UserGuide

DornCMS User Guide

This page is meant to get you started using DornCMS to manage your website. It includes instructions on how to perform common tasks like editing a page, doing a site backup, managing back-end users, etc.

Logging In to the Administrative Back-end

To get to the administrative back-end, add "cms/" to the end of your site's URL. Here are some examples:

"http://dorncms.com/"              #normal homepage
"http://dorncms.com/cms/"          #administrative back-end

"http://dorncms.com/mysite/"       #normal homepage
"http://dorncms.com/mysite/cms/"   #administrative back-end

This will take you to a login screen. The default username and password are as follows:

**username** - admin
**password** - password

It is very important that you change the username, password, or both immediately. The default login information leaves your site open to malicious attacks.

Changing your Password

From the CMS main screen, click "Edit Site Variables". Then click the "users" link.

All of the existing users are listed below the form with links to edit and delete them. Click on "edit" next to the user you want to change. Enter the new username and/or password and hit the "edit" button. Important - the changes are not saved until you hit the "Save Changes" button at the bottom of the screen.

Manage Back-end Users

From the CMS main screen, click "Edit Site Variables". Then click the "users" link.

There are 3 types of back-end users. Admins have full access to everything on the site. Designers can do everything except manage back-end users and back-up or restore the site. Editors can only edit page elements.

To add a new user, fill out the form and click the "add" button. To edit an existing user, click on the "edit" link next to the user you wish to edit. Similarly, to delete a user, click on the "remove" link next to the user's name. The "move up" and "move down" links don't effect priviledges at all and are just there to help you organize your list of users.

Important - You must hit the "Save Changes" button for any changes you make to take effect.

Understanding the Structure of a DornCMS Site

A site in DornCMS consists of one or more pages ("about us", "home", etc.). A page contains one or more elements and information on how to layout these elements ("title", "contact_us_box", etc.).

The reason elements are separated from pages is so each element can have a customized editing interface. For example, the interface for editing a page title can be a simple text input field, but if you are editing a large block of HTML code, you probably want to use a WYSIWYG editor. DornCMS also supports plugins for even more customized interfaces.

There are 2 special pages on the site, "header" and "footer". The "header" page is shown at the top of every page and the "footer" page is shown at the bottom. This lets you easily have a consistent template and theme throughout your site. As with the other pages, header and footer can have multiple elements as well as the PHP and HTML code to lay out these elements. To get a better idea about how templates work, check out the [Templates] wiki page.

When someone goes to a url on your site, "http://dorncms.com/about_us/" for example, DornCMS looks for a page called "about_us", pulls in all of the elements required, and displays the header, about_us, and footer page to the user in that order. If someone tries to go to a page that doesn't exist, DornCMS will load a special page called "page_not_found" instead.

Editing Pages

Form the CMS main screen, click "Edit Pages" and click on whichever page you want to edit.

A list of the page elements will be shown. To edit the page itself, click the "Edit This Page" link above this list.

Because a page is able to contain PHP code, a WYSIWYG editor is not used. This means you must be somewhat familiar with HTML in order to edit a page. Knowledge of PHP is not needed in most cases.

In addition to PHP and HTML, you can also use several special CMS directives that do things like include elements or link to other pages. Here is a breakdown of the different directives you can use:

• [cms]title[/cms] - include the title element of the current page (replace "title" with whatever element you want)
• [cms]contact_us - address_box[/cms] - include an element of another page
• [img]myimage.jpg[/img] - display an image
• [url=about_us/]About Us[/url] - Link to the about_us page and use "About Us" as the display text for the link
• [url=myfile.pdf]Download Now![/url] - Provide a download link to an uploaded file
• [sitevar]business_phone[/sitevar] - Include a site variable.
• [var]site_root[var] - Includes a global PHP variable.

If you need to load an element in PHP, you can use the following code as well:

<?php
$element = CMS::load('about_us','title');
?>

It is recommended that you only put layout code in the page itself and put all of the actual content in elements.

Important - You must click the "Save Changes" button at the bottom of the screen for your changes to take effect.

Editing Elements

From the CMS main screen, click "Edit Pages" and click on the element's page. Click on the element you want to edit from the list shown.

Depending on the content type of the element and any plugins it is using, you may be shown one of a number of different editing interfaces. All of these interfaces write code to a plain textbox, but this is usually abstracted away to provide an easier to use editing environment. To learn more about creating custom plugins, read the [Plugins] wiki page.

All elements support HTML code and a few special CMS directives. These directives are identical to the ones above for pages except for "[cms]title[/cms]" and "[var]site_root[/var]", which cannot be used in elements.

PHP code is only parsed in pages and not elements.

Important - You must click the "Save Changes" button at the bottom of the screen for your changes to take effect.

Backing Up Your Site

Backing up your site is an important safety measure. If something happens to your web server or site, you can quickly restore all of your pages and elements as well as site settings and uploaded images/files.

From the CMS main screen, click "Backup / Restore Site". Click the "Download Backup File" link to download a zip archive containing all of your site's information.

Make sure to keep this file in a secure place since someone can potentially see all of your site's settings, including login information.

Restoring a Previous Backup

If something goes wrong with your web server or site, you may want to restore everything from a previously downloaded backup file.

Warning - only restore your site from a file that you downloaded using the backup interface. Trying to restore from another file may result in damage to your site.

From the CMS main screen, click "Backup / Restore Site". Browse for the zip archive and hit the "restore" button to completely replace your site with the backed up version.