Using WysGui CMS

Today I'll go over the basics of WysGui, and how to do things such as managing your pages and content on WysGui CMS. I'll also go over some of the key terms for these systems.

Key Terms

WysGui: A Web-Based User Interface used to Manage Web Sites that utilizes a WYSIWYG Editor for content, and Code Editors for modules. It Consists of a Brain, Body, and Skin built for many different types of Web-Sites.

Brain: The part of WysGui that includes all of the page settings, and data needed for the site's framework.

Body: The part of WysGui that displays the content and modules for each page.

Skin: The part of WysGui that determines the theme for your web-site. The skin consists of inter-changable style-sheets and templates.

Content: Text, widgets, HTML, JavaScript, Flash, Video, Music, and many other things that are used to build character on web-sites.

Module: Dynamic content used for form-building, data loading, and anything that can't be accomplished through Content.

Page: A web-page; A single file on the World Wide Web, providing text, graphical images, etc.: it may have hypertext linked with other Web pages at a web-site.

Parent: An entity on a page that nests content & modules. Parents can hold an unlimited amount of content, including other parents. Each piece of content inside a parent is considered a child element. The parents on this page include (header, right sidebar, main body, left sidebar, and footer).

Group: Used to sort and/or separate content & modules within a parent. Groups can hold multiple pieces of content, allowing versatile content management. The order in which the content displays within a group (ASC/DESC) can be changed, as well as many other things.

Creating & Managing a Page

You can create a page directly through the Admin Panel. No HTML or coding knowledge of any kind is needed. Simply visit the Admin Panel, click the icon labeled, "Add Page", and you're on your way.

Upon visiting the page, you are given a form with the following fields.

Specify Security: In WysGui there are two measures of security, and two means of implementing them. That means there are four fields to fill out. There are ranks, and users. For each rank or user, you can specify their rights to view the page, and to change data on the page. The four fields are:

View Ranks: Leave blank for everyone to see this page, or select specific ranks with rights.

Change Ranks: Must fill this out. The chosen rank(s) will have the right to manage this page and some things on it (depending on deeper security levels on parents/groups).

View Users: Leave blank to restrict view rights solely based on a user's rank, or fill out to give a certain user special powers.

Change Users: Leave blank to ristrict change rights solely based on user's rank, or fill out to give a certain user special powers.

Page Name: The name for the page. It's used as the label for the page in the Admin Panel. You'll also see the page name in the "Page" select menu when adding content, nav items, and modules. Also, the URL for the page is generated by the Page Name automatically.

Title: This is used to label the web-page. It's seen at the top of the browser, in the page's listing in Search Engines like Google, and should be short and descriptive of the content on the page.

Keywords: A list of words, separated by commas, that describe the content on the web-page. Try to use as little keywords as possible (around 7), and it's suggested not to over/under-use them in the content. They are used by Search Engines to help define your page.

Description: The description of your page seen under the title in search engine listings. It should be around 160 characters, and is used to attract users to click your listing. Also, they are used by Search Engines to define your page.

Theme: The theme your page will use. Themes determine the template & style-sheet for your site. It's the look & feel.

After filling out all of the fields, click the button at the bottom labeled, "Add Page." The page will be added to the database unless an error occurred. Look towards the top of the page to see the message.

You can now visit the Admin Panel and click Edit Page to change the page later. Through Edit Page, you can change any of the fields you entered, and also one more thing.�You can upload an icon for the page. The icon will be used as the favicon for the page, and will be used as an icon for the page in the Data View of the Site Tree, and some other places if enabled.

To create a Custom Page simply visit the Admin Panel, click Manual Edit, and create the page by typing a file-name in the box provided. Click the button "Create Page" and it will be created. Be aware of the extension you use. To access & edit the page, you can use the "File View" in the Site Tree, or type the URL in the address bar. You cannot edit a custom page through "Edit Page", or add content/modules or attach themes to custom pages normally. They are completely custom, and are designed for multipurpose uses that possibly can't be done through modules, or maybe would be easier/more comforting to develop stand-alone from the WysGui features. Rank protection, also, would need to be done completely custom. There is no initial connection to WysGui CMS, due to the simple fact that the file is created blank (with no content).