note! If you don't want the text banner, leave the first line as a blank line.
Formatting text in the "Content" box
When a blank line is entered between sections of text, the correct paragraph tags are auto-inserted into the page's HTML, spacing out the content nicely into visual paragraphs. A single carriage return will insert a line break within a paragraph. You can also enter your own HTML markup. If for example, you create an HTML list, the paragraph tags will not be auto-inserted.
Note! Do not paste into the page anything copied from Microsoft Word. It will probably contain invalid characters that don't display properly in a web browser. If you want to use certain special characters (especially the £ pound sterling symbol) use the correct markup.
To edit an existing page
(1) In the "Page filename" box, enter the filename of the page to be edited. The filenames of all existing pages are listed below the buttons.
(2) Click the "Get page content" button to get the content into the content box.
(3) Edit the content, taking care to preserve the text banner on the first line and the page heading on the second line, then leaving the third line empty.
(4) Click the "Overwrite existing" button to edit the page.
To delete an existing page
(1) In the "Page filename" box, enter the filename of the page to be deleted. The filenames of all existing pages are listed below the buttons.
(2) Click the "Delete page" button to delete the page.
If you deleted a page by accident, immediately after you did so, the page's filename and content should still be in their respective boxes. To recreate the page, click the "Create page" button before doing anything else.
The navigation menu
When a page is created, its filename will, by default, appear in the navigation menu. If you want a new page not to appear in the navigation menu, enter a hyphen at the beginning of the filename, eg: -mypage. The page will exist, and can be linked-to from the content of any other page. Otherwise it will remain private, for testing until you're happy enough with it to add it to the navigation menu (by creating it again without the leading hyphen) or adding links to it from other pages.
Except for 'home' and 'contact', the navigation menu is listed alphabetically.
Note! The first line text banner can be made into a horizontal sub-menu by entering hyperlinks. This might be useful, for example, in a particular series of pages which require inter-linking.
Adding HTML markup
To add an image
Assuming the image was uploaded to the default image folder (see [ Upload or delete an image ] at the top of the admin page), the following HTML code can be used to add it to the page, substituting the real image filename:
<img src="img/imagename.jpg" alt="" />
Note that the maximum width of an image is 540 pixels. Using the default stylesheet a wider image will be compressed in width.
Alternatively you can simply paste in photos from Flickr by using Flickr's 'Share' then 'Grab the HTML/BBCode' (medium size):
A photo pasted in from Flickr (click to view)
Images can be styled to display in any way you like; you can edit the styles in the stylesheet to add borders, float images left, etc, or you can add styles inline. Restore the original stylesheet with the 'Get default styles' button then clicking 'Edit styles'.
To add a horizontal rule (line)
<hr />
Just add the above HTML code into the page, leaving an empty line above and below.
To colour some text
<span>colour this text</span>
Just add the above HTML code into the page, substituting the text to be coloured for "colour this text".
To hyperlink to one of your own pages
<a href="/my-page">my link text</a>
Just add the above HTML code into the page, substituting your filename for "my-page" and the required link text for "my link text".
To hyperlink to an external page
<a href="http://www.example.com/">link text</a>
Just add the above HTML code into the page, substituting the real page address for "http://www.example.com/" and the required link text for "link text".
Validating your HTML
Note! Even experienced web designers sometimes break their pages. If you've entered your own HTML markup and see unexpected results (or something looks broken), check for markup errors by entering your page's web address into the W3C Markup Validator.
Including a visitor tracking script
The default file /cms/inc/tracking.php is empty, but you can write your own visitor tracking script into the file. It should be noted that the relative path to the website root folder from this file is ../ because tracking.php is 'php included' from the /cms/inc folder directly into the /cms folder, one level below the root.
Additional notes
The CMS character set is UTF-8. There's a test page containing French, German, and Swedish characters, and other bits and pieces, validating as XHTML 1.0 Transitional.
Leave a comment
[ comments are pre-moderated ]
Comments
No comments posted yet.